FOREST FOR THE TREES

On-going Thesis Research
AA Design + Make MSc
Hooke Park

“L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux”

The American monk and mystic Thomas Merton, describes thin space as,” a world that is transparent; where God is shining through it all the time” thin places offer glimpses not of heaven but of earth as it really is, unencumbered. Unmasked. Thick descriptions for thin places.

I want to create a dialogue with this thickness, and to explore ways of making, marking, and being that revel in this elusive condition. To do so I needed to observe without looking. To attend without activity. I need to retreat from the idea that I must moves towards something, and instead allow the world to reveal itself as it is.

I aim “To attend” in the old latin meaning “To stretch one’s mind toward something”, to humbly participate in its performance

Forest for the Trees aims to instigate more attentive encounters between people materialities and thing materialities through peripheral provocation and the erosion of distinction. This condition proposes a spatial disposition defined by openness, activity, and continuity; an architecture of effervescence and evanescent, in contrast to solidity, permanence, and objectivity. To expands upon this notion through ritual, ceremony, and collective activity that can nurture this sensitivity to the human-nonhuman entanglement.