Every way of seeing Lithuania’s green garment is shaped by its own optics – filtered through the observer’s interests and conditioned by an entire sequence of instruments and methodologies. ‘Forest Atlas’ is a process-based exhibition that invites visitors to enter the density of the forest at its centre – without beginning or end – into a constellation of prints assembled by aligning a diversity of forest images. The pictures, photographs, diagrams and maps presented in ‘Forest Atlas’ cartograph publicly available spatial data, revealing territorial changes, tracing the preparation and circulation of timber, and mapping the networks of production and technological innovation within the timber industry.

The notion of sustainability – now deeply embedded in cultural language to describe both products and the renewable resources used to produce them – arose historically from operations carried out in forest spaces. It is linked to the efficient cyclicality of felling and planting, and to the exploitation of forest territories designed to produce predictable, renewable timber stocks. Methods and tools developed to measure trees and compute their volume gradually reshaped our perception of forest habitats: to harvest timber more efficiently, forests were schematised, simplified, and reduced to numerical tables. Wetlands were drained, tree density thinned, creating the most favourable conditions for the strongest, straightest trees. In the process, the ability to see the forest as a long-formed, impenetrable, biodiversity-rich space was eroded. Today, this vision is being reconstructed – driven by ecological concern and a growing cultural shift that calls for the expanded protection of forest areas and the preservation of diverse ecosystems to support adaptation to climate heating.

The forest is a place of tension – shaped by competing interests, seen through culturally conditioned lenses. ‘Forest Atlas’ is dedicated to sensing forms of knowledge and imagination that link diverse disciplines, opening a fragmented overview of the relationships at work in forest futurity.

‘Forest Atlas’ opened on Saturday, 14 June,At the same time, in another forest and another cultural institution – Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts – the ‘Neringa Wood Works’ began, led by the resident carpenters’ collective gemeinsam bauen wir neu, the accompanying exhibition features work created by participants in the Neringa Forest Architecture project since 2020.

Exhibition dates: June 14 – July 13, 2025.

Visiting hours: Saturdays and Sundays, 12:00–17:00, or by prior appointment at tel. 061416255.

Address: Marcinkonys Station Gallery, Kastinio g. 1C, Marcinkonys.

‘Forest Atlas’ is a Neringa Forest Architecture project. Maps, research and visuals: Jurga Daubaraitė & Jonas Žukauskas, cartography and research assistant: Augusta Fišerytė.

Title image: Rūdninkų forest, spectral analysis from the years 2015, 2022, and 2025, is an assembly of publicly available Landsat 8 remote sensing data (Band 6, designed to detect hard surfaces). Areas that opened up following forest clear-cutting are seen in blue. Jurga Daubaraitė, Jonas Žukauskas, 2025

Financed by: Lithuanian Council for Culture and Varėna region municipality

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Les pièces de la forêt
Forest Parts

from 28 November 2024 to 25 May 2025
galerie blanche
arc en rêve centre d’architecture, Bordeaux

Elements that can be freely assembled to create interconnectable structures; wood samples collected from private monoculture plantations, experimental forests, private and state-managed mixed forests; materials from industrial timber production processes. These are just some of the ‘forest parts’ which, in this exhibition by the Neringa Forest Architecture collective, provide tactile links to the stories, processes and practices that have shaped and continue to shape the Landes de Gascogne forests. 

This vast wooded area is a mosaic of practices determined not only by the imperatives of maritime pine monoculture but also by the practices of care for its biodiversity. Conceived as a playscape, this exhibition is an invitation to the forest. Beginning with a film documenting outdoor workshops held in the forests of Lithuania and Finland, it unfolds through a Shadow Play animated by projections, a Samples Play for interacting with wooden elements, and a Timeline tracing both the history and the future of this complex ecosystem.

The exhibition includes workshops and educational activities for school groups, organising visits to forests and industrial sites which are rarely accessed by the public. These visits allow young people to experience different forestry and timber production practices and participate in discussions about the possible futures of woodland areas.  

CREDITS:

Exhibition curators and designers
Neringa Forest Architecture(Jurga Daubaraitė, Egija Inzule and Jonas Žukauskas) 

The Forest Workshops
Film by Neringa Forest Architecture and the Mustarinda Association (Michaela Casková, Riita (Nyyskä) Nykänen, Robin Everett, Tiina Arjukka Hirvonen)  •  Text and narration: Riitta (Nyyskä) Nykänen • Camera: Eitvydas Doškus, Elis Hannikainen • Editing: Ignè Narbutaité  • 39:17 min
Produced on the occasion of the Children’s Forest Pavilion, Lithuania at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2023.

opening talk
28 11 2024, 18:30
Jacques Sargos, writer, publisher, historian and art expert and Arnaud Sergent, research engineer in Political Science at INRAE Nouvelle‑Aquitaine-Bordeaux

We would like to thank our partners, institutions, companies and individuals for their contribution to the exhibition:
Adam (Matthias Demaitre) • Alliance Forêt Bois (Loïc Cotten) • Assemblons (Mathieu Baehr) • l’Association de gestion de la forêt usagère de Biscarosse (Bernard Cassen) • Au Liégeur (Denis Sabouret) • Cécile Faye • le Conseil Départemental de la Gironde (Fabien Marque, Marion Molveaux) • Eric Castex • Fibois (Géraldine Gay Mallet) • Gascogne Bois (Nicolas Bordenave) • le Groupement Forestier Uzestois (Pascal Seguin) • INRAE Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux (Annabel Porté, Arnaud Sergent, Bastien Castagneyrol, Christophe Plomion, Frédéric Danjon, Frédéric Lagane, Laurent Boufier, Maksym Loginov, Yulia Prokopuk) • I2M Université de Bordeaux (Jean-Luc Coureau) • l’Institut Technologique FCBA (Patrick Moulinié) • Jacques Sargos • Lamécol (Laurent Daudigny) • Mustarinda Association (Michaela Casková, Riita (Nyyskä) Nykänen, Robin Everett, Tiina Arjukka Hirvonen) • l’Office National des Forêts (Caroline Fourcade) • le Parc Naturel Régional des Landes de Gascogne (Ruben Penin) • Pierre Husky • Scierie Labadie (Philippe Labadie) • Scierie Labrousse (Jean-François Labrousse) • SEPANSO Aquitaine (Enzo Andel) • Smurfit Westrock • Stéphanie Lafitte • le Syndicat des propriétaires de la forêt usagère de La Teste de Buch (Jean Dubrous) • THEBAULT (Vincent Mautord)

arc en rêve centre d’architecture, the team:
Fabrizio Gallanti – director; Adrien Bensignor – general secretary; publishing – Christophe Catsaros, communication – Leonardo Lella, Fanny Leglise; public relations and partnership – Anastassia Mathie; curatorial team – Wenwen Cai, Eric Dordan; production – Cyrille Brisou, Denys Zhdanov; graphic design – Emmanuelle Maura, Marie Christine Mendy; education – Sara Meunier, Flora Stich; administration – Sylvaine Vigneau; services to the public – Massimo Capano, Hakima Chahid, Claudine Wierstra; trainees – Adrien Cuttaz(ENSA Paris-La Vilette); external collaboration: graphic design assistant – Nicole Sapojnikov; woodwork – Vincent Grama and François Richard.

English proofreading – Gemma Lloyd 

Photographs – Rodolphe Escher

Project is part of Lithuanian Season in France

Exhibition booklet in French

PARTS OF THE PLAYSCAPE

Samples Play is an open-ended game where players of all ages interact with an assembly of wood elements, guided by their own imagination and intentions. Each sample can also be read and decoded by linking it to its origin—whether to the specific forest and habitat where the tree grew or the process that transformed it into a timber product. The accompanying texts provide an overview and introduction to these sources:
English – Samples Play
Français – Jeu d’échantillons

Shadow Play is an enclosed space animated by the play of shadows created from various plants, lichens, and mushrooms: impressions on transparent film derived from the plates of the Léon Dufour Herbarium preserved at the Bordeaux Botanical Garden, X-ray images of maritime pine (Pin maritime) samples intended for dendrochronology (the analysis of events experienced by a tree throughout its lifetime) from the research of L. Bouffier and F. Lagane at the joint INRAE/University of Bordeaux Biogeco research unit, as well as plant and other organism samples collected during various visits to the Landes de Gascogne forests. Visitors are invited to bring their own “forest findings” to create new shadows.

Chronology traces the main events and forces that have historically shaped the Landes de Gascogne forest, while also possibly overseeing the future.

The post LES PIÈCES DE LA FORÊT – FOREST PARTS appeared first on Neringa Forest Architecture.

-This first issue of * as a journal, focuses on Forest. Forest as a constructed space unavoidably reliant on human actions, no longer nature, but infrastructure; an environment of natural systems governed, exploited, and regulated by human interventions, technologies, industries, institutions and agencies. How can cultural practices enhance the optics through which society senses a forest?

The former natural habitats that defined the Baltic region (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) – the forests and wetlands – were terraformed to become silviculture plantations, arable land and urban structures through  waves of colonisation. Most of the recent attempts to break away from linear infrastructural dependencies that were conceived in the years of Soviet central planning into rhizomatic networks of interdependencies of the European Project are reflected in material flows, policies, territories and continuities of practices shaped by the overlay of these two modernities. Subsequent investments in the timber industry, technological advances, the restructuring of forestry and scientific institutions, the deregulation across national borders and the global climate disaster insist on an urgent need for cultural practices to re-assemble images and concepts in order to reconstitute an understanding of the forest as a vital and central infrastructure. 

During the winter and spring Covid-19 lockdown of 2020 and 2021 we worked with the Neringa Forest Architecture programme (curated together with Egija Inzule), residents at Nida Art Colony , as well as a diverse group of others dispersed across wide geographies to translate the forest into a journal. The diverse ecologies of voices echo each other and form an assembly of photography, cartography, design, research, artistic work into a publication that may be conceptually compared to an optical device dedicated to reflect on the ways to be in, and with a forest. 

Following his visit to Nida, Preila and Juodkrantė last year Jochen Lempert responded with a selection of Neringa forest photographs. Jonas Žakaitis conversed with Nene Tsuboi and Tuomas Toivonen about their Kulttuurisauna routines, the synthesis of sound, and culture in relation to natural systems. Sofia Lemos unfolded the sonicity of labour and forests on the move, reflecting upon the histories of timber rafting down the river Daugava in her writing about Currents; a large scale art installation and performance piece by Lina Lapelytė and Mantas Petraitis. We interviewed Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe) about dispossession that becomes increasingly common through the protection of natural environments and the right of trees not to be offsetted by prescribing them a value to compensate for the guilt of CO2 emissions made far away. Gabrielė Grigorjeva wrote about the conceptualisation of forest time, its definitions and spatial categorisation. Jonathan Lovekin and David Grandorge contributed photographs from their series Infra depicting Baltic forests and wetlands carved out for peat extraction, stacked in piles of logs and shredded into biomass. Signe Pelne explained the mechanisms of biofuel, carbon sequestration and subsidisation. Mindaugas Survila and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė discussed how the meanings of forest are formed through their respective documentary film editing processes. With her baby, Agata Marzecova walked the forests around Nida contemplating the diverse landscapes and ecologies of care. Amelia Groom discussed the ‘symbiogenesis’ of lichens to reflect relationality in the artwork and soundtrack Songs From The Compost by Eglė Budvytytė. Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė revealed her creative process in synthesising lichen architectonics in her digitally generated architectural images. We conversed with Laura Garbštienė and Onutė Grigaitė about ways of being and living in woodlands, weaving and dyeing with plants, reading the roots of a plant, and the concealed relationships we are losing due to extensive logging and those we might save if we can learn about  species by responsibly exploring forest habitats currently closed due to environmental protection regulations. Rasa Juškevičiūtė photographed and Kotryna Lingienė wrote about the studio and translation of timber into exquisite furniture by Jonas Prapuolenis whose career spanned the larger part of twentieth century and became a design classic. Monika Janulevičiūtė carved intricate furniture pieces while reflecting on the simplest and modest yet authentic typologies of resourceful furnitures found in photographs of homes advertised on real estate websites. Together with Egija Inzule we wrote about the timber cycle that became the basis to initiate the Neringa Forest Architecture research and artistic residency programme at NAC we are curating together. To reflect the topic of this issue, Graphic designer Gailė Pranckūnaitė created a special typographical layer as intervention into the set template of the Journal. Virginija Januškevičiūtė introduced the photographer Algirdas Šeškus’ return to painting – for which he painted a forest.

* Initiated by the  Lithuanian Culture Institute, each issue of this biannual magazine encourages the co-creation and research of topics valuable to both local and global readers, and features a different focus word in its title, relating to the topic chosen by the invited curators/editors of that issue.

FOREST AS A JOURNAL available here for download 
Website: www.asajournal.lt; distributor: Antenne Books

Guest Editors: Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas

Contributors: Jochen Lempert, Jonas Žakaitis, Nene Tsuboi, Tuomas Toivonen, Sofia Lemos, Lina Lapelytė, Mantas Petraitis, Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual, Alon Schwabe), Gabrielė Grigorjeva, Jonathan Lovekin, David Grandorge, Signe Pelne, Mindaugas Survila, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Agata Marzecova, Amelia Groom, Eglė Budvytytė, Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė, Laura Garbštienė, Onutė Grigaitė, Rasa Juškevičiūtė, Kotryna Lingienė, Jonas Prapuolenis, Monika Janulevičiūtė, Egija Inzule, Gailė Pranckūnaitė, Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Algirdas Šeškus
Graphic design: Gailė Pranckūnaitė

* as a Journal editorial board: Vaiva Grainytė, Adomas Narkevičius, Rūta Statulevičiūtė-Kaučikienė; Editor: Kotryna Lingienė
Translators: Darius Sužiedelis (pp. 40-53, pp. 74-79); English language editor Gemma Lloyd; Scientific editor Silvija Šaudytė-Manton (pp. 40-53, pp. 100-109)

Size: 144 pages; Edition: 500; Language: English
ISSN: 2783-5685

2021

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