The Urban Tree Oracle with Ailanthus at Bussey Brook Meadow
- ALL AGES
Join us on Tuesday August 12 at the Arnold Arboretum for an evening of movement, drawing, and sounding with Ailanthus or Tree of Heaven
Date and time
Location
380 South St
380 South Street Boston, MA 02130Refund Policy
About this event
- Event lasts 1 hour 30 minutes
- ALL AGES
- Free venue parking
Join us on Tuesday August 12 at the Arnold Arboretum for an evening of movement, drawing, and sounding with Ailanthus, otherwise known as Tree of Heaven. Ailanthus is all around us, flourishing in ruderal worlds usually considered hostile to life: along roads and railways, in sidewalk cement cracks, in abandoned urban lots. Their story is one of complex ecologies with multiple strands that reach into human sensory experience, geopolitical imagination, colonialism, urban decay and revitalization, and so much more.
We will gather with a large Ailanthus and a few babies in a weedy lot on the edge of the urban wild of Bussey Brook Meadow to participate in a collective somatic exercise with Ailanthus, exploring other ways of knowing and being with our more-than-human kin. Then we will process and reflect through drawing and writing with ink made from Ailanthus’ leaves. Finally we will reflect, translate and share our experiences through words and sounding.
Boston-based artist Jane D. Marsching creates interdisciplinary, research-based, experimental projects that foster an experience of wonder and invite us to communicate with the beings we live with. Her current project, The Urban Tree Oracle, is a collective tool for climate resilience through deepening into relationship with our more-than-human kin, urban trees. She exhibits internationally and is the recipient of awards, fellowships, and residencies nationally. As a Professor at MassArt, she is Director of the Sustainability Minor and founder of the MassArt Resilient Pigment Library.
Matthew Battles is a maker and thinker whose work merges literary, scholarly, and artistic forms of inquiry. The author of six books to date, his writing has appeared in such venues as The American Scholar, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and The New York Times. His most recent book, TREE, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. With a far-flung network of collaborators, he has created films, installations, and experiences from Boston to Berlin. For Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, he edits Arnoldia: the Nature of Trees, a magazine exploring the urgency of tree-entangled science, history and storytelling for our time, and he lectures in comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Frequently asked questions
This event will involve walking and standing on a weedy, rocky open area. There will be some sitting and we will provide picnic blankets, a few chairs, and some pillows. Feel free to bring any supports you need.
All materials will be provided, but feel free to bring a sketchbook and any drawing tools you prefer.
The easiest way to get to the event is to take the Orange Line to the Forest Hills Station and follow the map to the destination, noted with a blue circle. Further parking is available on Flora Way, near the Arboretum Way entrance, and along Washington Street (all a 10-15 minute walk)
This event is designed for up to 20 participants. Event registration required.
Bussey Brook Meadow is a part of the Arnold Arboretum. You can find our spot along South Street across from the William Hinton State Laboratory Institute