ELAINE GAN

LANDSCAPE CHANGE AND
FUNGAL HISTORIES, 2014-5

Research with AURA at Brunkulslejerne, a former mining area in Denmark that is layered with memories of war, histories of brown coal extraction, and the feral lives of pine, deer, trash, and fungi.

Made for an exhibition, DUMP!, the installation shown here focuses on relations between trees and fungi to ask: who/what makes and unmakes histories and landscapes? Collaboration with anthropologist Anna Tsing and mycologist Henning Knudsen explores this question.

Three hanging panels display different artscience techniques for representing symbiotic and saprotrophic fungi (composers and decomposers) found at Brunkulslejerne today: (1) 18th century woodcuts by Van Sterbeeck, 1712 and Michelio, 1729; (2) field photographs of Pinus contorta and Paxillus involutus; (3) photographs taken through a microscope of ectomycorrhizae, forms that emerge when roots and mycelia meet.

In the middle of the installation is a pile of industrial woodchips that have been processed from pine plantations at Brunkuslejerne. The pile is physically unmade and remade by decomposers, insects, temperature, water, and humans over the duration of the exhibition.

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