EXTENDED FOREST
(2019-2021)
Virtual Environment
The Extended Forest manifests a vision of a new form of practice that radically rethinks how we might act in our approach to the guardianship of the natural world. My work confronts urgent crises in the present through performance and long-term strategic thinking through virtual spaces and character design. The Extended Forest is a parallel virtual world, that records and performs narratives about ecological conflicts around forestry. It aims to diversify the canon of sylviculture by introducing alternative information sources and sharing it with the public using various theatrical tools. The digital platform is an ever-evolving space of information, where memories and narratives accumulate. It acts as a parallel civic space for debate across time and space. The Guardians of the Extended Forest are immortal artificial personalities and intelligences with specific agendas, who inhabit the virtual environment. They exist as architectural elements and anthropomorphic characters. They are emerging symbols of guardianship with specific tones of voices.
The Extended Forest was exhibited in the Architectural Association in London at Project Review (UK, 2019), at the Somerset House part of the London Design Biennale: Design in an Age of Crisis (UK, 2021), at the Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture in Barcelona in the framework of the Sustainable views show (ES, 2021) and at Aarhus School of Architecture part of The School in Real-Time lecture series (DK, 2021).