Immemorial is a site-specific sonic performance in what once was old-growth forest, now clear-felled and burnt. It is a funeral for the forest without words; a community of voices echoing loss with an orchestra of instruments made from charred tree remains.

Immemorial is a memorial for what is ancient beyond memory, an act of sonic activism honouring the sentience of forests, mourning for a more-than-human community, as we do for our own. With an awareness of sentience as a beginning for change, to renewed relations between beings.

Documentation of the performance will become a short film for television and an interactive installation with video and tree instruments, for exhibition in municipal galleries in Australia and Sweden.

The Styx Valley, Tasmania, is a richly biodiverse temperate rainforest, home to the Eucalyptus regnans, near 100m tall and >500 years old. Standing tall long before colonisation, this forest has been found to store more carbon than any other known forest.

Alongside thousands of people Julia Adzuki has protested for its protection, and although there has been some success with reserves and legislation, old-growth logging continues, mostly for wood-chip export. Eucalyptus regnans have been a major source of newsprint in the 20th century. Ancient history silenced by the news.

Overall project objective
To support the expansion of the notion of sentience to include more-than-human beings and communities, specifically trees and forests.

To respond to environmental destruction and climate change collectively with arts and indigenous communities through somatic, sonic and listening practices.

To share this response with a broad international public with an approach that is relational, poetic and empathetic. To inspire change by planting seeds of awareness.

To engage my skills, as a sonic artist and teacher of somatic movement practices, in addressing important environmental concerns.

To share gratitude with a place that has touched my soul.

Specific project objectives
To share a week of somatic movement and sonic/listening workshops together with a group of 20 or more Tasmanian artists and members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. And to co- create a performance-ceremony for voice and an orchestra, inspired by Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations, on- site in the clear-felled forest, Styx Valley Tasmania.

To create string and percussive instruments with charred tree remains, on-site in collaboration.

To document the performance with compelling sound and video recordings.

To edit a short film, trailer and video installation for international screening and exhibition, for TV, film festivals, social media and municipal galleries.

More info on Julia Adzuki here.