With the second issue of Moreness, we descend, from the high mountains Above the Treeline towards the valley and seep into the forest, follow paths, penetrate the thicket and undergrowth, and look up at the trees in awe. While in Moreness 01, we scaled mountains, climbed rocks, and conquered the highest peaks of the Dolomites, we now shift our attention to needles, leaves, barks, and rings, we allow roots, moss, and lichens to tell us stories and marvel at colours, shapes, textures, and materials.
We travel into the depths of a complex, multi-layered habitat that profoundly characterises the Dolomite region. We move freely between disciplines and industries, we investigate, question, recount, and delve into the obvious and the hidden, we address events, deal with phenomena, examine effects on the landscape, economy, life, and living beings, ask questions, follow tracks, hunt, and gather. We dive in, run, flow, merge, go with the matter, research, reflect, and doubt.
They’ve always been around us. Trees and forests. They’ve always been there. Their story begins long before ours. Nature comes. Nature goes. It is simply the way it is – but it’s not a bad thing. We have always thought that it belongs to us, and we feel we are at its mercy. We try to decode, decipher, and explain it. It is in our very being. It would also be in our very being to respect, cherish, and leave it be. Should we not get even more involved and paint utopias of the future?
A place of retreat or aberration? Idyllic or dangerous? Peaceful or wild or tame? Simple or complex or both? Nature will recover. But what about us? An intruder or part of the body? Shouldn’t these moments belong to us together?
Anna Quinz
Kunigunde Weissenegger
Editorial to the second issue of MORENESS
Buy your copy of Moreness 02– On Trees and Woods here.
