Erin Manning: 100 Acres

As a part of London Gallery Weekend 

How big is the forest? It is the forest of the world. It is infinite. It twists around as a snake swallows its own tail and has no end and no beginning. No one has seen its farthest dimension."

- Annie Proulx, Barkskins

The trees are a concern. We invite him in to cull. The solar panels are shaded by the tallest ones. Decisions have to be made. We can’t cut them all down. How much energy is enough? 

Sustainable: capable of being endured; continuing to exist.

The solar panels are really in the wrong place. More money should go into raising them, into pushing them above the tree tops. Strange, this stand-off with the forest, caught up with the desire to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, to not need the generator on those cloudy days where the sun just can’t get through.

He comes and we stand on the edge of the cliff and look out at the river. Which trees should fall? He points at trees. We nod. Or change our mind. No, not that birch, it’s so beautiful. There is no rational standpoint. A bit of shade brought on by this one is not so bad, is it? But that one, yes, that one should go. Down with the conifers! 

I go down to where he is. He doesn’t talk much. Instead, he holds his hands in front of his eyes, mimicking taking a photograph. Yes, he says. 

There’s a path here, I say. Can we move the fallen trees off the path? I love the moss. He looks down. Yes, he says, we will make sure the path remains. The dog runs around us, excited by the sound of the chainsaw. 

• Erin Manning Out of the Clear, 2022

Richard Saltoun Gallery is pleased to present 100 Acres, the first solo exhibition of Canadian cultural theorist, political philosopher and artist, Erin MANNING (b. 1969) in the UK and at a private gallery. Manning’s practice is predominantly textile-based and relationally-oriented, often participatory, with a strong pedagogical interest. 

100 Acres is a site-specific installation encompassing the entire gallery, composed of two twenty-five yard cuts of monks cloth that are sewn, embroidered, knotted and tufted. In a refusal of distantism - the belief that the world is given to us in the establishing shot of overview - the work recalls the encounter of the forest as lived through the 3Ecologies Project (3E). 3E engages in para-pedagogies of resistance, fostering techniques for other ways of living and learning at the intersection of the « three ecologies » (social, conceptual, and environmental). 3E’s aim is to give the land back to itself; purchasing it, taking it out of the property market, and preserving it in perpetuity within an extended ecology of stewardship, experimentation and learning.The forest serves as  a speculative garden, an incitement for other ways of touching existence. Deeply engaged with the ProTactile movement of the DeafBlind community, the project asks how else the world calls us to sense and sensing beyond distantism. 

100 Acres continues the project by other means, composing in accompaniment to the relational fields of the forest, giving them an echo in the gallery. Textures of sense generate choreographies relaying the form and force of more-than-human encounter. The ethos is of participation, beyond art as object. Drafted by the artist, the protocol invites audience participation in the project of giving the forest back to itself. The cut reveals the fragility of its weave. The Protocol guides negotiation of the cut and minor repair of the weave: 

Protocol - 100 Acres

1. Negotiate a cut with the artist for extraction (120 cm x 150 cm, £2000)

2. Coordinate a minor repair of the incision

3. Resituate the piece in a new milieu

All funds will go toward the purchase of additional land for the 3Ecologies Project (3ecologies.org). Purchased land will be taken out of the property market and placed in collective stewardship in perpetuity.

PROJECT

Give the land back to itself. 

THE 3 ECOLOGIES

Of subjectivity (in its nascent state)

Of the social (in a mutant state)

Of the environment (at the point it can be reinvented)

Erin Manning: 100 Acres in the press:

London Gallery Weekend 2024 | The Art Newspaper

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