The pan-European project "Shared Landscapes" saw nine artists create seven works around the theme of humanity’s relationship to nature. Performed this month in the countryside of southern France for the Avignon theatre festival, the series will tour Europe over the coming year. RFI spoke to one of the artists involved: Ari Benjamin Meyers, an American artist and composer based in Berlin, whose music invites audiences to reflect on climate change.
Curators Caroline Barneaud, of Switzerland’s Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, and Stefan Kaegi, co-founder of the German theatre company Rimini Protokoll, began approaching artists about three years ago with a view to putting together an ambitious al fresco project mixing performance, art, theatre and music.
The result is "Shared Landscapes" ("Paysages Partagés"): a seven-hour immersive experience in a natural setting, where audiences are invited to contemplate their relationship to the environment through performance art and sound installations.
Earth art
Meyers, who hails from a classical music background, told RFI he had been experimenting in land art and different forms of performance over the past 15 years. When Barneaud and Kaegi contacted him, he had just finished working on a piece called "Forecast" that dealt with climate change, so he was in the right frame of mind to take on the new brief.
"It was simply to make something in nature," he says, with the idea that it would be recreated within different locations across Europe.
For the Avignon Festival, the piece was performed in Pujaut, on the Pelatier plateau about 13 kilometres outside the city. Meyers agrees that as an open-air stage, the area is dramatic, made even more so by the crushing summer heat and the deafening sound of cicadas.
'Unless for the trees...'
As a warm breeze filtered up through the rocky valley overlooking vineyards, audiences were given blankets and asked to lie down on the hilly slope under pine trees and stare up at the sky. They were equipped with headphones to hear the voices of people talking about their experiences in nature, a sound installation designed by Kaegi.
After about 40 minutes, single notes from brass instruments could be heard emanating from the nearby shrubbery, building in volume and intensity, merging together to become a haunting song. One by one, musicians, who had been camouflaged in the trees, or laying in the grass, gradually revealed themselves to the audience.
This is the structure for "Unless for the trees", one section of a four-part composition by Meyers performed at regular interludes throughout the show. Each segment is dedicated to a natural element: "Unless for the birds", "Unless for the ground", "Unless for the air".
He chose instruments such as the trumpet, trombone, flute, saxophone or tuba that are sturdy enough to withstand being outdoors in the heat. Meyers has them play a thoughtful, melancholic tune, far from the rousing airs people might be used to hearing bands play outdoors at fairs and carnivals.
"It was important to get people to reflect. I don’t want to depress people but it makes you think, makes you slightly uneasy…something’s a little wrong, a little off," he says, reflecting on his message about the environment.
"Being in these places that are very old, you feel the age of the trees, the ground, the age of the ecosystem, the breath – the music-making goes back to something old."
Interacting with the environment
While most sections of the show rely on recordings and technology – wireless headphones, virtual reality goggles or a giant screen – Meyers’ piece is performed live and in person.
For him, it was imperative to have a live performance, with local musicians interacting physically with their immediate environment.
"You see people working, they’re hidden but you understand that they’re real people. Climate change, it affects all of us, particularly young people. They have their whole lives to live with this situation. It was good to have young musicians who said: 'great, I’ll climb and play in a tree'."
It was also important to have the audience roam the countryside for hours (with their picnic dinners), away from the hustle and bustle of the city.
"You're at the mercy of nature, and that can be gruelling and also beautiful. It's a big time commitment for the audience but I do think it needs that time. There's something very special about saying 'OK, I'm going to be in the woods for seven hours and there's no quick escape'."
A climate prophesy
"Shared Landscapes" is a timely project, with the issue of climate change and humans' role in it on everyone's minds.
The title of Meyers’ piece is inspired by a 1971 children’s book, "The Lorax" by American writer Dr Seuss, which he says was clearly ahead of its time in predicting the demise of the planet.
"The Lorax is a kind of protector of the environment. He’s faced with industry and it’s destroying the forest. He disappears and leaves behind a pile of stones and written on the pile of stones is the word ‘unless’. Only at the end do we understand that unless we care, unless we do something, it’s going to end badly for us," Meyers explains.
"For me it was important to have this human element. Also to say, it’s on us. It’s easy to go off and see other parts of the Avignon Festival, have a glass of wine, like everything’s fine – but we know it’s not fine, it’s getting worse."
"Shared Landscapes" is part of the "Performing Landscape" project. It was performed at the Avignon Festival in July 2023 and will tour Europe over the coming year. Next stop is Germany in August 2023, followed by Austria, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain in 2024.
