REQUIEM FOR A FOREST

ART THAT SHAKES AND MOVES

– AND YET INSPIRES HOPE

Since 27 June and until 5 July, the Neuer Kunstverein Wuppertal presents the installation REQUIEM FOR A FOREST by choreographer and filmmaker Nathalie Larquet.

The exhibition space becomes an immersive chamber of remembrance – a kind of echo chamber. A large-scale LED installation shows dancers amid a dying forest. These images stand in stark contrast to another work also on display: AHNUNGEN, which spans various moments in time – beginning with a choreographic dialogue with a forest in full bloom, and ending with contrasting images of a ghostly landscape.

Also featured is the short split-screen piece THE INVITATION, filmed in the same forest, and originally part of UNDERGROUND VII by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, presented at Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden.

The audience encounters four remarkable performers: Julie Anne Stanzak, Ophelia Young, Scott Jennings, and Pawel Malicki. Each embodies the highest level of dance artistry, captivating with their presence, imagination, and authenticity.

What unfolds here is not merely a lament for a specific forest. These three installations, presented together and in dialogue with one another, offer a reflection on the disappearance of landscapes – and on how the body, art, and memory can preserve places that no longer exist. In an age of ecological crisis, Requiem for a Forest asks: How do we mourn what has been lost? And can dance – in all its transience – become an archive of that loss?

Ausstellungseroeffnung-REQUIEM-Neuer-Kunstverein©TANZweb.org

Larquet’s interdisciplinary practice, situated at the intersection of dance, film, and spatial installation, invites the audience not only to understand, but to feel – and perhaps to listen anew to what still remains.

It is not only the images that leave a lasting impression, but also the texts created in the course of this work – including THE INVITATION. Here, Julie Anne Stanzak develops a poetic framework from a dialogue with a text by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, which she also performs.

Words from I am a moment (and so many others), spoken and developed by Ophelia Young, resonate with startling precision or offer powerful contrast to the visuals in the REQUIEM installation. This text – a fictional, four-voiced dialogue with imagined beings – lends an additional and deeply psychological layer to the images of devastated forests.

The Neuer Kunstverein Wuppertal has offered the artist a powerful yet intimate setting for REQUIEM FOR A FOREST, supported by the Wuppertal-based company INNLIGHTS-display solutions, which provided the high-resolution LED wall for the exhibition. Larquet’s spatial installation expands the projections into the physical space, creating a pull on the viewer. From a high-gloss black dance floor rises a charred black tree stump. Red ribbons, like arteries, run through both the projection and the floor, which reflects the images and draws the audience into them. Seated on dark grey cushions and blocks, visitors are invited to fully immerse themselves in the visual and textual experience.

Not to be missed! Until 5 July only – Thursdays and Fridays from 5 to 8pm, and for the closing on Saturday from 3 to 6pm, at Hofaue 51, Wuppertal.

Ausstellungseroeffnung-REQUIEM-Neuer-Kunstverein©TANZweb.org

With the kind permission of the artist, the following texts from the exhibition are reproduced:

INVITATION

Places of longing – at once intimate and unknown – emerge within us without apparent cause or rule. They arise when we begin to listen inwardly, to attune ourselves to the quiet resonance such places leave behind. Invitation follows this inner vibration and translates it into the visible – through improvisation, through movement, through the body.

What unfolds is a choreography of intuition: each gesture a response, each pause a trace of an inner journey. Dance becomes the medium through which these ephemeral spaces are embodied. The camera becomes a partner – not only framing what is seen, but seeking to capture what eludes visibility.

Requiem for a Forest was filmed in the exact same location – twice, within only two years. And yet, everything had changed: the light, the air, the sense of presence. What remains is a trace – of time, of memory, of a place that is never the same, even when returned to.

AHNUNGEN

is an homage to a forest that no longer exists.
It is an invitation to an intimate ceremony, a journey through time, a shared moment with Julie Anne Stanzak – one of the legendary dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. During this walk, she allows her memories, emotions, and desires to resurface. Nature is the only witness to this dance. In the film, we become observers of this intimacy. The camera comes close to her skin, capturing the tenderness of the moments she spends in the forest.

The story of this meditative walk unfolds and ends on a battlefield, inhabited by ancient spirits, wandering aimlessly through the dried woods and severed trees. It evokes a feeling of helplessness in the face of the Anthropocene.

A moving detail of this piece: the music group A Winged Victory for the Sullen kindly granted permission to use a track from their album Champs de Mars, inspired by a battlefield.

REQUIEM FOR A FOREST_Nathalie Larquet&timefellows©Nathalie Larquet

EPILOGUE

In 2019, something began to change.

The forest – the one I used to walk through every week with my horse – slowly began to lose its colour. As though it were fading from within. A little paler each day. A little quieter each week.

Then came the sounds. Chainsaws. Aggressive. Unceasing.

They cut through birdsong, pierced the wind.

One morning, my horse suddenly stopped – on our familiar path. He refused to go any further. It was clear: he no longer wanted to enter.

And I did not insist.

The trees fell, one by one. The wooden giants I had known – felled.
The moss my horse once inhaled with pleasure – withered.
All that remained were dead branches, dry bark scattered across the forest floor like scraps of skin after a battle.

I never imagined I would witness a forest dying before my eyes.
And yet, within two years, it was gone.

A year earlier, I had filmed there. With Julie Anne Stanzak. The forest was still alive. Lush. Full of whispers, full of souls.

Today, the footage from that time is an archive. A testimony.
Proof that this beauty once existed.

With this video installation, I speak of nature’s transformation, of climate change, of the silent disappearance of the world.
In the hope of awakening something within us.
Perhaps the forest is not entirely lost –
so long as we remember it.