Forest Encounters

During Antwerp Art Weekend, Out of Sight opens Forest Encounters, a multidisciplinary group exhibition exploring diverse imaginaries, concepts, and practices related to the forest. Central to the exhibition are the questions: What can we learn from and through the forest? What are the actual and potential human encounters with it? How can we coexist more harmoniously with forest ecologies?

Bringing together perspectives from contemporary art, forestry, and the humanities, Forest Encounters approaches the forest as more than a site of ecological inquiry. It is framed as a complex socio-political terrain, shaped by conflicting policies, cultural narratives, and economic interests, while also remaining a vital, living biodiverse space.

Amid escalating climate, environmental, and political crises, the exhibition invites a critical rethinking of our relationship with forests. Acknowledging more than human perspective, Forest Encounters unfolds through artistic research projects, workshops, storytelling, and film screenings. Moving between real and imagined forests, it situates the forest as both a natural entity and a contested cultural landscape.

:: FOREST ENCOUNTERS — Parallel Programme ::

THURSDAY, 29 May

19:00-22:00 | Opening, in presence of the artists

20:00-20:30 | Where dreams bloom in silence: Future Forests and Tasks of Reverie, Jelena Vukićević (performative poetry reading)

FRIDAY, 30 May

12:00-15:00 | Light, Language and Botanical Imagination — 2 days workshop (Day 1)

18:30-19:00 | Stratifying, Nayarí Castillo and Reni Hofmüller (live improvisation performance)

SATURDAY, 31 May

12:00-15:00 | Light, Language and Botanical Imagination — 2 days workshop (Day 2)

THURSDAY, 19 June

10:00-13:00 | PAM p.m. 11 — Platform for audiovisual and Media arts encounter>> THURSDAY, 26 June

19:00-21:00 | Cinema Session #2: Ruderalia — Film screening and walk with Joris De Rycke
Realised in collaboration with MORPHO

:: WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION ::

Marjolijn Dijkman

Between the Lines, 2024

Iron Harvest, 2024

For the first time in Belgium Marjolijn Dijkman presents her two new works, Between the Lines and Iron Harvest, as part of the Forest Encounters exhibition. Both works are part of Marjolijn’s long-term artistic research which focuses on the catastrophic effects of drought and climate change in the forests of the Zone Rouge in the northeast of France. It relates to the ongoing struggle to deal with the aftermath and remnants of the First World War within the global climate crisis, which impacted this particular landscape on a monumental scale.

Between the Lines is a visual essay film with an orchestra of robotic drummers playing trunks from the protected forest near Verdun.

The film consists of short chapters with black-and-white assemblages of contemporary film and drone images, recent aerial LiDAR images of the craters and trenches in the forest, and historical photographs of the devastated landscape after WWI. These are interspersed with slow panoramic close-ups of bark from fallen trees with bark beetle traces.

The sound installation refers to the military marching bands and Morse code communication during WWI and the sounds bark beetles use to navigate under the bark.

Iron Harvest is a sculpture made from many small pieces of iron shrapnel collected in the clear-cut forests marked by WWI in Verdun in France (1914-1918). These residues of rusty metals welded and assembled are strangely reminiscent of the bark of spruce trees ravaged by the bark beetle Ips typographus.

Polonca Lovšin

Mushrooms at the End of the World, 2023

Fungi, a vast group of organisms that include species that produce mushrooms (spore-bearing fruiting bodies or sporocarps), are among the planet’s oldest inhabitants, connecting all life on earth. A vital part of our ecosystems, they are found everywhere around us and even inside us. They possess incredible transformative power: they turn rocks into soil, create medicines, produce poisons, cause hallucinations, clean radioactive soil, and degrade crude oil and plastic.

Mushrooms at the End of the World visualizes the way fungi transform everyday objects, buildings, and cities to create fertile soil for new beginnings. The work, which was inspired by the writings of anthropologist Anna Tsing and biologist Merlin Sheldrake, was developed in collaboration with the Slovenian microbiologist Primož Turnšek.

Nayarí Castillo & Reni Hofmüller

Stratifying, 2025

Stratifying is an acoustic intervention reflecting on the fragility, resistance, and fluidity of living beings. It invites listeners to navigate the subtle realms and dimensions of the earth. The words offer poetic cues, echoes of rhythms of wakefulness, latency, and pause. The forest speaks, and through this collective listening experience, we begin to transform—together becoming a new landscape of forests.

This immersive sound composition draws from recordings captured in forests across Austria, interwoven with poetic texts and spoken word. Sounds and words merge to bring the audience to the forest floor, an invitation to close your eyes, breathe in the scent of damp soil and humus, and listen to the hidden life of the underground.

Dušica Dražić with Siniša Ilić, Monika Lang, Ibis Ćerimagić, Jelena Vukićević

It Rains Differently, 2023-

It Rains Differently is a portrait of a forest as a fictional character. It is a meditation on collective labor, on an imaginary that fulfills itself through the form of Forest that is in constant making and only through that manages to persist all the changes.

The case study of this research is a forest that was created on the Pešter karst plateau in southwestern Serbia. Every summer between 1978 and 1988 thousands of young people from all over Yugoslavia volunteered for reforestation. Forty years later 150.000 ha of mature forest dominate the landscape of what once was Yugoslavia. Despite all the societal changes that unfolded — the collapse of the country, wars, privatisations, ecocides. Despite all the secrets buried within the forest.

It Rains Differently steps away from the symbolic realm, producing a new forest while producing a work of art.

In August 2024, a reenactment of the reforestations took place on the Pešter plateau. Volunteers once again gathered—not only to plant a new forest, but to take part in the collective making of the film and installation It Rains Differently. Over the course of seven days, more than 5,000 trees were planted.

The Forest Encounters exhibition presents works that emerged during these days:

Pine Seedlings by Ibis Ćerimagić are cyanotype prints made on the final day of the reforestation week, developed on site in the Uvac River. Rather than documenting the reforestation directly, the work resonates as a quiet echo of it — a pause between gesture and growth. It is not illustrative, but responsive. Not a record, but a residue. Perhaps the ground will hold memory in its roots.

Writer, poet, and literary theorist Jelena Vukićević moves through the confluence of inner stillness, reflective thought, and an imagination attuned to the subtle resistance of language—its quiet refusal to be merely functional. For this occasion, Jelena shares poems and texts that emerged in and around the forest.

Siniša Ilić presents a series of documentary drawings in the form of a storyboard, tracing the reforestation process and the making of the film. His work evokes the tradition of landscape painters, as well as social realist painters who once documented labour. Yet, these drawings lean toward abstraction, transforming into traces of performative and labour actions.

Based on the original scenario It Rains Differently, written by Tanja Šljivar, Mirjana Dragosavljević, and Dušica Dražić, and drawing on historical reforestation protocols, Monika Lang illustrated six flags. Each morning, a new flag was carried by volunteers as they entered the landscape they were about to reforest. It was then planted on a steep hillside, marking the day’s final goal. Serving both as a signal and a symbol, the flags guided the collective effort across the vast landscape of the Pešter plateau.

The exhibition also includes a dream sequence from It Rains Differently, the film-in-progress by Dušica Dražić.

Credits

Between the Lines [2024, film projection (4K) with sculptural sound installation, 30’ (loop), variable dimensions]
Concept: Marjolijn Dijkman • Sound composition: Henry Vega • Cinematography & editing: Marjolijn Dijkman • Assistant editing: Léo Ghysels • Production sculptural installation: Marjolijn Dijkman, Wim Dijkman • Production and development robotics: Lukas Pol • Tree trunks donated by: Office National des Forêts (ONF) Verdun • Archival images: Documentation Center – Verdun Memorial, Private Collection • Aerial LiDAR images: Office National des Forêts (ONF) Verdun • Supported by: Deep Histories Fragile Memories, Luca School of Arts / Leuven University, Mondrian Fund, National Forestry Office (ONF) Verdun, V2_Lab for Unstable Media • Thanks to: Orlando Aguilar Velazquez, Isabelle Bergot (Verdun Memorial), Wim & Els Dijkman, Sebastiaan Helbers, Wendy Morris, Rebecca Theeuwsen, Guillaume Rouard (ONF Verdun), Maarten Vanden Eynde, Noël Varoqui

Iron Harvest [2024, Sculpture]
The work was produced with the help of Service Interministériel de Défense et de Protection Civile Français – Centre de déminage de Metz (Metz) and the Office National des Forêts Verdun; Vent des forêts, Lahaymeix, France.

Mushrooms at the End of the World [2023, objects overgrown with mushrooms, collage]
Supported by: Forest Encounters, co-funded by the European Union, Municipality of Ljubljana, department for culture, and KUD Obrat.

Stratifying [2025, audiovisual and text based installation and live improvisation performance]
Sound, composition, installation: Reni Hofmüller • Installation, text: Nayarí Castillo • Project Assistant: Helene Thümmel

It Rains Differently [2023-, film, multimedia installation] Concept and direction: Dušica Dražić • Original scenario: Tanja Šljivar, Dušica Dražić, Mirjana Dragosavljević • Actors: Vladislava Đorđević, Željko Maksimović, Milutin Dapčević • DOP: Hannes Boeck • Camera 2: Eitan Efrat • Drone: Igor Bošnjak • Media archive research: doplgenger (Isidora Ilić & Boško Prostran), Dušica Dražić, Ana Panić, Simona Ognjanović • Photo and mobile phone image: Aleksandrija Ajduković • Sound recording and design: Bojan Palikuća • Voices: Vladislava Đorđević, Željko Maksimović, Milutin Dapčević, Paul Murray • Documentary drawing: Siniša Ilić • Illustration: Monika Lang • Postproduction (image & sound): Wim Janssen, Dušica Dražić, Bojan Palikuća • Foresters: Ivan Kaličanin, Željko Kaličanin, Adnan Bajrović, Bojan Kaličanin • Volunteers (reforestation): Trifko Trifković, Jovanović Radiša, Milica Dukić, Ivana Marković, Marko Mitrović, Srđan Bojović, Vesna Pejović, Sarah Smolders, Marija Šević, Milutin Milošević, Darko Brdareski, Tatjana Staletović, Aleksandar Đorđević, Ana Milićević, Zoran Kostadinović, Nebojša Stanković, Andrijana Pajović, Cveće Miljković, Katarina Ćirilović, Nikica Jurković, Dragan Janošević, Teodora Simić, Svetlana Sentjakov, Vukoje Šiljković, Marina Maričić, Mihailo Veličković, Marija Daruši, Mihajlo Manigodić, Gavrlilo Cabadaj, Matija Gogić, Ibis Ćerimagić, Marija Ranić, Jugoslava Vladisavljević, Luka Knežević Strika, Mihajlo Milanov, Jelena Vukićević, Maja Ignjatović, Snežana Ivanovski • Production on location: Ana Vuković, Dušica Dražić • Volunteers’ coordination: Katarina Nikolić • Doctors: Kenan Kučević, Aldin Alijagić • PR and communication: Ratko Rakin • Translation of the original scenario (Serbo-Croatian to English): Žarko Cvejić • Proofreading of the original scenario (English): Paul Murray • Co-produced by: Escautville, Out of Sight, Stereovizija • Supported by: Flemish Audiovisual Fund (VAF), Forest Encounters — European cooperation project (2023–25) co-funded by the European Union, Institute of Forestry in Belgrade, Flanders — State of the Arts, Museum of Yugoslavia, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Platform 0090, STUK, Morpho, KAAP, Vitalia • Thank you to: all the volunteers and collaborators, Milutin & Dragana Dražić, Wim & Marcel Janssen, Ljubinko Rakonjac, Ivan Kaličanin, Željko Kaličanin, Bojan Konatar, Rade Rakonjac, Hasim Bogućanin, Zlatna kap – Udruženje dobrovoljnih davalaca krvi Sjenica, Dražen Garapić, Miloš Janjić, JAZAK, Konačište Centar — Kej Tours Sjenica, H&A accommodation, Hotel Borovi.