'Treading the arboreal pathway through the backwoods of black metal'

Becoming the Forest is an open-ended publication, which looks at our relationship to our surroundings, with a specific focus on the Northern hemisphere’s abundance of dense spruce forests, and how the aesthetic and philosophy of the musical subculture of black metal has become entangled with this topography.

Contributors: Hildegard von Bingen, Fia Cielen, Crom Dubh, Monica Gagliano, Grift, Hulder, Tom Jeffreys, Danny Larsen, Sverre Malling, Malokarpatan, Turia, Vemod, Johannes Zechner.

Table of Contents

The Ogham
Wherein an attempt is made at deciphering this ancient Celtic script

Betula problematica: talking birch trees in nineteenth-century Russia
Tom Jeffreys
In which the history of the world’s largest country is found to be permeated by the roots of a humble but hardy tree

Interview: Vemod (NO)
Wherein the patterns of glaciers melt upwards into shimmering music and Northern Lights

Interview: Crom Dubh (GB)
Wherein an attempt is made to make sense of the present through the past and the past through the present

Deep Listening: Tuning into the frequencies of plants
A conversation between plant researcher Monica Gagliano and Una Hamilton Helle
In which we learn how to truly listen to plants

Interview: Turia (NL)
Wherein the Dutch trio relate the sounds of low-lying plains and high mountain peaks

Interview: Grift (SE)
Wherein a creator of desolate soundscapes gives us an insight into his grey-hued surroundings

The Nature of the Nation. The German Forest as a Paradigm and Ideology
Johannes Zechner
In which the forest becomes a projection screen for the stories a nation told itself

A Gathering: We Came by Foot
Lotte Brown & Una Hamilton Helle
In which a mountain is climbed, the Genius Loci is found, rot is recognised as life, wolves defy the concept of borders, a woman gets eaten by the devil in disguise, five beasts announce the end of an era and a new cosmology is needed.

Interview: Hulder (US/BE)
Wherein the torturous background of this Dark Medieval Act is revealed

Interview: Malokarpatan (SK)
Wherein the folk tales and dialects of rural Slovakia grow into sinister tones

Further artworks by
Lotte Brown, Fia Cielen, Una Hamilton Helle, Danny Larsen, Sverre Malling

Edited by Una Hamilton Helle and Lotte Brown
Published by Het Bos Antwerpen
Supported by the Norwegian Arts Council
Designed by Blue Firth

Released All Hallow's Eve, 2019
152 pages, printed on black, white and silver with green cover

-- EU customers, please see shipping notes before ordering --

MORE INFO:
tinyurl.com/BecomingtheforestIII