CONFUSED FORCES: The Tree, Living Memory in Twenty-First Century Art

Résumé En

This article concerns the way in which a perceptual shock caused by a treecan constitute an event for artists, to the point of motivating the project andthen the production of a work. In other words, the issue is to analyze howthe encounter with certain alive or dead trees, whether physical or through amedium/reported, can determine a creative process in which memory playsan important role. The analysis will be carried out through two works inprogress that are very different in their conception as well as in their meansof production (the “Beuys’ acorns” project by the artist couple Ackroyd andHarvey and a personal project entitled “Forces confuses”). Various conceptualtools from psychoanalytical theory, anthropology, sociology, phenomenologyof perception, theory of memory, and art history structure the case studies;these define a specific relationship between the life of forms and forms of life,linked in the experience of these works, in relation to the aesthetic, ecological,and sociopolitical context of the beginning of the twenty-first century.