Featuring an electronic score from Austrian producer Egon Elliut.

In a special, site-specific performance, contemporary dancer and choreographer Kiani Del Valle navigates the fragile ecosystem of Swiss artist Claudia Comte’s 2019 installation I Have Grown Taller from Standing with Trees.

For the immersive work, Comte looked back to her childhood living in a chalet next to a forest, from which she developed a lifelong fascination with trees and wood. Taking over the Copenhagen Contemporary‘s largest hall with the de-barked trunks of 45 century-old spruce trees, an enormous carpet embroidered with a warping grid representing the forest’s root system and a three-metre high ceramic sculpture supposedly forged in the heart of a volcano, she invited audiences to walk among the trees and climb the fallen trunks.

Kiani Del Valle moves through the felled forest, across the forest floor, to the ceramic sculpture, ‘The Queen Of The Volcano’. The electronic score was provided by Austrian producer Egon Elliut and the performance was captured by filmmaker Sander Houtkruijer.

Through their presentation in the hall, some standing, others fallen, the effects of changing climates across 100 years were made visible in the rings of the trees. Coupled with Comte’s invitation for audiences to touch the trees, and even to mark them with their names and messages, the work underlines the changeable history of the materiality of wood, with each trunk acting as a kind of organic time capsule. The trees were sourced from sustainable forests in Switzerland and for each tree felled for the installation, two were planted.

I Have Grown Taller from Standing with Trees was commissioned by the Copenhagen Contemporary Museum and ran from February 8 – September 1, 2019. For more information about Claudia Comte, you can visit her website and follow her on Instagram.

For more information about Kiani Del Valle, you can visit her website and follow her on Instagram.

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