Encircled by Portland State University Library’s curved façade, the towering copper beech tree that served as the site for this project was planted in approximately 1890, and designated as a City of Portland Heritage Tree in 1995 and an Oregon State Heritage Tree in 2022. It is as much as elder as a historic landmark given its long history and the connection to the forest it helps preserve within an urban campus. Archivist Carolee Harrison maintains an archive for the tree that contains historical documentation and archival photos, dating back to the early 20th century.

Beyond a celebration of the heritage tree’s unique size, age, historical and horticultural significance, TREESEARCH is a collaborative and site-specific movement project wherein twelve beginning dancers developed unique 10 minute movement artworks in response to the heritage tree as a site. We strung all the pieces together into one durational two hour piece, which took place at the tree, in the library next to the tree, and in a dance studio on campus near the tree. From games, to meditations, to wandering dance pieces, and original films made by strapping a camera to the body and dancing around the tree, the piece cataloged a a range of forms of embodied relating with the tree. In the midst of ongoing climate catastrophe and the height of genocide in Palestine, the experience offered a moment of reverence and connection.

For Open Studios, I created an immersive installation comprised of the students-selected segments of the video documentation of their works. I rented every projector at the school (Portland State University), placed one video segment on each projector, and arranged them around an empty classroom in a curved shape to mimic the shape of the library. I found many pieces of colorful transparent and opaque plexiglass and set them up around the room, as a reference to the colorful reflections that light made against the glass facade of the library on that sunny day of the performance. Carolee Harrison gifted the installation three archival, historical photographs of the tree.

TREESEARCH attempts to imagine and validate new forms of honoring and relating with the heritage tree, laying the groundwork for a process of remembering.

Part of Movement As Art & Research Practice

Archivist: Carolee Harrison, Special Collections and Conservation Technician at Portland State University Library

Video by Luz Blumenfeld-Honea, Hannah Skutt, Gilian Rappaport

Poster by Kyle Wolter

Thank you to Carolee Harrison, Taravat Telepasand, Scott Nieradka, Interim Dean Michael Bowman, Laura Glazer, Michelle Illuminato, Luz Blumenfeld-Honea, Hannah Skutt, Jarrel Navarro, Jazz Lawrence, Kyle Wolter, Mariya Chmykh, Pawel Bednarski, Rebecca Rasmussen, SadieLee Crume, Solas Wall-Johnson, Summer Newlands, and the staff of Portland State University Library and Archives