When Poetic Justice was founded in 2019 out of MIT Media Lab by Ekene Ijeoma, the Black-led collective’s goal was to research how mixed media art can respond to structural injustice in the U.S. This week, the group revealed its newest project, Black Forest.
Black Forest will take shape in the form of 40,000 trees planted across the U.S. over the next eight years. To date, more than 300 mid- to large-size trees have already been planted in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Rhode Island, and Washington.
To accompany the 40,000 new trees, Poetic Justice will also record over 40,000 stories from across all 50 states. These stories will be collected vis-a-vis a hotline run by Poetic Justice, and then edited into a sound and video collage. The content will be distributed for public consumption on the Black Forest hotline and website. Films as well as publications that focus on Black urban forestry, feminist ecology, Black mourning, and monuments accompany the project.
Creating a “Dynamic Sonic Portrait”
Each of the 40,000 new trees will eventually be tagged with a QR code that links to one of the 40,000 stories compiled through the Black Forest hotline. Poetic Justice said the end result will be a “dynamic sonic portrait” that “posits endless possibilities to connect living monument sites and participants.”
In turn, Black Forest takes inspiration from activists in years past who have sought to plant trees in Black communities across the country; places that historically have had far, far less tree coverage than white neighborhoods. A major source of inspiration is Neighborhood Tree Corps founded by Hattie Carthan, a legendary activist remembered as “Bed-Stuy’s Tree Lady.” Under Carthan’s leadership, Neighborhood Tree Corps planted over 1,500 trees throughout Brooklyn in the 1960s.
Poetic Justice also looked to Africa and groups like the Green Belt Movement. That collective was founded by Wangari Maathai and has planted over 50 million trees in Kenya since the late 1970s.
Counteracting Inequity
The nation-wide endeavor started after Ijeoma noticed a felled tree on the ground that had been there for several days. The tree reminded him of Michael Brown, Ijeoma said, and how he was left on the street for hours by police officers.
Ijeoma also said the ideas behind Black Forest were deeply influenced by how African Americans were adversely impacted by COVID-19. During shut down, Black people were twice as likely to die from the virus than white people. Thus, the question became about how art can be a channel for counteracting systemic inequality across medical and political systems.
All in all, Black Forest is meant to be a living monument and archive that both commemorates Black lives and celebrates the resilience and joy of Black communities. It unites “the Black tradition of tree planting and storytelling with an expanding archive of digitally crowdsourced and mapped stories of Black lives,” Poetic Justice elaborated. The project blurs the boundaries between landscape architecture and art while utilizing both media as tools for transformation.
Poetic Justice is currently seeking volunteers.
