Forestania

Forestania is an immersive experience in which visitors, equipped with boneconduction headphones, use a connected crank to activate the scenario of a landscape gradually devoured by flames.

Forestania is an installation that takes the form of an arcade-like kiosk, equipped with an interface (crank) available to the public, enabling them to mechanically scroll through a landscape backprojected from inside onto the kiosk’s screen. Mechanisms, light and sound are synchronized, with all the installation’s narrative elements evolving together as the crank turns. It’s a new variation on a certain principle of active contemplation by the public, which we’ve already experimented with, among other works we did, the immersive performance Au Jardin des potiniers. Forestania was inspired by a trip to Montreal in May 2023, when forest fires ravaged much of Canada.

A glowing light and suffocating atmosphere had invaded the city, giving it an unreal, apocalyptic feel. There was a strange sense of dread of the lurking fire, of danger encircling us, moving inexorably towards our perdition, revealing our powerlessness in the face of this situation. This experience, filled with intense, blazing light and an atmosphere imbued with both death and beauty, inspired us to question this strange feeling of awe, and to bear witness to the posture of athe disaster tourist.The landscape is revealed in a sideways tracking shot, between circumnavigations through the Canadian forest and 360° movement around a fixed point. In this scrolling movement, we take our place in the ineluctable advance of the spectacle of destruction that is a forest fire.