PORTFOLIOBOURNEELLIOT2022SAMPLE
Forests in Israel are not just masses of photosynthesising bodies but a manufactured Zionist tool, appropriated to create a landscape suited to the Jewish people. The forest is an aesthetic device, weaving the idea of a continued Jewish presence in Palestine into the texture of the landscape; an agent in realising the Zionist fiction of Eretz Yisrael, a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. The forests also acts as a mechanical and social apparatus. They are employed to claim land inexpensively and erase the record of recent history.
https://2022.rca.ac.uk/students/elliot-lewis-bourneFILMS:
1 A Desert of Trees Elliot Bourne MA Year 2 // 2022
“The Israeli settlers made the desert bloom.”
A Desert of ....Trees
This claim, alongside others, are employed to construct a world where the Jewish people are indigenous to, and most deserving of, Palestinian land. In this argument the other than human is employed to create an ecosystem which never existed - one that erases many forms of life and memories of what was formerly present.
Contrary to the prevailing Israeli narrative this region has always been a blooming landscape. An understanding of history as a linear sequence of events is used to suggest an uninterrupted continuation of Jewish presence on the land; justifying occupation and violence. In order to counter this logic, the project constructs designed visions of multiple histories and potential futures of the landscape. History and future all exist in the same moment. These scenes have been uploaded to Google maps, georeferenced - living within the digital infrastructure of our daily lives, viewed through the same method as other recorded memories. The forest is mobilised as a vehicle through which to deconstruct Zionist myths, enacting the history of the place, and speculating on its future.
FULL PROJECT INCLUDING
2 Map of Israeli forests, renderedPalestinianplantations,destroyedvillages,recognisedandunrecognisedBedouinvillages.MadeusingDEMdata,processedthroughQGIS,inBlenderandlayeredinAdobe. >
3 A Desert of Trees Elliot Bourne MA Year 2 // 2022
Spectral satellite imagery showng regular shapes in tree composition. Present day, above northern Lahav. In some areas of the forest the rigid placement of the trees is broken, appearing disordered, or placed with a different logic; this composition is more explicit through the analysis of multiband satellite imagery. The forest floor is littered with rocks and large pieces of stone. The roots of the trees dislocate and disperse around each stone. Where there are larger stones or pieces of stone structure, the roots, which remain near the surface of the soil are blocked completely. Until 1948, this is the site of the Palestinian village, Abu Libbeh, the village is erased from memory, apart from its name, location and population of 1,195 before it was depopulated in 1947. One of many villages which existed on the sites of now forests. The village was only readable through the mechanism of its erasure. The forest, as well as a social tool, is a mechanical one. Erasing the recent history of the land and distancing its current population from its record. Lahav is a popular site for recreation; as well as bird watching many people come to the forest for walks, mountain biking and off road motorbiking. visiblie light satellite at higher resolution. Tree
inaccuratleycompositionrecreatedunrealengine.StillfromfilmshowingPalestinianhomesemergefromtheground.Stillfromfilmwheretheforestfloorhasbeenremoved.Stonesandpiecesofstructureareseentoaltertheplacementoftreesthroughblockingtheirroots. < > << > ABU LIBBEH
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Now a vision of the town exists with the forest for anyone with an interest or relation to the site to view. The project puts these erased and oppressed perspectives into public space, to be seen by anyone who searches the Forest. Still^ from film where the showing black goats. Bedouin townships would have large herds before it was outlawed to ‘protect forests’. Soon they will be reintroduced, not by the Bedouins but by the Israeli state as fire prevention, to protect forest.
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South of Lahav is the Bedouin village Al Msa’adiyyah. Many bedouin villages remain unrecognised by the state and without land rights. In 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and many other dates, Al Msa’adiyyah, south of the plantation has destroyed over and over and over by the state, and rebuilt. The land on which they’ve settled has been claimed for future forests: livelihoods are destroyed for the proliferation of the plantation. These scenes create confrontations in daily lives as people encounter them involuntarily. Satellite and photographic evidence reveals explicitly that these towns exist and they cultivate the land, even if they do not have a label on google maps.
Spectral satellite imagery showng Bedouin structures [light blue] and their associated agriculte [shades of green]. A portion of Al recreatedMsa’adiyyahin Unreal PhotographEngine. of present day
AL MSA’ADIYYAH
AL-HiranIsraelidestroyedBedouinPhotographMsa’adiyyah.AlofvillagebythestateinUmmStillfromfilmofrecreatedAlMsa’adiyyah.StillfromfilmshowingAlMsa’adiyyahinvariousstatesofdestructionwithtreeseruptingoutofthedestroyedstructures. < > <<< >
7 A Desert of Trees Elliot Bourne MA Year 2 // 2022
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ANCIENT AGRICULTURE
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Around 1000 BC, at the shallow base of several foothills in Lahav were likely terraced crop fields. Agriculture in ancient times was sophisticated. Dry soil would create an environmental condition where the little rainfall would be channelled into terraced beds at the bottom of valleys. Allowing for plant beds to get the equivalent rainfall of an area much wetter. Crops such as Za’atar, Akoub, and wild sage Israel have made it illegal to forage, the practice of which is the cultural heritage of Palestinians and could be the future, if the forest was to be deconstructed. Perspectives of the forest hidden and erased are empowered by their record existing in digital space.
9 A Desert of Trees Elliot Bourne MA Year 2 // 2022
similarshowingrainwaterofshowingdrawingthemethodharvestinginterraces,anareawithtopography.Stillfromfilmshowingaprosepctivefuturewhereancientmethodsofagriculturearerevived.Stillfromfilmshowingshowingafieldofza’atar,nowilegaltoforage.
visiblie light satellite of and contour map of the area with tributary.
Synthetic Control Elliot Bourne MA Year 1 // 2021 MA Year 1 Synthetic Control FULL PROJECT INCLUDING ANIMATIONS https://vimeo.com/566450499NARRATED: Synthetic^ mushrooms which rot larch trees, accelerating the southern Taiga’s coversion to grassland. A potential near future geo-engineering technology. Modelled and rendered in Blender using geometry nodes.
The permafrost, a fragile region with catastrophic potential, is accelerating into this reality. As the climate begins to warm, the East Siberian Taiga forest is starting to transpose. In the north, the tree line edges deeper into the frigid landscape of the arctic circle. While in the south, fires, logging and other destructive human-induced events are creating new ecological conditionswhere the forest cannot return.
The Earth’s climate is changing. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and landscapes are beginning to migrate. These changes, however, are not evenly distributedacross the globe. Over the next century, the poles will experience disproportionate warming at (potentially) four times the magnitude of the temperate zone.
Forest in northern Siberia has been deemed an unfavourable ecological condition; paradoxically, it is lending to accelerating warming at a planetary scale. To protect the permafrost, the forest must be contained, the tree line halted and the transformation subverted. While ‘rewilding’ projects such as Pleistocene Park nominally seek to preserve, Synthetic Preservation explores an extrapolation of this logic. Through the perceived agency of human and nonhuman actors to shape ecologies, landscapes and environments, this project asks: What is really being preserved? To what ends? And for whom?
12 Map^ showing Inveterventions placed within landscape. Map made using above method.
Map of interventions on site above timeline of itnerventions and their hoped results. Made using DEM data, processed through QGIS, rendered in Blender and layered in Adobe.
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Still^ from animation of building component being constructed. Modelled in blender and rhino and rendered in blender. Map^ showing Inveterventions placed within landscape. Map made using above method.
Isometric^ drawing of structure placed along the norther treeline. Modelled in Rhino and processed in illustrator.
17 Elliot BourneWelsh Counter Language MA Year 1 // 2021
The Welsh ‘Valleys’, within which is my hometown, has a GDP of 68% the EU average, compared with London’s GDP of 614% the same average; this is the greatest inequality in any one country in Europe. There is, of course, a complex assemblage of reasons for this inequality. However, a key aspect is the exploitative mining industry, the extractive economy it created and the void its closure left. Mining practices in Wales date back to the Roman times but burgeoned into a Goliath during the 18th Century Industrial revolution, with the Welsh Ports of Barry and Cardiff becoming the first and second biggest coal exporters in the world by 1913. The mines where this coal came from were predominantly owned by English entrepreneurs, this created an extractive economy, meaning the communities stayed poor.
Juxtaposing physical artefacts of extraction and exploitation with a welsh craft tradition, The project seeks to be a culturally specific embodiment of this injustice, referencing the labour exploited and violence performed on the land. A critique of the complicated relationship between the two countries.
Lloegr, Cariad Mawr oddi wrth ‘tramorwr’
FULL cariad-mawr-oddi-wrth-tramorwrto-england-love-from-wales-i-lloegr-https://ms.rca-architecture.com/2021/PROJECT:
Positing the lovespoon, as a tool, amongst a constellation of other tools, or physical artefacts - derived its material and form. These include 13th Century oppressive infrastructure, symbolic mock governance, protest instruments, damning government documents, stolen relics, a drowned village and a substitute currency. The practice of creating a lovespoon is a violent one. Wood is extracted from a tree: taken. and its form destroyed through labour. This process in a sense is akin to the violence and extraction of the mining practice.
The history of Wales is confused, not often heard and considered uninteresting to most. I however, would refute this.
MA Year 1
As, both a beneficiary of colonisation and a victim, Wales has a productive perspective to add to the conversation on de-colonisation. As Iraqi-born, Cardiff-based artist Rabab Ghazoul, has said, “[…] we in Wales have the capacity for both radical empathy and radical responsibility”.
The Welsh practice of carving and giving wooden spoons as a symbol of love dates back to at least the 17th Century and forms part of a much wider craft tradition in the country. These spoons are heavily symbolic, historically embodying symbols relating to love and affection, however contemporary examples include representations of Welsh identity such as dragons and daffodils. It is generally believed that lovespoons were formerly crafted by male suitors and then presented as romantic gifts to the maidens they admired. My lovespoon would be a subversion of this practice, its form and material referencing not a romantic relationship between Wales and England, but an exploitative one.
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Charred wooden carvingdepecting‘lovespoon’colonialhistoryofWales >
21 Like Everytthing Elliot Bourne 2021 <
how Web 2.0 social technology operates on the communication of information. Research employed in final year
MA Dissertation Dissertation exploring project
to appropriate the alogirthm of Google Maps to further a politicalagenda
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22 Like Everything Elliot Bourne MA Year 1 // 2021
https://issuu.com/rca-issuu/docs/elliot_bourneDOCUMENT:
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23 Like Everytthing Elliot Bourne 2021
GraphicsFreelance Event poster created using still from Blender animation. Cards created in illustrator and projected onto blendermodel.
24 Freelance Graphics Elliot Bourne 2015 - 2022 Mix cover created in photoshop rendered in digital environments to create a series. Modelled andinrenderedBlender. >
