The Forest Primeval
Exhibition Proposal
The Forest Primeval is the product of an ongoing collaboration between musician and composer Alex Luquet (aka Sailcloth) and filmmaker Daniel Paashaus (aka paas-haus). These original live performances and gallery installations showcase the duo’s short films, soundscapes, photography, spoken word, sculptural work, and live music, including live film scoring. All of these elements come together to form a thought provoking and intimate study on humanity’s relationship with nature and a meditation on human impact and legacy.
Most recently, the Forest Primeval was exhibited at Martin Art Gallery at Muhlenberg college. In addition to the live performance, there was an extensive sculptural installation, including 110 ceramic faces, over 250 ceramic snails, a dozen human masks, three animal masks, a life-sized plaster rhinoceros bust, an eight foot long ceramic sturgeon, and a display case with props used in the films. Four flat screen televisions were set up to show short films that Paashaus and Luquet used in the previous version of their live show.
Accompanying the sculptural work by Paashaus, Luquet crafted a soundscape for the gallery, installing speakers on the sides of the pedestals to fill the space with sound. The following is a shortened 5 minute version of the looped 90 minute sound installation along with Luquet’s explanation of his process in creating the work:
Rhino and Snail explores sonic signatures we don’t control when they become part of a significant moment in our lives. The tonal center of the rhino’s music is determined by the speed and direction of the wind at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy on the day Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, was euthanized. The tonal center of the snail is based on the wind patterns from the same date in 1977 on Moorea Island, Polynesia—the year the invasive Rosy Wolf Snail was introduced, leading to the extinction of local Partula snails.
Probability scripts prevent complete control of the melodies and allow the music to respond like wind chimes to past weather patterns. Locally gathered forest recordings, edited to represent a full day from sunrise to sunset without human sounds, is compressed to the same length as this significant day for both the rhino and the snail.
The Films
Paas-haus and Sailcloth have collaborated on a series of short films over the past decade, highlighting their shared appreciation of the natural world, their deliberate and careful pacing, and their contemplative aesthetic. As they complete new films, compose new songs, and write new stories, The Forest Primeval also changes and develops with ongoing substitutions. The following trailer contains a handful of clips from their films and some of the older videos are available on paas-haus.com. Screeners of newer works are available upon request.
The Live Performance
The live show is built around the short films created by the duo, multiple of which feature live musical scoring. In between each of the films, paas-haus presents a spoken word or storytelling piece, accompanied by his photography or stop-motion animation and an original musical composition by Sailcloth. The current iteration of the performance lasts an hour to an hour and a half, including the prologue and epilogue music.
About the artists
Sailcloth
‘Sailcloth’ is music written by the bass player Alex Luquet in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As an upright bass player Alex has accompanied a range of musicians (William H. Travis, John Morgan Kimock, Dominic Angellela), learning to find ways the instrument can guide a group of performers on-stage while reacting to listeners in the room. Sailcloth is meant to allow the unique personality of the instrument to shape the compositions. Alex graduated from Moravian College with a degree in music and education.
The Sailcloth EP ‘Resting Fields’ was written as a soundtrack for the film ‘I’ by Daniel Paashaus. The score was written to support the on-screen visuals and guide the viewer through the emotional arc of the story while remaining it’s own compelling piece of music. Creating a parallel musical narrative to the Forest Primeval performance allows the music to respond to and guide the on-stage performance, encouraging interactions between the performers closer to group improvisation.
paas-haus
Daniel Paashaus (aka paas-haus) is a self portrait and experimental filmmaker, photographer, sculptor, and vegetable farmer, working and living in Quakertown, PA. After studying writing and literature at Temple University, he worked at the Santa Fe Photography Workshops and completed an artist residency at Millersville University. His films, photography, and masks have been exhibited in venues throughout the Lehigh Valley, including Soft Machine Gallery, The Bethlehem City Hall Rotunda, Lehigh University, Muhlenberg College, and The Ice House.
He constructs visuals and narratives in a post-humanist meditation on nature and the individual’s finite role therein. Frequently approaching his work through the lens of ancient mythology, paas-haus embraces the passage of time, filming his work in pieces over multiple seasons of growth, development, and decay. A story of self identity, legacy, and mortality unfolds as plants and animals play out their cycles of life, death, and rebirth.
Reviews and Thoughts
Eric Santana
Bethlehem based guitarist, music creator, and instructor
“Forest Primeval has a perfect mesh of visuals and sound that create a unique space to visit. The sound of the bowed bass feels like the ground below your feet is moving and as alive as it is in the film.”
Eva Di Orio
Artist and Owner of Soft Machine Gallery
“The Forest Primeval is a combination of film, spoken word, music and performance art. Daniel Paashaus exposes his vulnerability as a human, father and farmer. With photos of flowers and nature that are altered with animation or color, he “poisons” the purity of the idea of “beautiful nature”, reminding us of its potentially cruel and harsh reality. Being human, and a part of the animal world, is simultaneously survivalist and communal.
Paashaus makes masks that he both wears in the film and displays after the performance as artifacts. The masks, made of found animal bones, or made to look like animals, transform him into a primal self, his attempt at becoming one with nature, as it appears he feels separate from it. However, as he does so, his apparent life cycle as this animal is shown, as he dies in the end. Snippets of his life as a father also reference the life cycle, showing the transference of life to the next generation. The performance seems to address the irony and self absorption of being a parent and human; one must fend for him/herself and his family while also caring for the world and environment at large, for him, especially as a farmer and environmentalist.
In “I”, the separation of humans and nature is unraveled, the "beauty" of nature is brought down from its pedestal, as we learn supposedly that nature is matter of fact in its it's function to survive and provide. Does Paashaus feel his purpose is larger than nature's as he compares himself to it? As a human, are we responsible for caring for nature or are we just as vulnerable as it? Is our role as parents or caregivers equal to the earth as "mother", providing us with everything we need to survive? Does nature contain a wisdom more powerful than us, an awareness of its own beauty, that we are still learning from? The sacrifice of being a father is comparable to the gifts the earth gives us. The earth is as beautiful and cruel as we are, in our needs and attempts at surviving.”
Suzanne Martin, PsyD
psychologist/psychoanalyst
“The Forest Primeval is an aesthetically lush yet contemplative work that seems to be an intensely personal search for meaning and an exploration of self. But it is also evocative and uncanny enough to allow the viewer an endless playground for their own personal reactions and interpretations. I found myself reminded of being a child in the woods and feeling a deep yearning for something that I could not identify; a reunion with something unknown yet so familiar. I was reminded to look, to really look, and to see, and to feel and to just be for a goddamn minute. I thought about Posthumanist responses to the Anthropocene, and the ways that we have neglected and betrayed the non-human world. I thought about what makes life beautiful despite its endless, merciless transformations. The Forest Primeval is the best kind of art: one person’s expression that holds many, many things. ”
Contact
For more information about The Forest Primeval or to discuss possible booking options, please contact Daniel Paashaus at 484.719.9616 or email danielpaashaus@gmail.com.
Additional images and film can be found on paas-haus.com and audio can be heard on sailclothsounds.com or by looking up Sailcloth on Spotify.