REEL Art: #2 – Becoming Black Walnut Tree, Becoming Forest

In 2017, at the age of 47, Billy, a two-spirit visual artist and one of the originators of the Sweet Labour Arts Collective, died. He asked us to continue working with him after he was gone. In 2022, we produced a community-engaged art event inspired by Billy’s prompt, a community feast, dance performance and film. The work featured footage from a site-based performance where we guided the audience through a decolonial somatic imaginary practice of becoming a walnut tree. This experience became the impetus for this short film called “Becoming Walnut Tree, Becoming Forest.” The piece was inspired by the place where Billy’s ashes were scattered at Oneida Nation in a grove of walnut trees.
This film embraces the idea that what you imagine your body can become to guide the viewer to become a tree and forest simultaneously. Using scientific studies on plant sentience and Oneida ways of knowing, the film invites audiences to envision themselves as a beautiful Black Walnut Tree, who are both male and female at the same time, to root into the colonial stories that have shaped them, and to envision new possible forest worlds.

Credits ????
A Sweet Labour Art Collective Production
Produced by Kevin O’Connor and Ruth Douthwright
Script: Brooke Chrisjohn, Kevin O’Connor and Linda Jantz
Voice: Brooke Chrisjohn
Film Maker: Marshall Stonefish
Dancers: Ruth Douthwright, Montana Summers, Kevin O’Connor, Linda Jantz, Brooke Chrisjohn
Composer and Musician: Wormwood, Christina Willatt and Andrew C. Wenaus