"How to mutate the word tree into a verb? Or What new wordnoises does this tree trunk dream of?" A polyphonic performance
Within the context of the work-in-progress with the title wide wood web friendship. Duration: 37 min.

It is not first through the voice that one becomes animal?

Deleuze/Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus
On July 24, 2023 in Humboldthain Park Berlin
A tree was struck by lightning
The oak tree was leaning across the park path
Its trunk was torn open in pieces
In November 2023 Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou started an ongoing process of reading/decoding/drawing the opened-up skin of the fallen oak tree.
A series of drawings have been produced.
On December 29, 2023 a collective polyphonic performance takes place at the Humboldthain Park Berlin. Invited artists and performers read a text written by Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou. The participants voice/ breathe out the drawings of the opened-up tree skin using the sounds of the environment.
The language of the text and its meaning are disrupted and mutated by the sounds and noises produced by the overlapping voices of the participants. New polyphonic and embodied languages full of pleasure, playfulness and affect have been shaped.
The performance generates a new network of materials, situations, actions, voices and bodies that interweaves the participants with the existing network of the tree.
The work embraces the paradox of its own materiality: graphite, wood, paper, ink, plastic, electricity, time, minutes, hours, more electricity, data, metal, copper, a studio, a tree, bodies, organs, intestines, air, worms, caterpillars, flies, soil, moist: mycorrhizal symbiotic associations.
The project "How to mutate the word tree into a verb? Or What new wordnoises does this tree trunk dream of?" poses questions on the entanglement of language to patriarchy and domination, on the potentialities of language decomposition and on the relationship between human and non-human forms of life.
Who has the right to take care of this tree?
Who has the right to cut down this tree?
Who has the right to coordinate its materiality?
Who has the right to sit next to this tree?
Who has the right to speak to the tree?
Who has the right to translate this tree?
What other polyphonic languages can be heard that empower life in its complex entanglements?
What unheard wordnoises does this tree trunk dream of?
                        An alphabet in the momentum of the air

The performance is based on the following poetic text, which the artist wrote especially for the project

Concept/Fotos/Text/Drawings: Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou
Performers: Ayşe Orhon, Ioanna Angelopoulou, Daphne Dragona, Theemetra Harizani, Oyto Arognos, Marta Jurkiewicz,
Ioannis Savvidis, Lina Theodorou, Yiannis Loukos, Chryssa Tsampazi, Eva Lindenmaier, Özlem Cengel, Franck-Lee Alli-Tis.
Dramaturgy advisors: Ayşe Orhon, Ioanna Angelopoulou, Daphne Dragona, Theemetra Harizani, Oyto Arognos
Camera: Theemetra Harizani
Video Editing: Franck-Lee Alli-Tis, Theemetra Harizani
Additional documentation: Marta Jurkiewicz, Franck-Lee Alli-Tis aka V Stylianidou

"How to mutate the word tree into a verb? Or What new wordnoises does this tree trunk dream of?" into a verb is part of the of 15m²_a mobile exhibition platform initiated by Panayiotis Michael.