The Mulberry Tree
Current ProjecT
- A Film
- A map
- A series of workshops
Road Movie to a Mulberry Tree
In the Alpujarras of southern Spain stands a mulberry tree
A silkworm dragon, coiled amongst the branches, breathes a golden thread.
A pilgrimage to a mulberry tree begins. Along the way, I meet people from different cultures and places who share their memories of mulberry trees. Their stories, interwoven, become a map made with the golden thread.
I first used this golden thread in my doctoral thesis, Mapping a Lived Experience in Landscape (2024). Inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson’s theories on perception, I developed a way of mapping that offers a glimpse into a non-linear reality.To see behind the scenes
The film itself will be a slower, considered and less absurd piece of work
Bergson’s book Matter and Memory (1896) describes how a relationship between matter, memory and the actions we take informs perception. In this film, the mulberry trees are the matter, the memories are those of the people we meet, and the actions are eating the mulberries and the making of a map. The map emerges from a ritual action connecting matter and memory.
The film follows the golden thread, interweaving a history of mulberry trees, the memories of the people I meet, and mulberry trees in different places.
The resulting map proposes a non-linear relationship with space and time, where our actions shape the reality we perceive.
A co created Map
Using a ritual of the silkworm dragon’s golden thread
Over the course of the film, a map is made, interweaving the memories of the people I meet along the way, connecting their stories to mulberry trees across time and space.
The map will be reproduced with gold thread as a limited edition for patrons of the project. Pre-sales will help fund the making of the film, providing an exclusive map of stories of the mulberry tree.
Pre sales of the map fund the film
To be notified when the presale opens
Workshops
Workshops will take place with growers, healers, artists, cooks and others whose lives have, in some way, a connection to the stories of the mulberry tree.
Details will be announced as the project unfolds.
Snippets of the production journey can be seen at @existentialsitcom.
