For the 5th season of the Artistic Observatory of the ash tree avenue in Trampot, we welcome several artists from different disciplines.

American photographer Wayne Gudmundson will be in residence from May 31st to June 6th in Trampot. His work, exhibited notably at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, explores the marks left by humans, nature and time in the landscape. Concerning trees, his black and white photographs seek to show how they interact with the landscape, creating it.

He will photograph the avenue in Trampot as well as other avenues in the surroundings. His editing and printing work will be done as part of another artistic residency, at the Tusen Takk Foundation, in Michigan (USA).

For the fifth year in a row, visual artist Constance Fulda (France) will continue making rubbings of the ash trees in the avenue. Each rubbing on a special Japanese paper, is unique, like the signature of the trees, made of the imprint due to the bark and former scars. Put together, they will represent a piece of about 125 meters long. Read more about Constance Fulda and her previous work in the avenue under 'Observatory 2020' to 'Observatory 2023'. Constance Fulda will be in residence from June 16th to June 23rd in Trampot. Come and see her perform her rubbings on Sunday, June 23rd from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

On the same day, at 3:30 pm, we will also welcome the French ensemble Angeli Primitivi (José Le Piez and Patricia Chatelain) for a concert of 'Arbrassons'. The Arbrassons are acoustic sculptures created by José. The sound is produced by simply carressing the wooden surface. This acoustic process was discovered and developed by José Le Piez. It has an amazing poetic force and seems to hold magic. Its only equivalent in the world is that of the livika, a sacred instrument used in funeral rites in Papua New Guinea.

José Le Piez will then remain in residence in Trampot to perform his art of sculpture, which he practices in the spirit of martial arts. José has worked in collaboration and exhibited with Ernest Pignon-Ernest or Giuseppe Penone, and his sculptures are exhibited e.g. at the Utopia Museum in Belgium, the Mona Museum in Australia, the Museum of Natural History of Rouen-Normandy, or the City of Sciences in Strasbourg. In Trampot, José will work on timber from ash trees in the avenue that had to be cut down in 2023.

We continued the Artistic Observatory in Trampot with visual artist Constance Fulda in June.

The Observatory was featured on a regional radio programme (France Bleu) and in a news report on French television France 3. The public is always surprised by the result of the rubbings, which resemble constellations or clusters of neurons, with no apparent connection to the underlying bark.

The observatory will continue in 2022.

As part of the Artistic Observatory of the ash tree avenue in Trampot (Eastern France), we welcomed the Franco-Tunisian artist Ridha Dhib on March 24th. The day before, he had stopped in Trampot on his long performance 'Ex-tracés', and written a short passage of the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. 

The avenue is now documented by a photo and a video sequence with an augmented reality compass that points towards Mardin, at the Turkish-Syrian border, 3118 km away, the goal of the "Ex-tracés" performance.

This virtual artwork of our Observatory will only exist if it is known and shared by as many people as possible. You can comment the picture and the avenue here.

On June 25th and 26th, artist Constance Fulda returned to continue the rubbings of the ash trees on washi paper. 113 have already been completed, representing roughly half of the final work, and a length of 56.50 m. For six of the rubbings made, they represend the only tangible remains of the trees, since these were felled in 2022..

During her performance, Constance Fulda also exhibited six 8m high rubbings of oaks intended for the reconstruction of the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris. It created an 'emotional shock,' as one participant expressed it. There is no doubt that the effect will be as mighty when Constance Fulda's intervention for the Observatory is completed, as the entire work will be nearly 125 m long!

 The Observatory can be continued thanks to the support of our donnors, the IRIS foundation in particular

Performance artistique à Trampot filmée par Thierry Passerat (Vimeo).

For the launch of the Artistic Observatory of the ash tree avenue in Trampot, we welcomed the French visual artist Constance Fulda. Fascinated by trees, she placed her Japanese papers - an extremely light and durable paper that does not turn yellow with time - on the bark to capture the intimate history of the ash trees bordering the RD 427. The result is puzzling: each tree revealed a kind of constellation, a complex network of "cores" and filaments resembling a strange mycelium.

This is the first time Constance Fulda has made such a series of rubbings in an avenue. Usually, she works on single trees such as the huge banyan tree of Thrissur, India, or the millennia-old cedar of Yakushima Island, Japan.

The audience received a miniature rubbing and a copy of an unpublished handwritten text offered by poet Christian Bobin.

Vosges Television (ViàVosges) aired a report available here.

Constance Fulda will return to continue her work until each tree has its "portrait".