Breathe Congo

In this penultimate Viewing Room, we’re moving into the green. Breathe Congo: a Reflection on the Growing Deforestation of Central Africa’s Rainforest is a land art piece with accompanying text, first presented at the Stellenbosch Triennale in South Africa (2020). This is a living interactive artwork – a spiralling path of trees, an opportunity to go inward and to reflect. Honouring the green heart of Africa, the world’s second lung, the artwork is a meditative path and an elemental gesture contemplating the beauty and fragility of our relationship and interdependence with one another and with our natural world.

Every tree a silent majestic witness, and an urgent reminder,
That we exist now and our collective future is in our own hands.
A spiral, like breath, is both radiating out and drawing inward. Infinite.
Without beginning and without end.
The root of the word ‘spiral’ comes from the Latin spirare: to breathe, to inspire, to expire.
This is our earthly contract with the trees and the forests.
We only exist in togetherness.
They are breathing us.
And we are breathing them.
The choices we make now are creating the future.
TOMORROW THERE WILL BE MORE OF US.
May we be wise. May the trees and forests still remain.
May the breath be without end. May it not spiral out of control.
May we be the path for the footsteps of our children and their children and the children of their children’s children.
The breath of the future.
May we be the miracle memory.
May we become the wise ancestors who left a natural world worthy of its future dreamers.

The Congo Basin in central Africa is home to the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world after the Amazon. Often referred to as the “Green Heart” of Africa and the “World’s Second Lung”, the Congo Basin rainforest is around 301 million hectares and spans six countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.

The WWF tells us – ‘A mosaic of rivers, forests, savannas, swamps and flooded forests, the Congo Basin is teeming with life. Gorillas, elephants and buffalo all call the region home. There are approximately 10,000 species of tropical plants in the Congo Basin and thirty percent are unique to the region. Endangered wildlife, including forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas inhabit the lush forests. 400 other species of mammals, 1,000 species of birds and 700 species of fish can also be found here. The Congo Basin has been inhabited by humans for more than 50,000 years and it provides food, fresh water and shelter to more than 75 million people. Nearly 150 distinct ethnic groups exist and the region’s Ba’Aka people are among the most well-known representatives of an ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Their lives and well-being are linked intimately with the forest.’

• This large and important wilderness region absorbs vast amounts of carbon dioxide which is crucial to the fight against climate change, helping to mitigate rising global temperatures. Additionally, it helps to regulate local and global rainfall, to safeguard both water and soil quality, and to control disease.

• According to Carbon Brief, ‘The effects of tropical deforestation on climate go well beyond carbon, deforestation also affects rainfall. At a local level, it changes rainfall and water run-off patterns making the remaining forests drier. It could also have global impacts with scientific models showing that the complete destruction of tropical forests in central Africa would reduce rainfall in southern Europe and the upper and lower US Midwest.’

• France’s Environment Minister Ségolène Royal has stated that researchers believe that deforestation in Central Africa may have catalysed the most recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa: ‘This destruction of the natural habitat of fruit-eating bats drove the animals to approach human settlements to find food and the virus may have been transmitted during this increased contact resulting from deforestation…’

Factors that are contributing to deforestation and destruction of the Congo Basin rainforests:

• Growing global demand for coffee and cocoa – this region produces 70% of the world’s cocoa.

• Unprecedented timber demand, with a specifically rapid growth in demand from China.

• Unsustainable, unregulated, and illegal harvesting of wood.

• Road-building by industrial logging companies has created opportunity for further illegal logging and wildlife poaching in remote areas once unreachable.

• Large numbers of displaced refugees from armed conflict and civil war have been forced to live off the land which has severely impacted forests and wildlife. WWF reports the demand for fuelwood and charcoal has led to the deforestation of Virunga National Park in the DRC.

How do we help to create an emotional connection to the wealth of environmental data available to us? How do we instil a sense of urgency and also a sense of agency? Perhaps through beauty, and the simple experience of walking slowly through a cool and calm spiral of trees, the spiral of life, whose centre reveals a mirror which reflects a glimpse of ourselves amidst the trees and sky, we can provide a visceral understanding and personal connection in ways that environmental data may not offer on its own. The opportunity to observe ourselves and our actions, a reminder that we are active participants within an inseparable whole.

Pieter Colyn is a South African Land Artist and Landscape Designer based in Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is the owner and founder of ART Cederberg, a growing outdoor sculpture park where people can experience contemporary sculptures by leading South African artists set against the backdrop of pristine nature and ancient rock forms. ART Cederberg is set within 16,000 hectares of protected wilderness and is part of the Klein Cederberg Nature Reserve located in the Cederberg Mountains, 2.5 hours outside of Cape Town in South Africa. ART Cederberg’s mission is to converge art, wilderness, and ecological conservation.

Emilie Miller is a writer based in New York City. She has been published in The New York Times and was one of six foreign authors chosen to write for: Racconti Dal Mondo, a book of short stories about Cagliari, Sardinia. Her play Cinghiale! earned her a Los Angeles Stage Alliance Ovation Award Nomination and was also listed by Angeleno Magazine as a Top Ten pick. The Katrina Exercise, a play chronicling Emilie’s time spent volunteering with The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, was presented in excerpt form at The Kitchen in New York City as part of The Field’s Emerging Artist Residency (made possible in part by the Lambent Foundation Fund of the Tides Foundation).