Artist Sohan Ariel Hayes Is Giving Life To The Trees For PIAF's Opening Spectacular

The opening event of last year's Perth International Arts Festival - the first of Wendy Martin's four-year tenure as Director - set the bar for outdoor events in Perth. This year, Davis has recruited the same creative team to deliver a new spectacular, celebrating the biodiversity of Western Australia, the ancient knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of the area, and the peril global warming and climate change poses to the vibrant, thriving ecosystems of Australia and beyond.

Video and projection artist Sohan Ariel Hayes has pushed his creative practice to its limits for this newly created environmental odyssey, spanning 1.2km along Fraser Avenue to the Pioneer Women's Memorial, Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak. On the eve of the production's premiere, he reveals the challenges and triumphs of this artistic evolution.

Last year's grand spectacle, HOME, was attended by more than 50,000 people. Did you expect it to be such a huge success and how has the scale of last year's crowd influenced your approach this year?

HOME for me was all about this place we live in, the land and its people. More than that, it was about putting this place in its place through acknowledging the history people share in this place as immigrants and indigenous peoples. I was delighted that so many people came along to HOME to hear the songs of survival sung so boldly by such a powerful line-up of Perth artists.

This year Nigel Jamieson & Wendy Martin have really pushed for the work to address our connection to this place, this country, through the synthesis of science and traditional ecological knowledge. At at time when we are losing so much of the natural world to development, there have been luminaries such as Noel Nannup and Stephen Hopper who have been pointing at ways in which we can conserve the biodiversity of our country through the integration of this two-knowledge system. This idea forms the spine of the work this year and has offered us an incredibly rich subject to communicate through a series of site-based installations across the beautiful spaces in Kings Park. I really hope that the experience of walking through this work opens the audience up to old and new ways of connecting and listening to country.

This year's opening spectacular, Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak, is set to draw an even bigger crowd. What does it mean for you, as an artist, to reach such a huge number of people with your work?

There is a deep sense of responsibility I feel, given the very great privilege to make work in this place and for this audience with this incredible team. I hope that I have reciprocated the great trust given to us to make this work by giving, in return, the deepest commitment, honouring the testimony given by the many speakers present in this work.

This year, the ante has definitely been upped by turning this event into a promenade performance that stretches some 700 meters along Frasers Avenue. What have been the biggest challenges for you and what surprises can we expect?

The most difficult and the most beautiful quality of this work is the light projected onto trees. At times what you will see in front of you will truly surround you and entrance you and then at other moments be completely lost. Moving through the work there is a constant vanishing and becoming of images and certainly the work demands that the audience play with their orientation to trees, seeking out moments for themselves. Some moments are choreographed like theatre and others are like bird watching and require a keen eye to witness.

Last year's animations drew heavily on historical drawings and documents chronicling the history of Perth from the time of white settlement. What design influences have you explored this year?

At the very centre of this work is the practice of drawing and the drawn line. Every visual moment began with a line on paper and then was brought to life through the digital animation. We strived for a naturalism of movement, yet constrained ourselves to a highly graphic style that could be read on the variable natural environment that we have been illuminating.

Perth International Arts Festival presents Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak, 10 — 12 Feb. The journey begins on Fraser Avenue.