Description
Tree explores the forms, uses, and alliances of this living object’s entanglement with humanity, from antiquity to the Anthropocene. Trees tower over us and yet fade into background. Their lifespan outstrips ours, and yet their wisdom remains inscrutable, treasured up in the heartwood. They serve us in many ways–as keel, lodgepole, and execution site–and yet to become human, we had to come down from their limbs. Matthew Battles’s Tree follows the tree’s branches across art, poetry, and landscape, marking the edges of imagination with wildness and shadow. Matthew Battles is Associate Director of the metaLAB and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, USA. His previous publications include Library: an Unquiet History (2004), The Sovereignties of Invention (2012) and Library Beyond the Book (2014) Part One: Feral Trees The Tree of Heaven In a Dappled World A branching Heuristic Part Two: Garden and Forest In the Tree Museum From Ailanthus to Apple The Charter of the Forests Part Three: A Dark Abundance The Tree and/in History With and Without Us Notes Index
