The starting point of Jan Boháč's artistic work is the theme of accidents or other dramatic events, which he sees as having cathartic potential. He compares the personal, intimate experience of a life-threatening situation to the global experience of the climate crisis. He envisions a possible healing process through performative sessions, blending psychotherapeutic imagery, relaxation meditation, and TTRPG (tabletop role-playing game) fantasy worlds.
The project Trees Make the Forest and You Make the Tree can be experienced at Galerie mladých in two ways: as a gallery installation or as an immersive sound performance with opportunities for audience interaction. Both experiences evoke the same scenario – turning into a tree and becoming part of a forest – but with varying levels of communal connection. The audio in the exhibition is a recording of past sessions, featuring the voices of those who have already undergone the transformation into a forest. It simultaneously encourages and invites visitors to take part in one of the upcoming sessions. The capacities to speak, hear, and especially feel are only slightly altered, transferred to the roots that metaphorically grow from our feet, anchoring us in the soil and connecting us to the mycelium—a communication network.
The pivotal moment and core metaphor of the story is the gradual transformation into a piece of wood and slowly becoming a tree, while retaining human abilities and senses.
The capacities to speak, hear, and especially feel are only slightly altered, transferred to the roots that metaphorically grow from our feet, anchoring us in the soil and connecting us to the mycelium—a communication network. This communal experience of grounding connection is key to the cathartic experience and the moral of the story. On a physical level, the communication can be personally enlightening, though it may evoke the genre of ancient fables. By personifying plants, we learn empathy and the importance of both interpersonal and interspecies connections, dissolving our individuality to achieve collective consciousness.
The genre of tabletop fantasy RPGs is referenced not only through the forest setting and the role of embodying a tree, but also by the narrator, who resembles a Dungeon Master or "Cave Lord" from games like Dragon's Den. This figure guides participants through activities like creating a game concept map using beads, sharing personal transformation experiences, and directing the plot of the séance. Unlike other contemporary art forms that reference the fantasy genre, the text of the sound composition deliberately avoids melancholy or evoking ambivalent feelings. Instead, the focus on relaxation aligns with therapeutic imagery, where the narrator’s role and the clear, secure structure of the story are crucial – even with the recurring emphasis on transformation.
An equally important part of the installation are the tree objects created using the technique of poured plaster. The sound composition was made together with Jonáš Richter. We would also like to thank Anna-Natalia Fajnorová, Adam Hejduk and Jonáš Garaj for their help.
