The Forest Underground at Archive Event VI: Miriam Sentler - The Chase, Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam (NL). Copyright: Miriam Sentler/ LNDW Studio.

This work was developed during a residency at Jester (formerly CIAP/FLACC) Genk (BE) and the Emile van Dorenmuseum and has been exhibited for the first time during Archive Event VI: Miriam Sentler - The Chase at Looiersgracht 60, Amsterdam. 

Team: Drake Stoughton (composition, conceptualisation), Archie Metaalbewerking Amsterdam (metal construction), Alicja Melzacka (support & organisation)

  .  The making process of The Forest Underground is
generously supported by the O&O grant of CBK Rotterdam.


︎ Sound sample on request      

(2022-ongoing) Audio installation, in collaboration with composer Drake Stoughton (1995, US/NL)

The Forest Underground starts from the sounds of the “underground forest” of the coal mines of Limburg and is developed in the context of Genk, one of the largest coal towns in Belgium. In the mining industry, trees, plants and animals were treated as industrial resources. They were utilized in order to find coal, a fossil fuel that itself originated from ancient ecosystems and plant remains. However, that these natural entities also had material agency was for the miners of the last century self-evident. In the mines, the voices of birds, crickets and trees were heard on a daily basis, accompanying the hard work of the miners. The song of the cricket, which was brought into the mines along with the tree logs used in the construction of mine shafts, was audible even deep under the earth. The Scots pine was not selected for the support of the mine galleries because it was so sturdy, but because the wood cracked or “speaked” before it broke. The voice of the canary accompanied the long working days, and when it fell silent, it was time to run.

The device specially made for the The Forest Underground, which Miriam and composer Drake Stoughton showcase for the first time at Looiersgracht 60, will bring the sounds of this underground forest back to the abandoned mines of C-Mine in Genk later this year. The model is based on a resurrection device developed for fainted canaries, used in the 19th century to “revive” canaries that went off their bat by carbon monoxide poisoning. This historical device is now used as a container in which the sounds of crickets, trees and birds return to the underworld.