Why Katie Paterson is turning forests into incense sticks

‘To Burn, Forest, Fire (2021–ongoing) realizes two different sensory experiences using incense sticks: One is the scent of the first forest on Earth, which dates back 385 million years; the other recreates the smells of the last – or the most threatened – forest of now. To create the artwork, I and the studio team spoke with paleontologists and geologists about the location, date and composition of the first forest, which is considered to be in Cairo in upstate New York, where there are fossilized remains of root systems. We then tried to build a scent ‘image’ of the overall locality, including the atmosphere, soil, and life that was around at that time. It’s difficult to picture. What would the color palette of the Earth be like? There were no vertebrates, for example, but flying insects, and the trees were fern-like. In fact, 385 million years is not long in the geological timescale. It struck me that there were several billion years before trees existed. The growth of the earliest forests brought more oxygen to life, weather patterns changed, and the biodiversity of the planet grew.

‘For the second scent, we chose the Amazon because it’s so epic, although the speed of destruction is so great that many areas of the forest could soon be the last of their kind. We wanted to build a scent picture of the rainforest as it is now – very vibrant with so many forms of plant and animal life – and so we chose the area around the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador. To develop the scent descriptions, we worked with scientists there and guides on the ground.

‘The incense sticks were created in collaboration with the Japanese perfumer Shoyeido, whose beautiful rainbow incense I’d discovered years ago. There was a lot of translation involved – not only in terms of interpreting dense scientific language but in translating it into Japanese, which was then translated into incense. The Amazon incense stick is limy and fresh, while that of the first forest is very earthy.

‘The work involves a ceremony that’s a little different each time. The incense is lit, and a bell is rung. Each stick burns for 15 minutes, while people sit, smell, and contemplate. The work was originally commissioned by IHME Helsinki in 2021 and was staged in a few locations, including beneath a very old tree on a Finnish island, in a crypt, in people’s houses, in seminar rooms, and out of windows, so that people walking past got whiffs of the scent. For the World Weather Network, it’s been staged all over the world, including in places where there are no forests, like Dubai.

‘I like how portable the artwork is and what minimal physical intervention it involves. You have these two small incense sticks in a little cardboard packet, which are lit, and then the whole thing is gone. It’s ephemeral yet it encompasses this expanse of time, connecting us to the deep geological past when the first trees happened to take root and to the geological present, in which the speed of destruction overtakes the billions of years it has taken for trees to evolve.’

This is the last article in our series of stories on the World Weather Network, a constellation of 28 artist-created weather stations around the world, initiated by Artangel in London, in response to climate change.

Katie Paterson is represented by James Cohan Gallery (New York), Ingleby Gallery (Edinburgh) and PKM Gallery (Seoul).

Skye Sherwin is an art writer based in Rochester, UK. She contributes regularly to The Guardian and numerous art publications.

Published on June 27, 2023.

Caption for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Katie Paterson. 2. "To Burn, Forest, Fire", IHME Helsinki Commission, 2021. Photographs by Veikko Somerpuro.