Treading the arboreal pathway through the backwoods of black metal
 
Becoming the Forest is an open-ended publication, which looks at our relationship to our surroundings, with a specific focus on the Northern hemisphere’s abundance of dense spruce forests, and how the aesthetic and philosophy of the musical subculture of black metal has become entangled with this topography.
 
Becoming the Forest is a wider and ongoing arts project by artist and Legion Projects curator Una Hamilton Helle, of which this publication is the latest instalment. The publication includes essays, interviews, illustration and photography and brings together international voices from literature, the visual arts, science, art history and the musical realms. These include contributions about the molecular memory of spruce trees, musings on the animistic worldview, an introduction to folkloric painter Theodor Kittelsen and interviews with black metal-inspired bands that touch upon everything from the eco-dystopian to the mundanity of nature.
 
Contributors: Alkerdeel, Ashtoreth, Botanist, Lotte Brown, Camilla Christensen, Audrey Ewell, Fen, Carl Gunnar Fossdal, Una Hamilton Helle, Hexvessel, Ibrahim Ineke, Amelia Ishmael, Sarah Jury, Theodor Kittelsen, Mork, Occvlta, Trond Sebastian Rusten and Andrew Walter.
 
Edited by Una Hamilton Helle and Lotte Brown. 
Published by Het Bos Antwerpen. 
Supported by the Norwegian Arts Council. 
Designed by Gerard Leysen. 
Released 2017, reprint 2019.
120 pages, 210x135mm, black and white. 
ISBN 9789090303468
 
Available through Antenne Books