[NetBehaviour] Oak portal to another year

[Zak Qlikman]

The forest hums with latent energy. At the center stands an oak as wide as
a house, twisted and gnarled, its bark shivering with faint emerald light
beneath the dying sun. A rent, black as space, rips two feet down the
trunk, and space warps within it, like it were alive, breathing.

Faint, pulsing radiance shines out through the rent, a tenuous thread of
possibility in a world run out of wonders. The visitor stays there for
quite some time, then hunch through.

[image: oak-s-2024-12-30 16.01.43.jpg]

When s/he emerges, the air strikes them like a shockwave. The world outside
is now raw and jagged, a place where geometry has come unraveled. Trees are
titanic constructs of twisted root-masses and coursing, glowing filaments,
their tops a neural web which crackles with light. The ground beneath is a
juddering lattice of semi-organic matter, pulsating faintly with a rhythm
which seems maddeningly close to a heartbeat. Above them all, the sky is a
fractured purple roof, endless in its extent but rent here and there with
cracks of brilliant white light.

It is shapes that move, at first vague, distant, hazy pieces of
background-but then one sweeps up to break apart. There is something deeply
alien to its structure: transparent overlays of its being reveal events and
thoughts that flash faster than a nervous heartbeat; its eyes are firmament
stars blazing in fictitious orbits.

The visitor’s throat constricts.

The oak is a portal, but it is no sanctuary. It is a mirror. What s/he sees
here is what their world may be.

For a moment, translucent layers flicker with images: collapsing spires,
blackened forests, and desolate wastes.

With savage force, the ground buckles beneath them, and the visitor is
flung backward. Landing with a thud on the forest floor, s/he gasps for
air. The oak rises before him, unchanged—the jagged opening now sealed, as
if it had never existed.

The forest is silent again.

-

http://thevisitors.jeron.org/ar


On Mon, Dec 30, 2024 at 2:17 PM Ruth Catlow via NetBehaviour <
netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:

> Thanks for the New Year messages :)
>
> Last week we came across this 2 foot high opening in an oak tree at
> Newborn Springs in Suffolk here in the UK 🌳 ✨
> Looking upwards inside the hollow we discovered a magical wood cavern that
> opened to the sky.
>
> [image: portal.jpg]     [image: inside the portal.jpg]
>
> It was so easy to imagine that it was a portal to another time and
> dimension. It was not so easy to imagine a dimension that is not wracked
> with violence and sorrow. But an oak portal feels like a good place to
> begin the search.
>
> Love and strength to you all for all your new year portalling.
> <3
> Ruth
>
> --
> Ruth Catlow
> she/her
> Director of Furtherfield & DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab
> +44 (0) 77370 02879
>
> *I will only agree to speak at events that are racially and gender
> balanced.
>
> **sending thanks
> <https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press-releases/2019/november/think-before-you-thank-if-every-brit-sent-one-less-thank-you-email-a-day-we-would-save-16433-tonnes-of-carbon-a-year-the-same-as-81152-flights-to-madrid.html> in
> advance
>
> *Furtherfield *disrupts and democratises art and technology through exhibitions,
> labs & debate, for deep exploration, open tools & free thinking.
> furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/>
>
> *DECAL* Decentralised Arts Lab is an arts, blockchain & web 3.0
> technologies research hub
>
> for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies & economies now.
>
> https://decal.furtherfield.org/
>
> Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company Limited by Guarantee
>
> Registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
>
> Registered business address: 2 Lincoln Terrace, IP11 &QA.
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