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May 3, 2024
The Fireline Fellowship
- Submission Deadline: May 3, 2024
- Award Info: Fellowship
- Type: Grants & Fellowships
- Eligibility: National
- Categories: Craft/Traditional Arts, Photography, Drawing, Film/Video/New Media, Mixed-Media/Multi-Discipline, Painting, Sculpture
- Location: Corvallis, OR 97331, United States
The Fireline Fellowship invites writers, artists, and thought leaders in the humanities to become part of a thinking community that, for two and a half years, will explore issues related to wildfire at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (the Andrews).
In October, 2024, fellows will meet in person with scientists and stay at the Andrews and then will meet quarterly online. Fellows will receive a stipend, opportunities to learn alongside scientists in the field, and up to four weeks of residency time at the Andrews. Fellows will develop new projects for a public audience and/or involving public engagement, and projects will be presented in collaboration with the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx). Eight Fireline Fellowships will be awarded: three by invitation and five by application.
Set on the slopes of the Western Cascades, the 16,000-acre H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest is one of the most closely studied forests in the world. For 75 years, researchers have focused their attention on everything from the spread of tiny mycelial threads below ground to the old-growth trees towering above to all that lives and breathes in between. Scientific discoveries here have challenged prevalent notions about forest “management” and deepened our understanding of forests. And, over the past 20 years, writers, musicians and artists have joined the scientists in the forest as part of the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program, creating work that reflects on our relationships with forests and how that relationship changes over time.
On August 5, 2023, a lightning strike sparked a fire near Lookout Mountain in the Andrews forest. For months the Lookout Fire burned through the old growth, over study plots and up and over the ridges. Neighboring communities were evacuated for the second time in three years. In the forest, the fire blazed over creeks and turned great trees into smoldering stumps. The fire destroyed many long-term experiments, tools and equipment. By the return of the rain in October, 70% of the Andrews had experienced fire.
There are hundreds of miles of firelines in the forest now. These lines etched in the land mark what burned and what did not as wildland fire crews hacked and dug through the underbrush, feller-bunchers clipped down trees, and bulldozers scraped the old-growth moss to bare earth. Natural firelines formed with shifts in the wind, changes in topography, vegetation, or moisture, and finally, the coming of rain.
There are firelines in the scientists’ datasets too. A delineation between the pre-fire known and the post-fire unknown. And firelines radiate into our thinking and imagination. The blurry lines between grief and curiosity, nihilism and hope, and fear and awe. Lines of inquiry about what it means to recover from and live with fire. Lines of poetry, music, essays, books and art that will make meaning, reimagine limited narratives, and help us find our way in this new era of wildfire.
As both natural processes and part of socio-ecological systems bound to cultural traditions, values, habits, and imaginaries, wildland fires clear a space for re-envisioning our connections with each other and with the rest of the natural world. This fire, in a place with a deep history of long-term inquiry and interdisciplinary collaboration, offers a unique opportunity to engage with the many questions, complexities and experiences connected with wildfire.