A temporary horizontal line has been created amongst the green. It’s sharp, as an industrial landscape. It can never be reached or crossed.

 

At first, I noticed traces of girdling on the fallen trees in the forest— a technique used to control the lifespan of a tree, to regulate the speed of its death. The dimensions of an A4 sheet evoked, for me, the sharpness of those girdling marks. In this averaged landscape, the trees lose their sense of strength, collectivity and age. Breaking one feels like snapping a reed—whether by storm or by machine. 

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When scientists speak of the "global environment", the landscape becomes an image flashing in front of our eyes. In the ‘scientifically correct’ view of post-glacial rebound, as glaciers melt and disappear, the rising of continental plates is described as a change in sea level. Along the shifting boundary between land and water in Finland, this horizontal line drops by about 1 cm per year.
 

What we perceive as the horizontal line is not a line, but a place that can be experienced, crossed, and inhabited. The most exciting moment came when I set up these A4 papers in a protected forest. Suddenly, people walked through the horizontal line. The A4 sheet—meant to represent a kind of standard—proves incompatible with different places. Bodies and movement break the idea of a fixed horizon, creating activities amidst the horizontal line.