Survivor trees: Spectrality and stickiness

Abstract

Survivor trees are those which have survived disasters. They are often the only things left following the destruction of buildings by earthquakes, tsunamis, atomic blasts, and bombings. Survivor trees are located within the discourses of architecture and landscape architecture. This paper focuses particularly on the affectiveness of trees, their generation of emotions, and their propagation of atmosphere. Survivor trees at sites such as 9/11, the Oklahoma bombing, and the Japanese tsunami become affectively “sticky,” as places of emotional intensification with traces of the spectral. Haunting and affect theory are closely entwined, and both tune into the often invisible pulses that activate elements of the landscape. Both are entwined with the extraordinary and the supernatural, with heightened feelings, shivers and shimmers. This intensity of affect and haunting generates an affective atmosphere, that elusive aura which permeates places and moments with special feeling. Affective atmospheres suffuse us with intangible emotional presence; with survivor trees, this brings a strange familiarity, an uncanniness. The names given to survivor trees, such as “witness” or “seeing,” emphasise this haunting, affective resonance. Negative emotions and associations stick to survivor trees as well, including the trees who refuse to completely die – the zombie trees, whose haunting becomes something sinister.