HMA | High Mountains Archive

Authored crop of a bunker volume reconstruction in the Ardennes.

ARDENNES — 00381.627

The High Mountains Archive extends into the Ardennes forest, where geological and living processes intersect with industrial residues and post-military infrastructures.

HIGH MOUNTAINS
ARCHIVE

High Mountains Archive is an affective and situated research developed by Olivia Joret.

It began with Hoge Bergen — “High Mountains” — a site and neighbourhood in Belgium with a long history of extraction and non-ferrous industry. The former industrial site is now a nature park. There are no mountains, but deep clay pits.

Its mountains are entangled with excavation, accumulation, material transformation, living processes and structures of power.

The archive has since developed through partial encounters with materials, traces, histories and transformations, across different places and temporalities.

ARDENNES — 00381.627

The High Mountains Archive extends into the Ardennes forest, where geological and living processes intersect with industrial residues and post-military infrastructures.

Olivia Joret works in Belgium, between a shared workspace with the Level Five collective in Brussels and a studio in the Ardennes.

PORTFOLIO 2026 →Email

HIGH MOUNTAINS ARCHIVE #4

TINY
INFILTRATION

Film, ~2 min, 2026

Tiny Infiltration follows the sound of water entering a hollowed-out high-security storage complex in the forest.

Developed for MOVING ASSEMBLY, a four-hour performance with Level Five at KOMPLOT, Brussels, November 2026, in which works move between storage, display and activation.

HIGH MOUNTAINS ARCHIVE #4

LA CHASSE

(Field notes on a missing film)

Film, 2’13’’, 2026

Dense green undergrowth and tree trunks in the forest, a still from La Chasse.

La Chasse engages with references to a film with the same name (1950-1960), attributed to A. Cauvin, whose origin and status remain uncertain. The work displaces these references across forest and interior spaces, treating sites as constructed and unstable. Taking its cue from the title, it unsettles the logic of the hunt as a structure of pursuit and capture, while speculating on a form of objectivity that cannot be secured.

Presented in Level Five’s HomeScreen programme during Open Studio Days, Brussels, 2026.

HIGH MOUNTAINS ARCHIVE #4

METABOLIC SUBLIME

Volume reconstruction

The inaccessible interior volumes of a hollowed-out post-military bunker complex in the forest are apprehended through partial information. Processes of sensing through form, scale, material and activation bring these volumes into an affective and bodily relation, allowing some of their loads (historical, political, economic, ecological and others) to be approached and partially processed.