Artist sets up forest in Austrian stadium as nature's last redoubt

Almost 50 years after Joni Mitchell sang about putting a tree in a tree museum, a Swiss artist has set up a whole forest in a stadium to make a similar environmental point.

The installation, consisting of around 300 trees transplanted over the existing football pitch.

Basel-based Klaus Littmann installed 300 trees in a 30,000-capacity stadium in Klagenfurt in southern Austria, near the border of Italy and Slovenia.

Swiss initiator and curator Klaus Littmann (R) and Austrian artist Max Peintner pose during a preview.

"For many, because of the current situation, this represents a memorial as part of the climate change discussion," he told Reuters at the exhibition in the lakeside city.

The stadium will be open to the public from September 8 to October 27, 2019.

Mitchell's 1970 song 'Big Yellow Taxi' - and its refrain "They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot" - had a clear green message, suggesting that the world had become so developed that people had to go to museums to see nature.

"For Forest – The Unending Attraction of Nature" by Klaus Littmann is seen.

Littmann did not mention the song but referenced another influence from the same year, a drawing by the artist Max Peintner "who in 1970 had the vision that one day, it could happen that we look at nature in designated areas only, for example in a crater architecture such as a stadium."

Swiss artist Klaus Littmann looks at his temporary art intervention.

The free exhibition opens on Monday and runs until Oct. 27.

Reuters