Video artist Julia Oldham and rural industrial sound duo Free Static collaborate to create “View of the Red Forest,” combining video footage of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with a live score. Using video footage from her visit to Chernobyl in spring of 2018, Oldham builds a portrait of the rewilding of the Exclusion Zone. Wild horses, foxes and stray dogs roam through crumbling streets of what was once a bustling town while buildings and playground equipment are slowly dismantled by plant life. Free Static’s haunting soundtrack brings both the strangeness and hope of Chernobyl’s landscape into focus through a textural blend of tape loops, samples and modular synthesizers. This project was first performed live at Oregon State University’s experimental gallery Woodshop Projects on January 12, 2019, within an installation of large photographs of windows from the Exclusion Zone looking out into the overgrown landscape of Chernobyl.