Forest Mind

Directed by Ursula Biemann

Forest Mind is a video work that emerges from the artist’s longstanding interest in the human interaction with the natural world. Forest Mind tackles the underlying concepts that distinguish the Indigenous knowledge systems from that of modern science, gaging the limits of rationalism which has dominated Western thinking for the last 200 years. Located in the tropical forests of southern Colombia and told from a personal perspective, the narrative takes up diverse strands of research from the intelligence of plants to the importance of the territory as a sentient and cognitive entity. Drawing on scientific as well as shamanic perspectives of engaging with the world, the project takes an ecocentric worldview. (Video Data Bank)