Forests are increasingly contested landscapes, conceived of by different transnational populations as habitats, timber stocks, sacred spaces, botanical resources, or carbon sinks. This screening brings together three artist films that explore postcolonial, speculative and scientific understandings of forests. Journeying between Colombia, Germany, and Indonesia, we hear from the diverse communities inhabiting, investing in, clearing, and studying forests.

Ursula Biemann’s Forest Mind folds together shamanic and genetic understandings of forests, articulating a conception of nature’s intelligence in which the animist and the mechanistic can coexist.

Stephen Cornford and Theo Stanley’s Occlusion looks at the use of terrestrial laser scanning in contemporary forest ecology, asking what the consequences of changing systems of forestry measurement and valuation will be.

Riar Rizaldi’s Tellurian Drama weaves together a postcolonial pseudo-science in which the broadcast legacies of Dutch colonial radio stations are used to sequester carbon in their surroundings.

There will be a Q & A with Stephen Cornford & Theo Stanley after the screening.