In Light of Plants

Application summary

In Light of Plants will collaboratively conduct research and create artwork that engages with historic and current ecological devastation to forests. We will share and develop strategies for diagnosis, remediation, and healing with and in distinctive forest ecologies. What can art do in response to continual capitalist damage to our ecosystems? How can we work against planetary devastation and the precarity of local lands? In Light of Plants will engage with how local territories are specifically ravaged by capitalistic intrusion, industrial occupancy, ongoing extraction, and community displacement. Our work will examine the connections between violent extractivist practices within forests and their impact on biodiversity, human health, and well-being in different regions: Metsähallitus | Finland, Berlin/Brandenburg | Germany, Sicily | Italy, Sussex | UK. We will research and compare techniques and approaches for repairing contaminated and obliterated terrains. We will work with regeneration projects to imagine and evolve resilient, post-capitalist approaches to living in dense, diverse populations. We will expand the understanding of forests as sources of knowledge and culture, self-sustaining and regenerative ecologies that humans rely on.