Becoming a forest

The film: Definition of Forest

Definition of Forest (2024) is an experimental short film, based on physicist and philosopher Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism. As a researcher as well as the screenwriter and director of the film, I have applied Barad’s theoretical thinking to the Finnish forest ecosystem, imagining how it could be translated into sounds, images and narration. The film was made with a crew of about 20 people.

Barad’s agential realism eschews viewing reality and agency through the actions of an individual subject. Drawing on quantum physics, Barad argues that things, objects and subjects do not have pre-defined boundaries or features, but they emerge in relations to others. Instead of understanding reality as something that precedes representations such as film, agential realism introduces an idea of perpetual becoming in which chance and non-human agency play an active role.

The short film presents the forest by focusing on the material–discursive practices and processes that shape our ideas of it. Our corporeal entanglement with the forest is performed through the organic movement of a dancer. Traditional storytelling that focuses on a (human) protagonist is avoided by an ecocentric framing of the images, slowing down human movement and avoiding facial close-ups or a sense of a linear journey. Usually silent biological phenomena such as decay, growth or photosynthesis are narrated with an imaginary soundscape.

Definition of Forest connects to a reality that is fragmentary, relational, and exploratory of the yet uncertain or unknown. Rather than recording and representing reality, the film relies on becoming: reality is what happens in the processes of planning, filming, screening and sharing a film.

Film crew (e.g.)

Elina Valtonen – dancer
Favela Vera Ortiz – choreographer
Heta-Maria Pyhäjärvi – sound designer
Heini Mäntylä – cinematographer
Elizabeth Aaltonen – editor
Kristiina Koskinen – screenwriter/ director / producer

The research project: Becoming a forest

The short film Definition of Forest is a part of my post-doctoral research, titled Becoming a forest (2023–2025). Together they seek a new understanding of the forest through artistic research and environmental humanities. Both the film and the research are funded by Kone Foundation.

Our ideas about nature, ingrained in our agency, influence how we perceive natural environments. Through new materialistic and documentary film theories this research project generates knowledge about how a short documentary film can both witness, reimagine and discuss ideas of nature. It explores the intertwined phenomena of the concept of the forest, its material existence and the audiovisual narration presenting it. The three main research questions are:

1. How to understand the forest as active materiality through Karen Barad’s agential realism?

2. What kind of knowledge can screenwriting and filmmaking produce as a research method?

3. How can this kind of re-imagining and re-writing contribute to the debates and conflicts about forests?

The aim of the research is to produce knowledge and to contribute to the discussions on forests from an unconventional perspective. Behind polarised opinions, there are affects and emotions, stories, memories, and ways of thinking that are rarely brought into the discussion alongside situational or scientific knowledge. These phenomena do not disappear by excluding them from research. The concept of the forest encompasses more than any one study can capture, but the most misleading assumption is believing that it means the same to all of us.

Who am I?

I am Kristiina Koskinen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Arts and Design in the University of Lapland. My main focus is audiovisual narration related to nature and particularly forests. Theoretically, I situate my research within the realms of posthumanism, ecocritical film studies, and documentary film studies. Originally, my background is in media studies and forest science. Prior to my research, I worked in documentary television programmes for about ten years.

Related publications

Koskinen, Kristiina (2024). Muuttuvan metsän ajallisuudesta. Hyväksytty julkaisuun: Vuosilusto nro 15/2024.

Koskinen, Kristiina (2023). Rakkaudesta nilviäiseen. Lähikuva, 36(2), 60–66.

Koskinen, Kristiina (2022). Läpinäkyvä luontokäsitys: ekokriittisen elokuvatutkimuksen näkökulmia luontodokumenttien kerrontaan. [Väitöskirja, Taiteiden tiedekunta]. Lapin yliopisto.

Koskinen, Kristiina (2020). Antroposkenen ekosysteemi: Pohjoinen metsä villin luonnon näyttämönä. Lähikuva, (2), 25–41.

Main image: Press photo for the film Definition of forest