Forest Mind

Forest Mind film on the Night of Science

On The Night of Science, the video essay Forest Mind (2021) will be presented by the Swiss artist Ursula Biemann at Finnkino Maxim. Forest Mind will be shown twice during the evening, with a discussion about its themes between screenings. Speakers are associate professor Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen from the University of Helsinki and researcher Jussi Jylkkä from Åbo Akademi. The programme is curated by Paula Toppila, the executive director and curator of IHME Helsinki.

Set in the Amazon forests, Forest Mind explores the intelligence in nature from both shamanistic and scientific perspectives. Indigenous peoples’ knowledge is powerfully present in Forest Mind, since Biemann has been collaborating with the indigenous Inga community in Colombia for several years. Their traditional medics have long practiced the indigenous science of Ayahuasca, based on the visions evoked by this psychoactive plant. In the video essay these shamanistic practices are in dialogue with a western scientific perspective and modern sciences, such as plant neurobiology.

In the Inga communities of Colombia knowing not only occurs from a distance, by describing, naming and exploiting, but as an encounter between minds and worlds. While the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples has long developed in interaction with plants and the environment, understanding the interdependence of everything, in the 1950s, Western science discovered the DNA molecule as the common unit of life for all species. Art makes the connections between these approaches visible.

Finnkino Maxim

12.1.2023

18.00-21.00

Free entry