At the kitchen table with Ursula Biemann

The artist welcomes me into her flat in the heart of Zurich, where she lives with her playful Vizsla, Caramel. Her work spans several continents. For around 30 years, her camera has drawn her to places where worlds collide: the Arctic, the US-Mexican border, or the mining areas of the Amazon. Sitting at the kitchen table, we talk about her art, quantum physics and ayahuasca.

She is known for her documentary video art and multimedia installations. For Biemann, art always has political and social implications. From the outset, she sought dialogue with theoretical and philosophical positions: “When I left art school in the late 1980s, globalisation was booming. I wanted to find out what kind of new world order was emerging. And what happens to people in the process?” In her early works, she focused heavily on issues of migration, borders and power structures. But over time, her perspective shifted.

Simply taking a critical view was no longer enough for her: “At some point, you realise that it doesn’t actually change anything,” says Biemann. This became particularly clear to her when it came to the climate. She consciously turned to a care-based approach. Today, she is interested in developing concrete relationships and forms of care. Often on a small scale, but with a real impact. Most recently in the co-creative process ‘devenir universidad’. In this, she supported the Inga community in the Amazon in setting up an indigenous university.

The university is a direct result of her video work Forest Mind, which is currently on display at the Museum der Gestaltung. For the artist, the film centres on an understanding of a living, cognitive nature: “Nature is an intelligence. And we as humans can interact with this intelligence.” For the work, she collaborated closely with the Inga community and ETH Zurich. In doing so, she brought different forms of knowledge into dialogue.

Whilst modern Western science predominantly examines nature in mechanistic terms, indigenous peoples experience a living, spirited natural world. The artist describes knowledge among the Inga as an interactive form, “as there is no such distance from the object. This has many consequences for the way knowledge is produced.” It arises not primarily through facts and figures, but through direct experience and a lived relationship with the forest. Perception and the forest are inseparable in this context.

In her research for *Forest Mind*, Biemann immersed herself in this practice. “In fieldwork, you have to use all your senses, not just the camera.” Observation is always a creative process too: “When you consciously use all your senses, you create a new reality.” This led her to discover a parallel between indigenous and Western research. The latter shows that DNA emits extremely weak light pulses. These so-called biophotons are a quantum-physical property of the molecule. “Part of it is actually vision,” she explains, “during one of these ayahuasca sessions, I saw all these delicate insects glowing.”

She describes DNA technology as the Western approach to understanding the all-encompassing interconnectedness of life. At the same time, indigenous knowledge traditions have long spoken of a life essence that connects all forms of life. Back in Zurich, a team at ETH Zurich translated a tree seed and an image and sound recording from the Amazon into a DNA sequence. Once again, reality and the representation of the forest intertwine.

She does not wish to lecture through her art: “I now believe that a work of art does not make an impact by expressing an opinion and trying to convince others of it.” Instead, she sees her films as catalysts. Images and narratives appeal to the collective imagination. For Biemann, art can thus make new realities conceivable: “Injecting something inspiring into this process is what I can do.”

Her new project Dialogues with the Future also addresses similar questions: “The split between rational thinking and spiritual dimensions ultimately leads back to the Enlightenment,” she says. In her docudrama, she explores how ideas from indigenous cosmologies have helped shape the Western Enlightenment and democratic ideals.

Finally, I am curious to know which question is currently occupying her mind the most. She pauses briefly and refers to the flood of negative headlines and news stories in recent months: “I am trying to understand which chasms are becoming visible and how they are leading to the necessity for old structures to disappear.” For many years, Ursula Biemann’s video art has been exploring new perspectives – on landscapes, ecosystems and our relationship with the environment – through moments of rupture.