Sustainability Talks

Perspectives on the Human-Earth Relationship

Wednesday, January 21 2026, 18:30 (6.30 PM)

Nielsen Auditorium

In the last 12 years, environmental concerns and our relationship to the Earth have moved to center stage. Biemann's artistic practice takes a systemic approach to environmental conditions by connecting a theoretical and planetary macro level with the micropolitics on the ground. 

Discussing her artistic practice in a first part of the lecture in such projects as Deep Weather on atmospheric chemistry linking extreme parts of the world (2013), Acoustic Ocean on inter-species communication (2018) and Forest Law on the rights of nature and indigenous cosmology (2014), she raises questions regarding the entanglement of aesthetics, ecology and geopolitics to narrate a changing planetary reality.

The last part of the lecture will cover her most recent projects and video works in Colombia (2018-2023) where her focus has shifted to the role of the mind in experiencing the world, i.e. the interaction between mind, body and the environment. Forest Mind (2022) is a video work that emerges from a long-term collaboration with the Indigenous Inga people in the south of Colombia. The video unites diverse strands of knowledge on the metaphysics of plants and plant-human relationships. The co-operation with the Inga involves the creation of a biocultural Indigenous University (or pluriversity) in the Andean Amazon where the territory is conceived as a vocal, cognitive and minded entity. 

Speaker: Ursula Biemann, Artist, Curator, Theorist

Learn more about Ursula Biemann

Ursula Biemann is an artist, author, and video essayist. Her artistic practice is strongly research-oriented and involves fieldwork in remote locations from Greenland to Amazonia, where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil, ice, forests and water. In her multi-layered videos, the artist interweaves vast cinematic landscapes with documentary footage, SF poetry and academic findings to narrate a changing planetary reality. Biemann’s pluralistic practice spans a range of media including experimental video, interview, text, performance, photography, cartography, props and materials, which converge in formalized spatial installations. Her work also adopts the form of publications, lectures, and curatorial as well as collaborative research projects.