Forêt d'expérimentation 2012

Directed by Michaela Grill

The experimental forest, the name of a place, a title, and a statement of intent. The first step into this forest is represented as a black-and-white silhouette, branches against a background of clouds moving rapidly across the sky, with a modulating soundtrack that records and further develops nature’s sounds. A picture, whose aesthetic excess takes up well-known references to landscape paintings and photography, as well as genre cinema. But as soon as one penetrates deeper into the forest, the visual and tonal register changes, the view moves ever closer to the landscape’s pre-civilizational elements; vegetation, water, and wildlife. Attention urns to details, rhythm; to subtle and also surprising changes and movements. Nature’s enigmatic aspect moves to the forefront and the viewer is captivated by formal beauty, by pictures, which must first be decoded in their visual alienation and play of various size relations.