Fragmented Forest

2012, 1-screen silent projection, DV, 15:22 min, China

The film is part of my research on the "exotic (landscape)" and botanical gardens in the Southern hemisphere. It was made in Xishuangbanna in Southeast China on the border to Laos and Mynarmar where I met a "fragmented forest".
Fragmented forest describes here a former rainforest that is cut down in a manner that leaves behind small, isolated patches of forest. These small "islands" become sites for ecological research on biodiversity, they become park for leisure, or they become rubber tree plantations.
Within one fragmented forest I found a tree that was worshiped by the inhabitants and the visitors (plantation workers, farmers, lumberjacks, cleaners, tourists, ecologists) alike.
Testing a "speculative camera", it stays unclear what is at issue: the plants, the light, the shadow and the plastic pieces of the worshiped tree become inseparabel. Every image becomes a thing and the things become images. The length of each image/thing plays with the concrete duration and the abstract time of the montage.

credits:
idea/camera and montage: Elke Marhöfer sound: Olaf Hochherz
many thanks to: Zhou Hongxiang, and Zhang Li