Agnes Meyer-Brandis: As Trees Go By

Videostill from Agnes Meyer-Brandis, As Trees Go By, 2025, 04:38 min., video, colour, sound. Courtesy of the artist / 2025, VG Bild-Kunst

The moors are drying out, allowing trees to migrate into them. Since 2016, the Office for Tree Migration (OTM) has been studying the migration of trees and plants in different climate zones and along tree lines. How they migrate north, how they climb uphill in California's White Mountains, or how they enter the moors. In this short video, we see OTM agent Sloan at work – whose core task is to observe slow or minimal changes using various real-time analysis programs – at the OTM centre in Hyytiälä, Finland. Observing migrating trees can be tedious and even boring, so Agent Sloan has started singing. The time-lapse images come from the camera system installed by OTM in the Siikaneva bog, which has been recording there since 2021. The monochrome images correspond to the average vegetation colour of each synchronous camera image. The colours provide valuable scientifically based information on photosynthesis.

Background:

OTM is a long-term research and art project by Agnes Meyer-Brandis and the Institute for Art and Subjective Science FFUR. Climate change is progressing faster than trees can adapt or migrate to more suitable areas. Therefore, the OTM investigates possible or impossible methods to help trees migrate faster to escape deadly changes.  The OTM temporarily appears as an observation station or control room for migrating trees at various tree lines, climate and transition zones: e.g. in 2016 in a forest clearing in Blokhus, Denmark; in 2017 in biotechnical research laboratories at the Max Planck Institute in Potsdam-Golm and the University of Groningen, Netherlands; and in 2019 in the hills of Marine Headlands in California. Since 2024, an OTM has been permanently located at the forest research station in Hyytiälä, Finland – a public, accessible installation as part of the Periferia collection and exhibition. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the many OTM agents who help with the long-term and challenging observation of migratory trees, whether it be setting up and maintaining weatherproof camera and monitoring systems in the moor (OTM agents H. Laakso, T. Pohja), IT support (K. Pouttu), data management and evaluation (C. Dietz, Z. Kuglaz and S. Lupfer), measurement campaigns and assisted migration trials (U. Taipale), regular mobilisation of roots, trunks and leaves/gymnastics for trees (OTM agent E. Sloan), the Hyytälä Forest Research Station and many other OTM supporters, see website: www.ffur.de/otm

Agnes Meyer-Brandis

Agnes Meyer-Brandis is a Berlin based artist with a background in sculpture and new media. She creates works on the fringes of science, fiction and fabulation. Educated first in mineralogy, followed by studies at the art academies in Maastricht, Düsseldorf and Cologne, she has founded the Research Raft, a fictitious Institute for Art & Subjective Science that purposefully ‘is asking questions but gives no answers’ in fields such as climate research, environmental studies, meteorology, as well as synthetic and artistic biology. Meyer-Brandis’ work has been exhibited worldwide and awarded with many prizes, including two Prix Ars Electronica Awards of Distinction & the European Kairos prize. For a more detailed description of her work, please go to her homepage: www.ffur.de or onetreeid.de

Current solo show:

As Trees Go By - Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Serlachius Museum Mänttä, FI, 12 April 2025 - 19 April 2026
https://www.onetreeid.de/astreesgoby