© Uta Kögelsberger

Uta Kögelsberger’s solo exhibition Forest Complex brings together a new multifaceted body of photographic, video, and sound works that observe the complex societal, political, and ecological entanglements surrounding the pressures Alpine forests have come under in the wake of the climate emergency. The works in this exhibition delve into the multiple ways in which humanity is responding to the climate emergency.

The 3-channel video installation Clearance follows the Sisyphean task of clearing up after the devastation caused by human-made climate-change related storms and the subsequent threat of bark beetle infestations. In contrast the single channel video Ne me Quitte Pas hints at the complexity surrounding the acceptance that we have reached a tipping point. This work is a playful interpretation of claims that music can improve a plant’s immune system. The work acts as a metaphor for the at once remarkably optimistic and desperately fraught attempt at changing our futures by singing the forests back to health. These works are set against the video portraits of people affected by the loss of forests; be it through severe impacts on their economic circumstances; their habitations that are now left exposed to avalanche and mudslide risks; or the risks they face in the life threatening clear up processes.

The 35 mm slide show installation Roots is both archive and document of the process of nature reclaiming the damaged environment in the aftermath of storm Vaia. The video work Woodworks follows the large quantities of storm and bark beetle damaged wood as it is being turned into a marketable product in one of the largest woodyards of Europe. In contrast the photographic series Some kind of Love documents trees that have entered into mutual relationships with one another above ground, hinting at the infinitely complex web of relations that supports them below the surface.

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