April Lin 林森
10 min mins
In collaboration with ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, artist-filmmaker April Lin presents ‘TR333’, a speculative documentary which imagines a new species of tree based on scientific literature on plants and climate hardiness. Their hybrid forms and body parts are a patchwork amalgamation of different tree types, this tree is a climate adaptive response, a lifeform born out of resilience and hope. As the spirit inhabiting the tree emerges to converse with the viewer, they share with us their experiences of ecocidal generational trauma, urging us to reflect around the ways all the beings on the planet are deeply interlinked, and to honour our collective responsibility towards one another. Using a blend of 3D animation, found footage, and a musical score based on data sonification, ‘Rainforest Canopy’ uses the speculative to recast the ecological crisis, asking ‘Why is this important?’ from a multispecies and affective gaze.
April Lin is an artist-filmmaker investigating image-making as a site for the construction, sustenance, and dissemination of co-existent yet conflicting truths. They dream & explore & critique & fret & catastrophise & imagine & play with the potentials that the moving image holds — for a collective remembering of forgotten pasts, for a critical examination of normalised presents, and for a visualising of freer futures as, of course, imagined from the periphery.