Ursula Biemann, Forest Law (2014) and Acoustic Ocean (2018).

At the heart of Forest Law is a series of landmark legal cases that bring the forest to court and plead for the rights of nature. One particularly paradigmatic trial that has recently been won by the indigenous people of Sarayuku based on their cosmology of the living forest. The project draws from research carried out by the artist and Brazilian architect Paulo Tavares in the oil-and-mining frontier in the Ecuadorian Amazon— one of the most biodiverse and mineral-rich regions on Earth, currently under pressure from the dramatic expansion of large-scale extraction activities.

Located on the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway, Acoustic Ocean sets out to explore the sonic ecology of marine life. The scientist as an explorer and important mediator of the contemporary understanding of our planetary ecosystems is a central figure in this video. She makes her appearance in the person of a Sami biologist-diver (indigenous of northern Scandinavia) who deploys all sorts of hydrophones, parabolic mics and recording devices to sense the submarine space for acoustic and other biological forms of expression.