The video series Tala om det för tallen (Tell It to the Pine), by Annette Arlander, on display at Hippolyte Studio, consists of seven conversations with a pine tree growing on the western shore of Örö. The conversations took place in 2021 and were recorded as they happened as a kind of performance. In November 2023, the artist returned to the tree and recorded an eighth conversation, Tala om det för tallen igen (Tell It to the Pine Again), serving as a sort of epilogue. Each conversation is also a standalone piece that can be viewed and listened to separately.
Arlander has explored various ways of engaging with trees and performing alongside them, such as writing letters to them. The conversations with the pine tree on Örö’s shoreline represent her first attempts at speaking to trees and recording those conversations while simultaneously filming the event. The works are shot with the same framing in each part, creating a rough, year-long time-lapse video that resembles a photographic series more than a film. These conversations are part of the artistic research project Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees (2020–2021), which explores how we might rethink our relationship with other life forms. The artist considers this question one of contemporary art’s central themes.
These conversations with the pine trees on Örö’s shores served as a starting point for Arlander’s ongoing project Pondering with Pines (2022–2024). The discussions from this project can be listened to as podcast episodes on SoundCloud: Talking with Trees – Puhetta puille – Talar med träd.
Annette Arlander (b. 1956, Helsinki) is an artist, researcher and a pedagogue who lives and works in Helsinki. Performing landscape is the overall theme for Arlander’s artistic practice, which is recently focused on vegetation, especially trees. Her work often involves site-specific work, performances for camera, recorded speech, video installations, and various experiments concerning the environment, and which takes place in the border zone between performance art, media art, and environmental art. She graduated from the department of directing at the Theatre Academy in 1981 and with Doctor of Arts (Theatre and Drama) in 1999. Arlander was awarded the AVEK, Media Art Prize 2014 and State Prize for Multidisciplinary art 2018. annettearlander.com
The artist’s work has been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike), Uniarts Helsinki Research Institute, and Öres ry.
More information:
Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees (2020-2021).
Pondering with Pines (2022-2024).
Annette Arlander
Tala om det för tallen
1.–24.11.2024
Hippolyte Studio
image: Annette Arlander, Tala om det för tallen, 8, 2023