Aline Papenheim

The project began after the collapse of a monoculture forest behind the house where Papenheim grew up. As the forest is slowly recovering from decades of control, Papenheim found a reflection of their own search for belonging in the renewed diversity of the landscape that they had once left behind.  

Working in relational exchange with the predominantly Christian rural community, Papenheim stays with the tensions that emerge — tracing how systems of control, tradition, and belonging shape both land and identity. The regenerating forest reveals both the consequences of uniformity and the possibilities for renewal that emerge through difference in land as in society. 

 Through exchanges with hunters, local residents, and the more-than-human world, Papenheim queers tools associated with hunting and observation, including night-vision cameras, drones, flashlights, and microscopes. Papenheims uses their own body to reclaim the gaze and shape-shift between perspectives, inhabiting speculative positions such as hunter, deer, the Witches’ Rock, or seed. Moving through the landscape as a participant, witness, and subject, they explore different ways of sensing and relating. 

The work examines what might grow from collapse, how we might learn to listen regardless of difference, and what new relationships can emerge between people and more-than-human life, when we’re inspired by the land that holds us.