«Forest Law in times of Corona» – Ursula Biemann at BIM Online (Argentina)

In dialogue with the current context, the Biennial of Images in Motion (BIM), based in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina), held during its fifth edition a series of simultaneous activities on DISTANT, a digital platform that hosted a universe of small audiovisual artworks produced by artists, independent filmmakers, documentarists and photographers. With more than seventy participants from different continents, the online exhibition arranged a cultural agenda composed of artwork presentations, meetings with national and international artists and virtual debates in order to produce a present that wants to look to the future. 

Held between October 22 and 31, 2020, the curators Andrés Denegri and Gabriela Golder proposed to work with the multiple reflections that surround the theme “Mirarnos a los ojos (volver a)”, a curatorial axis that turned its attention to the period of social confinement. In order to collaborate with the creation of artistic documents about this historical period, BIM Online 2020 has compiled videos, notes on paper, sketches, dialogues, comments, among other expressive forms that create possible translations of a social landscape during a time intimacy prevails. 

With the support of the COINCIDENCIA program, Swiss artist Ursula Biemann (Zurich, 1955) presented «Forest Law in times of Corona», an audiovisual work that investigates the consequences of mining and oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a region with one of the greatest biodiversity and mineral wealth on Earth. Placing us in the heart of the forest, Biemann creates dialogues between the audience and the forest to remind us of the importance of this and other ecosystems in the maintenance of human life.