Walden

It begins in one forest and ends in another, with more than 9000 kilometers separating them, a line that stretches all the way from the Steiermark to the Amazon. There are many places in between: deserted stations at dusk, border checkpoints in the pouring rain, shimmering ports by night, a tennis court by a vast river. A tree has been cut down and turned into planks, which now make their way from Austria to Brazil, a journey which slyly inverts the usual direction in which raw materials flow. Each of the 13 shots is one step along the way, although the planks often recede behind all the other things passing before the frame, for the camera never stops revolving. Regardless of where it’s been placed, the camera moves at the same gliding pace and the circles it traces are big enough so that nothing reappears. The cycle may have been reversed, but the message is still the same: trade touches places and non-places alike, it is both visible and invisible, perceptible only in movements and traces; most trees that fall in the forest do so unseen. As Henry David Thoreau once put it, “all change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.” (James Lattimer)

In the presence of Daniel Zimmermann and members of the crew.