Gifts from the Sentient Forest
Communication & Collaboration Between People & Trees in Northern Finland

My current practice includes creating the podcast 'Talking with Trees', which I described technically during the last retreat organised by the project Gifts from the Sentient Forest in September 2025. But why talk with trees in the first place? After posing and practicing with trees for a video camera in various ways I began writing letters to trees next to the trees, addressing the trees in writing, letting them influence my thoughts in that way. To talk to the trees directly was a step towards performance art, the live moment of creating something that cannot be undone or adjusted afterwards, because the conversation takes place in real time.

 

My main concern has been how to develop ways of recognising and engaging with the subjectivity of life forms such as trees, which we tend to consider as wholly ‘other’. How to develop acts of thinking, reflecting, pondering, or speaking with trees, next to them or in some form of collaboration with them. I did not use the idea of sentience but took it somehow as a given. All living beings must be sentient to be able to respond to and thrive in their circumstances. During the retreats, I realised that sentience could mean different things to different people and in different cultures.

 

An example of a video (not a podcast episode, though) discussing sentience with a juniper made during the retreat is here: www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3310043/3849752

Here is an abbreviated version of the improvised talk:

Hello juniper, good day to you. I come to you this rainy September Saturday to greet you and to wish you well and to talk with you about sentience. We were discussing the idea of sentience last night with a group of people who participate in a project called Gifts from the Sentient Forest and of course one obvious gift from the forest traditionally considered such is your berries and all the other berries of the forest. But I'm not so concerned about the idea of gift now, so I don't expect other gifts from you except the gift of listening to me and thank you for that, but I'm interested in this idea of sentience. And while speaking, I realise that I'm all the time trying to remove the small mosquitoes from my face so they wouldn't settle down and suck my blood because that causes me pain. And of course, pain is sort of the ultimate sentience. I realised last night that for me sentience is something very practical, something that we all living beings need to be able to relate to our environment and to move towards that which is good for us and nourishing and helpful and away from that which is harmful or painful or useless. And your situation is very special because you can't move away from things or move towards things except slowly. Of course, you can move towards light as all plants do. But still, sentience is even more important for you because you must adapt so totally to the place where you're growing. Sentience could be thought of as emotional or spiritual or even otherworldly capacities, but I've always thought of sentience as something that is common to us, that we all share, all living beings, whether animals or plants or microbes or fungi and all kinds of bacteria or archaea, because it's a characteristic of life to choose. And to be able to choose you must have some sentience, you must be sensitive and to be able to distinguish what you like and what you don't like. And I don’t like these mosquitoes. But they’re using their sentience to gather around me because I'm their party, their real feast for today. Of course, sentience alone will not take us so very far, we need experience to make decisions based on our sentience, and some kind of intelligence. I think intelligence is somehow related to sentience although we tend to think that sentience has more to do with sensing and feeling and emotions. But intelligence also needs sentience, because how can you make distinctions without that. So, you've been intelligent enough to create a way of living that doesn't feel disturbed by these mosquitoes, so that's very intelligent of you. /--/ I really would love to breathe in the scent of your needles and the refreshing oxygen you produce, with your volatile chemicals spicing it up, but I just can't take it. My sentience makes me suffer from these mosquitoes, so I will have to leave you. But I really hope you will enjoy the rest of the autumn season and wish you all the best. Thank you for your patience with me today. Take care.

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All images on this page are copyright of the artist Annette Arlander

Top: 'Midnight to Midnight With a Pine at Äkäslompolo 2' (2024) (video. 24 min 20 sec.)

Bottom: 'Kirje Äkäslompolon männylle – Letter to the Pine at Äkäslompolo' (2024). (video. 24 min 20 sec.)