We’re in a mountainous forest dense with growth, where soaring conifers lean, swing wildly and then crash to earth, as if in a choreographed routine. As the trees fall, they smash through the branches of their smaller neighbours, sending out shockwaves as they hit the ground. Sometimes, you spot tiny human figures, part of the team orchestrating the trees’ fall. They look comically small.
This is Cull, a five-screen work by Uta Kögelsberger, and the conifers are giant sequoias, some more than 2,000 years old and tall as a 25-storey building. After being scorched in a devastating California wildfire, these trees are now considered hazardous to homes, roads and powerlines. We watch five come down, one at a time, then the screens refresh and the felling starts again, with another five trees. It’s like a disaster movie made up of nothing but disasters.
