Grá Film Screening | Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020 at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre

Event Details

Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree, 2020.

HD digital film, 12 mins.

Saturday 23 August from 10.00am to 3.30pm.

This film contemplates the centrality of these giants of nature to the planet’s survival, and ours. Trees provide us with the very air we breathe. It is a glimpse into a future world where human beings have evolved and adapted in order to survive. Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The Heart of a Tree is a timely metaphor of a world turned upside down by our disregard for nature and the planet. It  is shot in a barren treeless landscape, which could either be a future vision of earth or another planet. The inhabitants negotiate their way though this inhospitable environment, harvesting air, the new gold. They plant trees on a deserted black beach, hoping to repopulate the planet with its source of oxygen.

Langan’s film is a glimpse into a future world where human beings have evolved and adapted in order to survive, exploring the disconnection between humankind and nature and ultimately within us.

Clare Langan (Dublin, 1967) is a significant Irish artist working within an international context. Her filmic work is often made in inhospitable locations and has been shown across the world, including at MoMA, Lyon Biennale, and Liverpool Biennial. She studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and with a Fulbright Scholarship, completed a film course at NYU. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from The National University of Ireland and in 2019 she became a member of Aosdána