What stories do trees tell each other? How do termites celebrate a feast? What does the passenger pigeon say to its extinctors? In the midst of the ongoing climate crisis and across anthropocene discourses, contemporary art has been looking for new ways to tell the tales of our planet as a complex, interconnected, multiple being, where humans are just one species among many, but also to revisit historical narratives that continue to shape our worldviews. By means of speculative narration, artists conjure natural deities, rework premodern ontologies, and reactivate suppressed or forgotten ways of knowing. Digital media, in this context, becomes a tool for storytelling that exceeds linear time — interweaving past, present, and possible futures. Can we create new myths for these troubled and troubling times?

Trees and Termites, Ghosts and Goddesses | Digital Mythologies for Troubled Times brings together five video works that explore these questions through interspecies relations, speculative narratives, and forms of more-than-human storytelling. The videos showcase a carrier bag of speculative fiction, opening discussions about media arts’ capacity to create new tales in the echo chambers of our time, inviting audiences into a shared space of imagination, reflection, and communal tale-telling.

Screening schedule:
AFSAR x DAVRA, “Proxy Conference: In Forest“ (2023), 35 mins
Zhang Xu Zhan, “Termite Feeding Show” (2025), 15 mins
Hua Wang, “Through the Eyes of Trees” (2025), 6 mins
Wendi Yan, “Dream of Walnut Palaces” (2025), 10 mins
Anan Fries, “R.I.P. – Redemption“ (2024), 10 mins