The Teufelssee (“devil’s lake”) is a Himmelsteich (heaven pond). That means is has no connection to any river. It is of glacial origin: formed by a chunk of ice being deposited. Today, it exists only because humans continuously pump masses of fresh water into it every day. White marker buoys on the lake indicate that half of the Teufelssee is a protected “nature reserve”, including a swamp that is being kept alive through the artificial water body of the lake. The other half is a popular destination for Berliners to enjoy nature themselves – and a traditional spot to celebrate east-German FKK nude culture.

WHAT IS A PINE TREE? attentively revisits the post-natural site again and again over the span of a full year to portray it as horizontal as possible. Scenes of bathers, animals, insects, leafs and waves intersect each other through the seasons, forming a non-hierarchical, kaleidoscopic portrait of the place. Yet slowly, the film becomes something else: less a film about a site, but a meditation about the conditions of its perception; about our rationalistic concepts of nature, and an attempt of overcoming them.

WHAT IS A PINE TREE? follows a long theoretical contemplation through my philosophical scholarship. In a sense, its method of observation precedes its content. In what follows, I would like to briefly introduce some essential ideas that inspire the film.

Western Enlightenment attempted to explain the world conclusively through rational and logical principles: through reason. The late-capitalist world today makes apparent that this focus had drastic consequences: The diametrical dualism of reason and body, and through it the separation of human and nature, permeates our society to this day. It was phenomenology that first attempted, in the West, a fundamental critique of the linguistic and rationalistic separation of things — placing phenomenological evidence, and with it aesthetic observation, at the center of its theory of truth.

In the practice of filmmaking itself, I want to show show how sensitive, embodied, and aesthetic perception of the environment is not only a conceptual, but also a practical correction and supplement to contemporary ethics. Living in harmony with our environment and this planet requires the felt-evidence of some kind of essential belonging. It is not enough, in seeking ways out of the crisis, to point toward industrial AI revolutions or technological progress: what is required, far more fundamentally, is the sensitisation of one's own perception and a radical awareness of the relationality of all being, including ones own. Such aesthetic observation seems to me such an urgent ethical practice, that I currently develop it academically under the title of “Ecosensibility as an Aesthetic Practice” in my doctoral PhD research in Hong Kong.

WHAT IS A PINE TREE? is therefore applied philosophy and phenomenological art practice – an attempt of self-sensitisation, a practice of ecosensibility with the vague hope to inspire this curiosity to re-examine our everyday environments in the viewer as well.

The Teufelssee is the ideal site for this investigation, as it represents, aesthetically, an absolute ordinariness – yet, upon closer inspection, offers a vast amount of overlapping layers of human and non-human stories. It was important to me to create a film that is not linear. In choosing a year as the framework of the observation, I attempted to make it circular instead – undermining the idea of teleological progress and growth, which usually ignores the idea of decay and death. Through the kaleidoscopic montage, I aim to provoke an absurdity: Absurd, how a person hacks a hole in the ice, stepping nakedly into the cold. Absurd, how mosquitos walk on water as if it’s a solid ground. In existentialism, the moment of absurdity can evoke a glimpse of the real – I believe that to be true.

By radically reducing the film crew to only myself and with choosing a very local subject, it becomes possible to return to the location more than 30 times — in snow and storms just as at 4am for sun rises on hot summer days. Through the repeated observation over the span of a full year, it becomes possible to portray the incomprehensible singularity. And, as I believe, it it this singularity that makes it possible to catch a glimpse of the universal.

Director: Jendrik Schröder (De)

Cinematographer: Jendrik Schröder (De)
Score: Jendrik Schröder (De)

Length: 29min 30sec

Format: 4K DCI, 5.1 

Genre: Post-Nature Essay Documentary 

Country of Production: Germany

Language: English, German
Subtitles: English, German

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