Vital materiality in the art film series A tree doesn’t fall far from the mountain

english

2026

volume 14, issue 1

A tree doesn’t fall far from the mountain   more-than-human ecologies   new materialism   performative filmmaking   posthumanism   relational art   vital materiality

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

This paper examines Jatun Risba and Franco G. Livera’s four-act art film series A Tree Doesn’t Fall Far From the Mountain (2022–2023) and its associated transdisciplinary Live Art screening events, Poetics of Relation, to explore how performance-based methodologies can reshape the aesthetics, formats and materiality of film production and representation. As the project’s author, co-director and performer, Risba investigates how immersive, unpredictable and tactile encounters with more-than-human entanglements during the filmmaking process – undertaken without scripts, production crews or budgets – can generate instinctive, ad hoc configurations of subjectivity that re-enchant both the creative work and the world it engages. This approach offers a potent, transformative remedy to the limited foresight characteristic of the current Anthropocene (Capitalocene) era. Filmed across different seasons within the same natural reserve, the films capture the biosphere’s circular rhythms and transformations. This approach underscores the significance of embodied, place-based knowledge and highlights the interdependence between human and nonhuman agents as they navigate the ever-changing tapestry of life. By integrating Édouard Glissant’s concept of Relation, the project fosters emergent, rhizomatic communities that embrace multiplicity and opacity, challenging dominant narratives and enabling novel modes of cocreation and coexistence. Contributing to discourses on new materialism, eco-aesthetics and relational art, the author argues that performative, collaborative approaches can cultivate ecological awareness and foster more inclusive, participatory and decentralised forms of art production, community engagement and collective world-making.

31.08.2026