PERENNIAL LAND - The Data Forest, 2024
Immersive Cinematic Art Installation
Conceived, filmed, and directed by Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger
Original Music Composition: Nana Simopoulos
Interactive Technology: Jianhao Ma
Editing, visual effects, and projection mapping by Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger
Additional Visual Effects: Caryn Heilman
Sound Mixing: Ander Agudo
United Nations COP 16, Colombia
WRI, Washington DC
Tree Hours, Amsterdam, NL
Video Mapping Festival, Lille, FR
Hall of Fame Gallery, Bronx, NY
JC Theater Center, NJ
"Perennial Land" is an experiential installation focused on Climate Justice that immerses us into the beauty of Earth's landscapes and awakens us to the importance of data-driven insights into our impact on nature.
"Perennial Land - The Data Forest" is an immersive interactive installation that explores the complex relationship between nature, culture, and environmental justice, combining visual poetry, cutting-edge technology, and data-driven storytelling.
"Perennial Land" is an experiential installation that combines the beauty of various forest environments with the importance of data-driven insights into a human's impact on nature. Stepping into a space transformed into a multi-climate forest, tech and tools about resources and equity are seamlessly integrated into the environment like trees. We want to push aside the modern habit of thinking of nature–culture divide, decolonize technology and highlight the ways landscape contributes to social, political and psychic ideas of space. The vulnerability of the environment is directly related to that of certain communities.
Nature does not need us. We need nature.
"Perennial Land – The Data Forest" is a two-part installation that explores the complex relationship between nature, culture, and environmental justice. Combining visual poetry, cutting-edge technology, and data-driven storytelling, the piece creates an immersive experience that invites audiences to reflect on their role in addressing climate change. The installation is composed of two interconnected elements. The first is an immersive film experience focused on care and climate justice, data, empathy, and nature, guiding viewers through a visual journey that highlights the urgency of environmental issues. The second element is an interactive video installation set within a gesture-responsive, dynamic landscape, encouraging audiences to explore their connection with nature and their agency in tackling climate challenges. The immersive interactive installation also incorporates cultural narratives and economic systems, simulating actions that drive change and exploring how landscapes shape social, political, and psychological ideas of space, while imagining potential futures.
Perennial Land – The Data Forest has been presented at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C.; Jersey City Theater Center in Jersey City, NJ; the Hall of Fame Art Gallery at Bronx Community College in New York, NY; COP16 – United Nations Conference on Biodiversity in Cali, Colombia; Treehouse NDSM Art Park II: Voice of Nature in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and IBSIC – Image Beyond the Screen International Conference, Video Mapping Festival in Lille, France.
This exhibition is made possible by the contribution of GCA Accountability Accelerator - Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Program Grant Awards provided by the Jersey City Arts Council and the Jersey City Arts & Culture Trust Fund, and Jersey City Theater Center.
PERENNIAL LAND - THE DATA FOREST - IMMERSIVE INSTALLATION
PERENNIAL LAND - THE DATA FOREST - INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION
Pictures from Immersive & Interactive Installation, Jersey City Theater Center - April 2025
VENUES
IMMERSIVE
World Resources Institute, Washington DC - Jun 2025
Jersey City Theater Center, NJ - Apr 2025
Video Mapping Festival, Lille, FR, Apr 2025
United Nations Biodiversity Summit, Cali, CO - Oct 2024
TreeHouse NDSM, Amsterdam, NL - Sept-Oct 2024
Hall of Fame Gallery, CUNY-BCC, NY - Mar-May 2024
INTERACTIVE
Jersey City Theater Center - April 3-10, 2025
WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON DC
Perennial Land immersive installation was presented at WRI Washington DC. Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger participated to the two panel discussions moderated by Andrew Marshall from WRI:
"Art and Nature" together with Randy Preston, artist in residence at the Restoration program; and Danielle Baussan of the Aspen Institute Arts Program
"Art, Climate and Data" together with Billy Friebele (working with digital, kinetic, and sculptural forms) and Amy Reid (producer, sound and visual artist)
WRI is a global research organization working to improve people's lives, protect nature and halt climate change.
"Thank you so much for bringing connection, beauty, and a shift in thinking to WRI. Your installation is wonderful and I think it was clear how much it meant to many people. It was a great success. Thanks for being in the panel discussions, how mind-opening this was for many colleagues - this is a new area for us and for many of them, this stimulated new thoughts about the work they do and how to express it. For many others, it brings together something they care deeply about - art, creativity - and unites with what they do every day - data, research." — Andrew Marshall, Chief Communications Officer, WRI
Pictures from World Resources Institute Immersive Installation and Panel Discussions - June 2025
UNITED NATION COP16 CONFERENCE ON BIODIVERSITY, CALI COLOMBIA
COP16 - United Nations Conference on Biodiversity, Cali, Colombia - Nature Positive Pavilion, Blue Zone - October 25, 2024 - All Day
"Nature needs us, we need nature. We are part of nature; together we sustain life." An amazing immersive experience presented by the Accountability Accelerator, part of the Global Commons Alliance. Step into a space transformed into a multi-climate forest, tech and tools about resources and equity are seamlessly integrated into the environment like trees. This exhibition is made possible by the contribution of GCA Accountability Accelerator - Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
"We are excited to support one of our latest grantees, 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁, an experiential installation created by artists 𝗟𝗮𝗶𝗮 𝗖𝗮𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗿𝗮 and 𝗜𝘀𝗮𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲 𝗗𝘂𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗿, who have been collaborating for the past 15 years. This immersive video installation invites the audience into a contemplative space, surrounded by the dynamic imagery of Earth’s forests. Interspersed with climate and nature data, and scenes showing the profound impact of human activity on our planet, 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱 creates a powerful visual narrative about nature loss. The installation demonstrates how art and technology can come together to raise awareness and inspire action to protect our ecosystems. We invite you to experience this thought-provoking installation that will be open all day. Come and explore the intricate connections between nature, data, and the urgent need for environmental action." — Global Commons Alliance, October 23, 2024
United Nations COP 16, Cali, Colombia with the Global Commons Alliance Accountability Accelerator - October 2024
HALL OF FAME GALLERY - CARE AND CLIMATE JUSTICE EXHIBITION, NEW YORK
Curated by Patricia Cazorla - CUNY Bronx Community College, New York, USA - March 21 - May 16, 2024
Perennial Land - The Data Forest was part of the Care and Climate Justice exhibitions series at Sarah Lawrence College and Bronx Community College with the support of the Mellon Foundation. Care and Climate Justice is a series of exhibitions that take place at Sarah Lawrence College and Bronx Community College in winter and spring 2024. The exhibitions are funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, which supports the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE). Against the urgency and presentism suggested by “climate crisis,” these exhibitions turn to responses that might be considered careful and slow, and that shed light on the long histories of environmental devastation on this continent shaped by settler colonialism and racial capitalism. As both an ethic and aesthetic, care takes the form of grief and remembrance, of attention and refusal, of adaptation and kinship, and of expansive imagination and storytelling in anticipation and prefiguration of other futures.
March 26: Care and Climate Justice Artists’ Roundtable - Heimbold Visual Arts Center
May 2: Perennial Land - Artist Talk - Hall of Fame Gallery, Bliss Hall,CUNY-BCC
Pictures from Installation at Hall of Fame Gallery - March 2024
"Gathering is an ethic at the heart of Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger’s looped video installation, Perennial Land: The Data Forest (2024), which invites its audiences into a restful, contemplative, and immersive space, surrounded on three sides by lush images of Earth’s forest environments. These images are interspersed with climate data and scenes of human-planetary relations gone awry, the visual grammar of the Anthropocene. Cabrera and Duverger specialize in public, interactive video works that break down the “uni-directionality” of artistic communication, so that audience members are positioned more as creative collaborators than an inert “audience.” Even as Perennial Land serves harsh reminders of anthropogenic destruction, it also summons hope for other ways of being. Over-stating human destruction can reinforce an ideological binary of nature/culture and obscure long histories of reciprocal care on this planet; Perennial Land, on the contrary, both hails and builds a community invested in responsible co-existence." — Introduction: Care and Climate Justice by Sarah Hamill and Izzy Lockhart, Care and Climate Justice Catalogue, 2024
TREE HOUSE NDSM - ART PARK II: VOICE OF NATURE EXHIBITION, AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam, the Netherlands, September 12 - October 6, 2024
Art Park II: Voice of Nature is a group show that continues a series we initiated in 2023, which focuses on urban nature in relation to the Municipality of Amsterdam’s project of establishing a park in the NDSM area. The specific theme of this year's exhibition, Voice of Nature, delves into the concept of granting rights to more-than-humans. Could we listen to what nature, including plants, birds and insects need? Can nature be granted the same rights as humans? In an era marked by environmental crises and biodiversity loss, the 14 artists participating in this exhibition attempt, through different approaches, to reframe our thoughts and interactions with the natural world and advocate for its value. This exhibition is made possible by the contribution of Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst
Video Gallery:
Care and Climate Justice Catalogue - Interview of Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger by Meena Mangroo - Co-edited by Sarah Hamill and Izzy Lockhart
