Transhemispheric Re-mediation

SYMPOSIUM DAY TWO – GUEST SESSION EIGHT

Keynote Lecture Performance with Luis Berríos-Negrón

This lecture performance is about the form of reforestation as a transhemispheric, spiritually grounded practice – less a technical solution and more a ritual of relations. Luis draws from work in Puerto Rico, Denmark, and Sweden, where tree nurseries are potent places for broad forms of Land-based learning and action. In these sites, communities tend damaged environments while reopening questions about nature’s personhood and how landscapes embody colonial trauma. Clay and ceramics serve as a key mediating materials, shaping mythological and meteorological forms such as the hurricane into social and sculptural forms that guide how we listen with the Land.
Through four artworks rooted in the artistic research of treeling propagation – Estratas Viveros Entrañas (2022), Ensayo de cuna a Guatubá (2024), Refuge (since 2023), and Caudex (since 2023) – the lecture reflects on how forest geo-aesthetics and phenomenotechnics influence our sense of reality, of biodiversity, and of colonial trauma. These works trace care and collaboration across hemispheres as infrastructures that can question extractive forestry, market-led geoengineering, and the reproduction of colonial violence.
Together, these installations display environmental re-mediation of forests (ie. as healing, as medium, and as revised messaging) as an invitation to another kind of worldmaking.

Luis Berríos-Negrón is a Puerto Rican environmental artist who researches decolonial forms and forces of climate injustice. Since 2024, he is Associate Professor at Umeå University, Sweden. Beyond his practice and exhibitions based in Berlin (2006–2017) and doctoral work at Konstfack KTH in Stockholm (2015–2020), his current work stems from post-hurricane reforestation research in Puerto Rico at Para La Naturaleza’s Art & Science Research Residency (PR, 2021–2022), as Postdoctoral Fellow in Art and Architecture at UmArts in partnership with Bildmuseet (SE, 2023–2024), and in Hosting Lands, a slow-growing exhibition movement unfolding around land across Denmark (since 2024).

https://www.umu.se/en/staff/luis-berrios-negron/
https://parsejournal.com/article/grito-transhemisferico/
https://www.umu.se/en/news/when-trees-become-co-actors_12142895/
https://spool.ac/index.php/spool/article/view/269
https://hostinglands.com/seed/abriendo-el-camino-para-una-tormentera-de-imaginarias-opening-the-way-to-a-refuge-for-imaginaries

Please register for participation prior to the event at: roswitha.gabriel@plus.ac.at
The link to the online event will be sent after registration.

Concept, Organization and Host: Doris Posch

This Guest Session is taking place in the context of WORLDMAKING MATTERS. International Multi-Day Symposium on Sustainable Fashion, Design and Arts, 15 Dec 2025 and 17 – 19 Jan 2026