
Arboreal Severance by Swiss artist duo Kieffer Woodtli is an immersive audio installation exploring our connection to nature through its absence. The installation is a continuation of the long-term project Arboreal Serenade, revealed at Art Basel 2025: a permanent generative installation at the Enea Tree Museum that translates the real-time physiological rhythms of a Japanese Pagoda tree into an immersive audiovisual experience. But what happens when the tree is no longer there? What remains when the connection is lost — or forgotten?
Arboreal Severance speaks to one of the most urgent and often overlooked dimensions of our planetary crises: not only the destruction of ecosystems, but our lost relationship to them. What if these crises are not just a technical problem, but also crises of perception — of forgetting that we belong to the Earth? That we are Earth. By making this absence perceptible, the installation does not offer answers. It offers space — to feel, to listen, to remember.
Arboreal Severance
Planetary Embassy
This installation is part of the Planetary Embassy at Climate Week NYC, a pop-up venue hosted by Swissnex from September 23 to 25 in the East Village dedicated to international, interdisciplinary, and interspecies collaboration. The Planetary Embassy explores how we can work with the more-than-human world to address urgent and interconnected planetary crises through conversations, installations, film screenings, and more, with contributions from Switzerland, New York, and beyond.
Bio
-
Bio
Sara Kieffer & Lucien Woodtli
Kieffer WoodtliKieffer Woodtli is a Swiss conceptual artist duo based between New York and Zurich. Their practice combines sculpture and experiential installation to explore existence, imagine futures, and synchronize nature, space, and humans into shared rhythms of perception.
At the heart of their work lies a deep fascination with the hidden processes of the natural world – the silent breath of trees, the movement of light, the intelligence of water. Through poetic and immersive environments, they invite viewers to attune to these subtle phenomena and, through them, to encounter themselves anew.
Their installations open up spaces for reflection, resonance, and participation – spaces where nature is not merely observed, but experienced as a mirror, a teacher, an extension of ourselves. By weaving together data, material, and sensory design, Kieffer Woodtli creates living systems that invite shifts in perception and ecological intimacy.
Their works have been shown at international exhibitions including Art Basel, Art Dubai, the London Design Biennale and the Theatre of Digital Art. They have been featured in publications such as Another Magazine, 1Granary, and Vogue. Their latest audiovisual installation, Arboreal Serenade, was revealed during Art Basel, Basel 2025 and is part of the permanent collection of the Enea Tree Museum.
Kieffer Woodtli is formed by Sara Kieffer (b. 1992, Zurich, Switzerland), and Lucien Mike Woodtli (b. 1994, Aarau, Switzerland).