Arboreal Severance

Swissnex and Swiss artist duo Kieffer Woodtli present Arboreal Severance, an immersive audio installation highlighting the fundamental wound of our time: the severance between human beings and Earth.

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.

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Partners

This installation is presented by Swissnex and Kieffer Woodtli. Audio equipment is provided by Silence Please and furniture is provided by Vitra.