Ruth Maclennan's Treeline screens as part of the evening programme of Climate Crisis >> Art Action Takeover at Whitechapel Art Gallery.

The after-hours programme follows the day’s discussions at the Climate Crisis >> Art Action conference, and also features a live soundscape by Chooc Ly Tan, a workshop on climate data mapping by Angela YT Chan, and a talk to celebrate the launch of the book Oceans with its editors Pandora Syperek and Sarah Wade, and guest speakers Kasia Molga and Bergit Arends.

Treeline is a collectively made film compiled from hundreds of hours of footage of forests submitted by people across the world. From a patchwork of disparate individual contributions (sent in by scientists, ecologists, artists and members of the public alike), Maclennan traces a sinuous green line that stretches from the wild woods of North America to the rainforests of the Amazon to the copses of middle England and the scrublands of Africa, as well as myriad places in-between. Resembling a continuous horizontal travelling shot, Maclennan's infinite panorama of trees is a vivid reminder of the swathes of green that continue to encircle and nourish the planet, and a powerful emblem of the shared resources and shared futures that bind people together. A paean to the beauty and majesty of trees, Treeline also echoes something of their form – putting out exploratory feelers, and drawing material from multiple sources to create an enveloping, overarching structure that is considerably more than the sum of its parts.

Treeline (2021) by Ruth Maclennan was co-commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and Forestry England. Supported by John Hansard Gallery and Hunterian, University of Glasgow.