Untangling conflicts and contradictions within Småländskt forestry.
Why do we call the monotonous spruce plantations here in Småland ‘forests’? Wildlife habitats are decreasing and the biodiversity with it. This was my concern when I started my project. But when I started to look for answers to why the forest looks as it does today, I encountered an obstacle. An obstacle containing a polarized debate, misunderstandings creating conflicts and controversies creating confusion. There is not a common notion of the meaning of words such as forest, forestry or preservation amongst the people involved in the forests. To save wildlife habitats people need to work together, and to be able to work together, we need a common notion of the meaning of words. I started to dig up the conflicts by having interviews with the people involved, to see what they were rooted in. This became my project.
This project is not about finding one right answer or a solution, it is rather a collective storytelling of different perspectives of the Småländska forests. You can take part of the perspectives through the perspective binoculars that are used in the film I made. The binoculars zoom in and out, shifting perspectives and showing details you perhaps wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.
