If Fire Complex started out as a personal response to a universal emergency born of flawed forest management and our Anthropocene climate crises, it’s grown into much more than simply bearing witness to disaster. It has become a multi-faceted vehicle through which the wildfire tragedy is talked about and action taken. After seeing Kögelsberger’s billboards, following an introduction from Forest Services, the Rotary Club became excited about joining forces on the replanting effort that the artist initiated as part of Fire Complex. So, as well as informing people regarding the impact of unplanned forest fires through Instagram, the project is promoting practical regeneration efforts and bringing people together to question California State eco-policies.

A rethink is long overdue. The giant sequoia trees evolved to withstand forest fires. In fact, their regeneration can depend on them. Fire helps these trees by cracking open the sequoia cones thereby releasing the seeds to begin germination. For decades the excessive prevention of natural fires added to the lack of controlled burns – due to economic and other reasons – meant the forest floor had grown overly dense and more susceptible to combustion. Besides the human and ecological costs, the financial burden resulting from the clear up (borne by taxpayers) is phenomenal and should focus minds on past decades of false economy: the woeful disinvestment in forest management.

Fire Complex imagery doesn’t labour these socio-economic and political issues. Kögelsberger partners the videos on her website and Instagram posts with cited references to various reports of issues associated with the aftermath of wildfires, not least their effects on poorer sections of the population. The direct restorative costs for 2020 are estimated to be 20 billion dollars. Add to that resultant healthcare expenses, businesses folding, loss of tax revenue, decreased property values – at the same time as huge hikes in rental due to the scarcity of places to live – and it all adds up to a shocking price tag. Plus, of course, there’s an impact on tourist revenues.

Visually the artworks present as uncompromising, plaintive, stark… At one level they almost challenge the viewer to look away, to dare to ignore the heart-breaking decimation. It’s too much to bear to see. But, of course, ignoring issues would only imperil us further. We must look closely at and think seriously about these variously presented representations of and reflections on our blinkered negligence. An early Fire Complex presentation in Feb. 2021 at Shepherd’s Bush Roundabout in London featured two adjacent billboards. The vertical digital site displayed the collapse of a massive tree being felled, an almost wistful scene. The horizontal 40ft wide billboard next to it presented a pair of gigantic sequoias displayed on their side: two supine and scorched tree trunks, absent their crowns with spindly fractured, frail, brittle and black stunted sticks for limbs.

A differently salient experience – displayed during 2022 Frieze LA on the corner of Fountain Avenue and Cahuenga Boulevard, Los Angeles – was an 80ft long paper-based installation that presented the burnt carcass of a tree horizontally at street level. The experience of walking the length of arboreal carnage, the inescapable eye-to-eye / side-by-side walk in close company – physically engaging with the woeful effects of conflagration – forces the viewer to begin to take in the scale of the loss. As mentioned, this poster installation is 80ft long and the tree, on its side, is 8ft high. The real burnt tree is in fact three times longer and wider. The phenomena of walking alongside the installation is grievous enough. To realise the image displayed is but a fraction of the size of the original charred tree is formidable. And this is just one tree amongst so many.

Another astounding work, Cull – a five channel video installation and anchor piece of Fire Complex – as well as being shown in the public realm, won the prestigious Charles Wollaston Award at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition this year. The award is presented annually to the ‘most distinguished work’ in the show.

The RA summer exhibition curatorial team decided to display Cull on its own in a darkened room. The effect is transfixing. The five vertical screens abutted together is a horizontal format that puts one in mind of a panoramic view but this is immediately confounded by the quintuple vertical screens each showing different single blackened trunks being felled. Occasionally we see a tree falling past a patch of sky or glimpse the expanse of vast charred landscape but for the most part there’s a sense of confinement, like we’re locked in to affirm the ecological tragedy tree by tree as well as the arduous steps taken to towards repairing the self-inflicted disaster.

The soundtrack to Cull amplifies the visual drama: dynamic thuds, plangent creaking, the groan and crack of giant, brittle flora crashing to the ground. As trees hit the forest floor they explode in a squall of ash and dust, branches are snapped and scattered. At times it sounds as if a bow is being dragged across a log saw. The discordant audio intensifies feelings of disquiet at beholding such a monstrous ecological tragedy on loop. Scanning across the five vertical screens, the successive toppling, you half expect a tree falling on one screen to appear in the next but, of course, it doesn’t. The tree is gone. Along with the ancient ecosystem which it was a part of.

Cull from UKogelsberger on Vimeo.

Throughout the multifaceted Fire Complex there’s a simmering foreboding at the terrible waste and Anthropocene irresponsibility. But there’s also steadfast resolve to, first, attest truths without sentimentality. And second, point to and enact practical steps beyond the self-inflicted devastation.

Art curator and producer Zarina Rossheart got together with Uta Kögelsberger for a more in-depth discussion about the development, processes and hoped-for aims related to Cull and Fire Complex…

Your multidisciplinary practice encompasses photography, moving image, sculpture and sound. Why are you attracted to using these mediums and how do these choices open up a space for expressing and communicating your ideas to your audience?

Cull and the wider project Fire Complex it sits nestled in were a direct response to the aftermath of the 2020 Castle Fire. Because of the urgency of the situation in our forests, it was clear from the start that the work needed to refer to the actual causes and consequences of the wildfires as directly as possible without too much artifice. Thus, the choice of photography and video as a medium.

But Fire Complex could never only be about creating a set of compelling images about a terrible situation. It had to set about making a difference. In the video installation Cull, we witness the removal of the fire damaged trees that are coming crashing to the ground in an orchestrated choreography. Some trees are falling with such force that the ground beneath them shakes. Alongside this the paper billboards bring the scale of the disaster to the fore through the sheer size of the images. The medium of this work is not just photography and video, the medium is also its support, i.e. paper and digital billboards in the public realm. When I started working on Cull it became clear very quickly that it needed to be seen in the public realm. It was essential that this work reached wider audiences beyond the confines of the gallery walls. The issue of forest management and wildfire prevention is not something we can wait years to address.

A lot of your projects feel urgent, they question the status quo, bringing the audience’s attention to the current social and political crises, yet the way you approach presenting these issues feels very personal and almost poetic. How do you manage to create this tension in your work? And what message would you like the audience to take away from it?

Over the last ten years the sense of a wider political, social, and ecological crisis has come to a peak. Brexit, the Trump administration, Black Lives Matter, the clear and factual evidence that climate change is here, the lack of action of our governments in response to it despite the clear message that we need to act now, all in their own way play into that.

Against this background it would feel irresponsible to make work that does not in some way engage with our social and political reality. At the same time, it also seems important that I have a direct connection to the projects I am working on. I need to feel like I own their reality. So, the work always starts from the personal even if it ultimately reflects on global situations. In the case of Fire Complex that was tied to my love for the area and the loss of this amazing ecosystem that was destroyed. This amazing ecosystem was also our back yard. Maybe it is this personal involvement that allows others into the work, that brings a human scale back into the overwhelming size of the disaster and allows audiences in.

I think a part of the way in which the personal dimension manifests itself in the work is related to the fact that I am not shooting with a team of camera and sound people. It is me and my camera, and sometimes me running up and down steep slopes to service three cameras, while also recording sound and liaising with the team cutting the trees. I wonder if it’s this low-fi production that makes the work much feel so immediate and accessible. Though my work is always anchored in social and political engagements it is also always sensory and visceral. The reason this is so important is because most of us do not learn through the pure communication of facts. Experience is an essential aspect of understanding the world. And politics is personal. When congress decides to allow each individual USA state to decide on their own emissions, instead of empowering the environmental protection agency to regulate emissions, then this is a decision that will have personal repercussions on all of us.

Cull is part of a larger project called Fire Complex that was a direct response to the forest fires in California in the area that you have been visiting for the past many years. Tell us more about how it started and where it is now?

My partner’s primary home sat nestled inside the Adler Creek Giant Sequoia Grove. The fire took out fifty percent of the homes in Sequoia Crest, our cabin included, and dispersed our circle of friends. All of that was devastating, but it fades in relation to the loss of the amazing eco system, flora and fauna included, that has been destroyed. Living with the knowledge that we are all responsible for the complete destruction of this forest makes it even more devastating and made it essential to do something.

It was also clear to me from the beginning that this project needed to do more than spread compelling imagery. It needed to make a real life difference and this is why there are so many aspects to this project: On the one hand there is the Instagram site that disseminates the imagery but does so alongside factual information about the complex underbelly of forest management and fire prevention, secondly there were the billboards in the public realm that linked people to organisations that are actively involved in reforestation, thirdly we organised a massive replanting project and to date have put 6000 trees in the ground, all of these aspects sit alongside the visual aspect of the work.

What was your approach to making Cull? How long did the process take? 

 I started working on Cull when we first visited the community after the fires. We were finally able to get back over to the USA in early December and on this first visit already the SCE (Southern California Edison) strike team was in the community felling the burnt trees left standing that were now endangering the electrical wires, roads, and remaining structures. It was gutting to see this amazing forest devastated by the fires, but also to see what was left over being removed by the teams responsible for the clear up process.

A study has been done by UC Irvine that the 2018 wildfires cost the California economy over the 134 billion dollars this was at the time set against ½ a billion dollars invested into fire prevention. The numbers seemed the wrong way round. A large part of these expenses is the process of clearing up after the fires. Each tree that is being cut down has a team of about 10 people around them, there is the person responsible for establishing that no wildlife is living in the trees, there are the tree surgeons (about 3), a health and safety team, the people responsible for moderating traffic and so forth. As mentioned, bringing to light aspects of the complex political underbelly of forest management, fire prevention and recovery, are an integral part of the work and this will continue on Instagram as the project progresses.

Cull was presented on digital screens and billboards in the public realm in LA and in Shepherds Bush, London. What were you hoping to achieve by showing this film in a public space?

 Cull being exhibited on the digital billboard in Los Angeles shapes the reading of the work. On the oversized digital screen on the side of a high-rise building, the trees appeared to be close to life size. There was an interesting dynamic created by the introduction of the natural environment into this heavily trafficked city, cause and symptom being brought together in the same space. Also, the unexpected nature of the encounter informs the reading. And finally, when CULL was exhibited in the public realm QR codes connected the project to a website that channelled people towards organisations that actively work towards reforestation. The work read very differently when it was exhibited in the public realm to its current exhibition at the Royal Academy.

The prestigious Royal Academy’s Wollaston award was previously received by the likes of Isaac Julien, Wolfgang Tillmans and Rose Wylie and other distinguished artists. What does it mean to you to win this year’s award with Cull?

It was really great to hear from both a panel member of the summer exhibition selection committee and a panel member for the Wollaston Award that this work was a clear favourite. The summer exhibition curatorial team unanimously agreed that this work needed a whole room to itself and subsequently the selection team for the Wollaston Award each put this work at the top of their list. This kind of feedback bears testimony to Cull not just hitting a nerve, but also doing it in the right way. It is an honour to join this outstanding list of artists in winning this award through this very democratic and open process.

What are your aspirations for the future journey of Cull?

Even if Cull is anchored in a specific situation, it is very much about a global crisis. For that reason, I think it is very important that this work tours and reaches wider audiences, be it in the public realm, or in gallery spaces. Because of its context this is a work that can’t possibly be shown too much. And, of course, I have a long list of expanded versions that take this body of works a step further that I would love to explore.