A Landscape of Orchids' Multispecies Community: Fertilising a Planetary Perspective through Eco-Cinematic Practice

Orchids appear to be a delicate decoration, but in reality, they are complex organisms that form interactive networks and distinctive bio-social communities with their neighbouring species. It is meaningful to learn from the orchids' lifestyles; as they pursue symbiotic relationships with surrounding environments. The multispecies relationships of orchids give a clue to the human species on the attitude for living in the current ecological crisis. Rather than artificially governing over nature and other species, humans can co-inhabit the environment with other living beings and shape an ecological culture. I believe that having a planetary perspective is crucial for humans to engage with more-than-humans and multispecies communities. Creative arts, especially eco-cinematic experience, is an effective way to raise the ecological awareness of humans.
I am working on artistic practice-based research that produces an eco-cinema piece about epiphytic orchid species that are native to Hong Kong and their multispecies relationships. In particular, I take a plant-focused viewpoint in visualising and composing a story of the orchid communities. In my work, orchids are the ‘indigenous’ beings who have been surviving under the rapid environmental change in Hong Kong. I am adopting various methods such as time-(re)scaling animation, extreme close-ups, and plants POV to deconstruct the species hierarchy. My work-in-process of eco-cinematic experiments shifts human perspective to defuse the border that limits humans to connect with more-than-humans. My work fertilises a soil where humans can participate in plants' multispecies relationships through artistic experience.