Indexed Beings: Film Screening and Talk

What happens when plants are no longer treated as specimens, but as sentient beings capable of knowing, acting, and creating their own worlds. How might this transform the production of scientific knowledge?

Indexed Beings is the second in a trilogy of artist films by Helen Knowles, developed through her practice-based PhD at Northumbria University. Filmed in Mocoa, Putumayo, Colombia, the work was made in partnership with members of the indigenous Kamëntsá, Inga, Cofan and Siona communities and the Herbario Etnobotánico del Piedemonte.

The 42-minute film centres on the re-enactment of a dispute that took place in the Herbarium of Piedemonte, Mocoa, in the Colombian Amazon, between a scientist and a local taita (shaman) over the role of the herbarium. For the scientist, it is a vital tool to defend territory from exploitation and protect its biodiversity; for the taita, plants are autonomous, intelligent beings that cannot be catalogued. Through performance, collaboration and dialogue, Indexed Beings explores plant sentience and asks how knowledge shifts when we recognise more-than-human intelligence, asking whose knowledge really counts?

The screening will be followed by a conversation with artist, Helen Knowles and collaborator and participant in the film Soraida Chindoy Buesaquillo, an indigenous guardian, mother and activist who is working to defend the sacred Putumayo mountains.

Book your place by emailing art.gallery@leeds.gov.uk