The premiere of the artistic film A Sanctuary in our Mind (2022) served as the opening for the Becoming Regenerative launch event at the Samsung KX Innovation Hub in London. The film explores the topic of regeneration from a creative and artistic perspective and abstractly visualises a future world in which nature and humanity live in peaceful symbiosis.
While the discourse around the future of our planet is mostly dominated by uncertainty, fear, and pain, it becomes harder to continue to believe in a hopeful future. In the face of the rapid environmental developments and intimidating scientific projections, it is however crucial to sustain the courage and inspiration to envision a healing world. A Sanctuary in our Mind represents a slow, gentle yet ambitious piece of work that reminds us of the importance of optimism, imagination and hope.
The film is based on the poem A Sanctuary in our Mind, which weaves together context and creativity, thus inspiring a way of thinking that combines reality and possibility. Readers are encouraged to imagine a future world as a sanctuary and to bring this dream of a brighter future to reality. Theories and concepts on which the poetry abstractly builds include regeneration, biodesign, speculation and empathy. For the film, the text was combined with abstract, nature-related imagery which considers different, non-human angles of vision. Overall, the blending of the words, sound, imagery and the pace of the film evokes a slow and calm atmosphere. A Sanctuary in our Mind serves as a constant source of inspiration and purpose for the research team behind Becoming Regenerative.
The film has been conceptualised and produced by the artists Asako Ujita, Bella Howard and Lena Rissmann at Central Saint Martins with poetry by Lena Rissmann.
A Sanctuary in our Mind
A Sanctuary in our Mind
by Lena Rissmann
This world is slowly suffocating
It is bleeding, sweating, gasping for air
We put our hands over our eyes and over our ears
In order to stay sane, to not face where we’re heading
Rising waters and spreading fires taking life away from us
Citizens forced to run from their own land
Nature a commodity, growing into an unbalanced escalation
Nations at war with one another
Animals caged, never to experience what living means
Money made from extinction
The power of a few, the fate of a mass
We have become used to how it all is
And yet, we question our world
We question our system – of course we do
And when we go to bed, we lie awake in the dark
Our chest rising and falling
The window open
The tree outside our window standing still, inhaling our exhalation
Our eyes open in the dark, our inhalation the tree’s exhalation
We can’t fall asleep, there are no lullabies to sing
Somewhere in our mind a sanctuary
Only in our mind for now
A place of hope, where we reach beyond
Where we live like we never have before
Where we collectively step back
Where we are no longer the dominator, the disruptor
Where we truly co-exist with what is around us
Where nature can tell its story
Where other forms of living have space and permission to be
Where this world can rest and heal and find freedom
Where we rethink to redefine what living should be like
Hold on to this place in your mind
If you let go, you let go of us as a living species
Our world can live without us
It will bring us to our knees
If we want to stay, we can not let go of the imagined
The sanctuary in our mind
So many of us awake at night
Our chests rising and falling
Inhaling natures exhalation
A silent exchange of life
Already in rhythm with what is around us
The living, the moving, the alive