I am the forest, I am the river,

I am the mountains,

I am the reindeer

Boreal Forest Listening · Evenki & Reindeer

This field practice developed over three years through repeated stays totaling three months in the boreal forests of the Greater Khingan Mountains in Northeast China, living and working alongside Evenki reindeer herders. The practice emerged through everyday coexistence within the forest, shaped by shared time, listening, and attention.

The Evenki relationship with the forest and reindeer reveals a form of knowledge grounded in calmness, attunement, and continuity. Their language, rhythms, and modes of communication are inseparable from the forest itself, carrying an intelligence shaped by migration, weather, seasonal change, and more-than-human presence. Listening within this context became a way of learning how sound, life, and land are interwoven.

This long-term practice includes field recordings, oral history documentation and translation, seasonal soundscape works, a 30-minute film, and a photographic diary. Winter listening practices form a central part of the work, resulting in a soundscape album recorded in snow-covered forests, around the tipi at night, and during journeys through tundra forests in search of reindeer. These recordings bring together environmental sound, seasonal transitions, and human presence within a landscape shaped by migration and long-term coexistence.

As the Evenki language is gradually disappearing, many existing oral histories have been preserved only in Chinese. In response, I invited Taksha, daughter of Maria Suo—the last Evenki chief—to re-narrate her mother’s histories in the Evenki language. These spoken memories are woven together with forest soundscapes, wind, ice, animal movement, and night-time listening. The voice does not stand apart from the environment, but emerges as part of it—carried by breath, weather, and space. The work also includes spoken reflections in Chinese by Tao Tao, a young Evenki hunter, whose words reflect contemporary life in the forest and its ongoing transformations.

During one of the final periods of living together in a forest cabin, Taksha offered a farewell that continues to inform this practice: “I am the forest, the river, the mountains, and the reindeer.” This statement is not presented as metaphor, but as an articulation of relational belonging—reflecting a worldview in which identity is inseparable from land and more-than-human life.

The project was presented as part of an online exhibition supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, the University of Zurich, and the Hulunbuir Mongolian Origin Research Center, contributing sound, moving image, photography, and oral histories to a wider context of indigenous knowledge and lived ecological relationships.

Online Exhibition:
https://stage.craftsoflife.com/

Sound album:
https://tieyannie.bandcamp.com/album/forest-reindeer-human
https://tieyannie.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-thaw-taiga-forest

Film with oral history:
I Wouldn’t Dwell Without Stars