CISKA DAALDER
Confessions of a tree-
A root trough history
2025Audiovisual installationSound design, scriptwriter,
voice narration of the last tree Collaboration with Arwin Ramcharan, Bien Carel, Constantinos Hayes &
Guus Kentie A Root Through History: Confessions by a Tree, an installation made of soil, small dioramas & in them phones with short videos, highlighting each era. And five sound narratives.


The audience was invited to enter the installation barefooted, walking in the soil, listening to the narratives,  crouching down watching each specific video.

 Set-up, without phones



IN WHICH SENSE HAVE HUMANS COMMODIFIED NATURE IN RELATION TO THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT?




Stories We imagined the commodification of trees throughout 5 periods of time. Shifting our perspective. 

The narrative serves as an allegory, exploring the mystery of the tree and its future.



Listen & read the 5 stories:


//not working yet//

*Wilderness //I’ve been here a long time. Long enough to forget where my roots end and the earth begins. The soil holds me, dark and rich, pressing gently into my skin. The sun rises and sets with a quiet rhythm, washing the air in soft gold, then deep blue. The wind passes through my branches, carrying the scent of salt from the ocean and the sharp sweetness of pine. Life moves all around me.

A fox slinks through the undergrowth, careful but not fearful. Birds flit between my branches, their wings brushing the air like soft whispers. The rivers murmur in the distance, cutting paths through stone and moss, clear and cold. Everything knows its place. The seasons turn like breath—inhale, exhale. A quiet order beneath the wildness.

Storms come sometimes, tearing at my bark, twisting my branches. But I don’t mind. They pass, and I remain. My roots sink deeper, my leaves return. The sun always finds me again. That’s how it works here—nothing is lost, only remade. Growth is in the breaking. And there’s so much more ahead. I can feel it in the soil, in the hum beneath the ground. Something new is stirring.

A quiet shift in the air, a different rhythm threading itself into the old song. The earth is making room for something. Someone. I don’t fear it. Why would I? The world knows how to hold itself. Life has always found a way to stretch toward the light. And so will they whoever they are. Whatever they bring.//



*Agriculture //Its a calm spring day. The cold of winter seems to be settling down. A pleasant breeze makes my newly grown leaves rustle. The humans have been thriving lately. They have been building their houses from stone. They have settled down in one place and seem to have found the strength of numbers. It reminds me of me and my forest in a sense.

Here and there they take some twigs for a fire. And to make tools for survival. As they have been doing for as long as I can remember. They are so creative, always looking for ways to survive. They have been digging lines in the soil next to me. I wonder what they’re up to this time!

All of a sudden, I feel a shock throughout my whole body. And although I have been living in harmony with humans for thousands of years, with one snap, I can feel that balance shifting. I feel that something is wrong right away. This time, the creaking and cracking sound wasn’t from the humans taking fruit, or some branches for a fire to keep warm. They are targeting my roots.. They are making space to cultivate. My survival is at stake.They don’t want unpredictable wilderness anymore. They want stability. Vast empty planes of land they will sow with a million seeds of the same plant. They don’t want diversity. They want uniformity. Uaagghhh!! It must be...
For the.... greater... good......//



*Industrialization //Around me, I have seen everything get changed. There used to be a house next to me. A family of humans lived there, and their children would play on a swing attached to one of my branches. It was pretty quiet around me, except for the laughter of the children and the sound of conversations. You know, I have been here a while, and my roots were reaching everywhere, connecting to the trees around me. But now, there are all these flats surrounding me, and in every window I see a new face.

There are no children really anymore though. The swing is barely being used. And there is a path surrounding me, I’m in this weird hole. It actually has severed some of my roots, I can’t feel them anymore. It has made it hard, or even impossible to connect to other trees. I’m pretty scared to be honest, there are all these sounds around me the whole time. It doesn’t seem to stop. But what scares me the most is that I’m sensing a lot more carbon dioxide in the air. I don’t need that much. I might be wrong, I’m not sure. I wish to ask others. But I can’t reach them anymore, so I don’t know if they sense it as well.

If im honest, it’s pretty lonely. I feel like I don’t even know the neighbourhood that is my home. Im all alone. I guess the encompassing sounds will have to do as company. But it just stresses me out a lot. I think humans might be building something close by. It makes even more noise. And there is this material with which they keep coming by. I don’t know what it is exactly. I have never seen it till recently. It’s very shiny and comes in these different linear forms. It looks weird. I don’t know what these humans will do with it and why they need so much. It just all makes a lot of sound, and every time they work, it gets really gross everywhere. I don’t know what is happening, and will happen, but I have a bad feeling about it.//



*Climate change- Wildfire //This heat is unbearable… How much longer is this heat gonna last? It’s already October…it’s supposed to be raining by now…I’m so thirsty…This has to be the hottest heat wave I’ve ever experienced. I miss when each season was so distinct…I remember the brisk, frosty winters filled with snow. The warm, fresh spring (honestly my favorite) and ugh, I never really liked the hot summers, but still they used to be actually bearable. I would always be excited for Autumn, when my leaves would change colors. It felt so refreshing…being reborn every season. But now it’s so much hotter or just more extreme.

Last year we had intense flooding that almost swept me away…This autumn it hasn’t dropped a single raindrop…Ugh…this heat…I can feel it drying me up from the roots…Why is it getting hotter? The sun’s supposed to set soon…Is that screaming??!! Wait…whats all that smoke I can taste??!! IS THAT A FIRE??!!OH MY FUCKING GODD it’s BURNING ME ALIVE!! AAAAAHHHHHHH!!//



*Future- The last tree standing //Artificial air, light and even soil. I am all that was, a reminder for these watchful eyes of a past they destroyed with their greed and selfishness. I stand frozen, encaged in a glass case, the last tree on earth, with the sole purpose to commodify these humans. They stare at me, with their eyes wide, what do they see when they look at me? Their mouths move, but there is no sound. So I imagine, do they speak words of fascination, guilt or perhaps ignorance. Do they see a relic of the old world? A glimpse of the beautiful green forests they destroyed.

I miss it. I miss the warm sun, the funky wind, the soil I shared with my ancestors and above all the voices of my fellow trees. The wind carried their laughter for miles, I can still hear them sometimes, I must have gone insane from the solitude. There was nothing worse than the silence after their screams. One by one they disappeared, I searched for them with my roots. All I found was decapitated stumps left and right. I was so heartbroken it almost killed me, but I endured. I had to survive for my family. Not long after, humans in white suits brought me to this place. At first I was hopeful of a better future, but that later turned into resentment of these ever watching eyes.//






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