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Tunda: A Quantic Plant and the Devil’s Breath

Castelblanco, Felipe

Format: Video recording

This three-channel video installation unfolds around the provocation that plants and humans might form alliances capable of altering the course of history—through selective memory loss and forms of space travel. At its center is the Borrachero Andaqui flower (Brugmansia arborea), a powerful plant teacher for Kamnënstá Indigenous healers in Colombia’s Upper Putumayo region. Among these communities, the plant is believed to possess the ability to cross temporal and spatial boundaries. Beyond its ceremonial significance, Brugmansia is also cultivated as an ornamental and protective presence outside Indigenous homes, where its potency deters ill-intentioned visitors by inducing nausea, disorientation, and a rapid shift of intent—momentarily interrupting human will. Therefore, a sudden and inexplicable leap propels an indigenous man from the dense jungles of Putumayo, Colombia, to the stark, icy expanse of the Swiss Alps and nearby citiscapes. Triggered by his encounter with the enigmatic Brugmansia plant, his journey unfolds in a space where visions, memory, and time collapse into one. As he moves through this unlikely path seeking a way back home, the ancestral knowledge of the Kamnësnta people emerges—guardians of the powerful Borrachero Andaki, a plant feared for its toxicity yet revered for its prophetic gifts. Suspended between dream and reality, past and future, the traveler becomes a vessel for the wisdom of vegetal beings, unraveling the boundaries of perception in a hypnotic, boundary-defying odyssey.

2025

Thanks to:

Botanical Garden, University of Zurich: Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Cámara Leret and team (Juan Carlos Copete Maturana, Kimberly Castro, Dr. Ingrid Olivares, Dr. Luiz Leonardo Saldanha). Federico Roda Fornaguera. Collectivo Mingueros, Salinas Meta: Azucena Olaya, Liliana Olaya, Dora Franco, Juan Alberto Castelblanco, John Alvaro Olaya y Familia, Valeria Castelblanco. Heraldo Vallejo, Quinchoa Juajibioy Family. Daniel Duarte. Plants Intelligence Team: Yvonne Volkart, Rasa Smite and Julia Mensch. Patrice Keenan and Luciano Ibá.

Cast: Ayënan Quinchoa Juajibioy, Taita Miguel Chicunque and Sofia Salvatierra

Directed by Felipe Castelblanco

Camera: Felipe Castelblanco, Lydia Zimmermann, Camilo Pachon and Ayënan Quinchoa Juajibioy

Creative Editing: Monica Bustamante and Felipe Castelblanco

Color Grading: Monica Bustamante

Sound Design: Carolina Lucio Arias

Co-investigator: Ayënan Quinchoa Juajibioy. Fabrication: Daniel Duarte and Azucena Olaya.

Equipment specification:

Two HD projectors for 16:9 Projections.
1 Projector for vertical Projection + tele lens. 3 Brightsign players

Additional funding form:

Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg and Stiftung Niedersachsen.

Institutional credits:

Tunda: A Quantic Plant and the Devil’s Breath. A work Felipe Castelblanco, realized in the framework of the research project Plants_ Intelligence. Learning like a Plant (2022 - 2025). A research project by Yvonne Volkart, Felipe Castelblanco, Julia Mensch and Rasa Smite. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and hosted by the Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. Co-commissioned by the Haus für Medienkunst Oldenburg and supported by Stiftung Niedersachsen.

Tags

Basel Brugmansia arborea (Borrachero Andaki) Colombia Contemporary moving image art Ethnobotanical knowledge Expanded cinema Human–nonhuman relations Human–plant alliances Indigenous cosmologies Indigenous knowledge systems Kamnënstá people Plant agency Putumayo Speculative narrative Switzerland Territorial imagination (Amazon–Alps) Time-based media Video Installation Video installation (three channel) werke felipe plant_intelligence

Queries

Werke - Plant_Intelligence - Felipe Werke - Plant_Intelligence Werke catalog - Artistic catalog - Education catalog - HGK catalog - mediathek catalog - Network

Full spec

DateAdded: 2026-02-02T08:51:15Z
DateModified: 2026-02-02T08:51:15Z
Key: AZNTCTDB
Language: Spanish, EN and GE subtitles
Rights: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
RunningTime: 00:17:00
SeriesTitle: Tunda: A Quantic Plant and the Devil’s Breath
Handle: 20.500.11806/med/4c1g-2mm5-xd