David Claerbout’s Birdsong explores creation, destruction, and solitude through a mesmerising video installation set in a historic castle deep within a forest. Text in English, French and Dutch.

Birdsong brings together three video works by David Claerbout – The Woodcarver and the Forest, Birdcage and Backwards Growing Tree – each a meditation on time, perception and the poetics of the natural world. In an era dominated by speed and distraction, Claerbout reclaims the longue durée, offering a contemplative, detoxed form of filmmaking.

Accompanied by a poem by Stefan Hertmans, this volume explores the myths of digitisation, the rhythms of nature, growth and degrowth. Birdsong is a visual journey through the imaging ideas that the artist has developed over the past decade.

This publication coincides with Claerbout's exhibition At the window at Gaasbeek Castle.

Text in English, French and Dutch.