Kristina Van Dexter
Kristina Van Dexter, Ph.D. is a writer, researcher, and defender of forests. For over a decade, Kristina has been tracing our deforestation crisis throughout the global tropics. Her work is grounded in learning from forests and those who defend them to orient our responses to their destruction toward forest futurities.
Kristina’s post-doctoral research is focused on the war on forests and decolonizing forests and conservation in the context of Colombia where conservation is increasingly intertwined with ongoing counterinsurgent and war-time interventions. Her work on decolonizing the forest has led to a deep engagement with forest poetics through experiments in listening to forests, forest futurist film, and experiential immersive installations of forest other-worlds. These endeavors work to foster forest futurities grounded in a reparative relationality and the reclamation of relational forest languages.
Kristina's extensive research includes numerous publications in prestigious journals and her involvement in international panels and workshops. Her forthcoming book, "Rastrojo / Re(in)surgent Forests," traces the contours of war and ecocide through language that decolonizes our gaze and delves into the grammars of forest futurities.
The founder of Paz con la Selva, Kristina resides in Colombia, tending curatorial and collaborative research projects with forests, Indigenous communities, and forest defenders to decolonize our gaze of the "forest” and repair and reclaim relations and languages to foster the conditions for resurgence and our collective futures.
Current Projects
Paz con la Selva
Paz con la Selva is a collective of writers, creative practitioners, Indigenous communities, poets, researchers, and forest defenders. The work of the collective involves collaborative, community-led research on listening to forests and Indigenous film. It is currently developing residencies for creative practice and related research and laboratories on forest futurities and listening to forests.
Rastrojo
Rastrojo is a revista dedicated to the defense of forests. Rastrojo is committed to poetic interventions in the destruction of forests through poetic experiments that emerge from forests and that engage the diverse forms and languages that compose their relational life-worlds. The revista is open to work from writers, poets, performers, Indigenous film collectives, and other collaborative and research-oriented creative work that engages forest politics and poetics.
Re(in)surgent Forests
Re(in)surgent Forests is a curatorial platform developed in response to the ecocidal destruction of forests. Re(in)surgent Forests is grounded in learning from and listening to forests and those who defend them, to the relations of death nourishing life, and the loss of those generative relations. Through workshops and dialogues and the development of films for forest futurities, the project works to repair and reclaim the relations and languages of lost forest futures. Read More