INAR Artist Fellow, Agnes Meyer-Brandis has received the European Commission’s STARTS Prize 2026 in the “Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration” category for the “Office for Tree Migration” (OTM) art project.
The award recognizes pioneering collaborations at the intersection of technology, industry, art, and the creative sectors.
Office for Tree Migration (OTM), founded by Meyer-Brandis, was established at the Hyytiälä Forest Station in 2021. The OTM is a long-term project observing tree migration: a global phenomenon which has been studied as part of climate change by natural scientists in Finland and elsewhere. The filming of wandering Scots Pine has been going on non-stop in Siikaneva peatland in Ruovesi since February 2022.
This long-term project has been developed in close collaboration with the Climate Whirl Art&Science program at INAR (Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research), the Hyytiälä Forest Station at the University of Helsinki, the Peatland and Soil Ecology Research Group at the University of Eastern Finland, and many other scientific institutions around the world. Agnes was the first artist-in-residency at Hyytiälä Forest Station in 2013 and have continued her dialogue with aerosol, forest, peatland and tree scientists since then.
Since 2013, when I first came to the Hyytiälä Forest Station of the University of Helsinki in the scope of a new artist in residence programme, I began connecting my research on aerosols, airborne particles and cloud formation in relation to trees… since then I have kept coming back to the station again and again and several projects have developed in this context and my “Tools To Search” series expanded, for example the “Teacup Tools”, “One Tree ID”, etc.. Working with trees one naturally become interested in their capacity to adapt to climate change. (Agnes Meyer-Brandis, 2026)
Congratulations to Agnes and all the OTM Agents!
The Permanent Office for Tree Migration is open at Hyytiälä Forest Station daily until the end of October 2026, as part of Periferia exhibition .
Read more about the prize here:
Read Agnes’s interview here:
The Jury Statement: The jury awards the STARTS Grand Prize for Innovative Collaboration to Office for Tree Migration by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, a project that exemplifies the transformative potential of sustained collaboration between art and science. Office for Tree Migration asks one of the most urgent questions of our time: how can we perceive what is happening to the natural world when the scale of change exceeds human intuition? Agnes Meyer-Brandis responds not with data alone, but with experience—creating conditions in which the slow, vast migration of forests under climate change becomes something that can be felt, not just understood. The project’s deepest contribution lies in the dissolution of the boundary between research and art, and the proposal that ecological awareness is not only a matter of information, but of attention and imagination. At a time when climate change risks becoming either an abstraction or a source of paralysis, Office for Tree Migration offers a different relationship to the crisis—one grounded in ecological and interspecies solidarity, and the possibility that slowing down to perceive “tree time” might itself be a form of political and ethical practice.
The award will be presented to the artist during the ARS Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, on September 10–13. The artwork will also be featured in the festival program. The most recent edition of ARS Electronica 2025 attracted approximately 122,000 visitors to Linz.
Text: Ulla Taipale
Captions:
Image 1: Office for Tree Migration (OTM) Hyytiälä Branch, FI, view outside, 2024 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bildkunst (2026)
Image 2: Office for Tree Migration (OTM) / Assisted Tree Migration, Siikaneva peatland, 2024 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bildkunst (2026)
Image 3: Office for Tree Migration (OTM) Hyytiälä Branch, FI, view inside, 2024 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bildkunst (2026)