Light Needs

Jesse McLean / / 2023

Do plants have a consciousness? Not if you look at it from a human scale. But maybe it is about time we stopped always doing just that. ‘Light Needs’ is a generous, thought-provoking and artistically inventive film that literally expands one’s consciousness and creates a space for empathy with other life forms – namely the houseplants that most of us live with. In an unpretentious but serious and empathetic exploration of the symbiotic relationship between human and non-human beings, we learn, among other things, what it feels like to turn sunlight into glucose from the inside. But we also meet a diverse range of people who let us in on their close and often deeply personal relationship with the plants they share their homes with. Visual artist Jesse McLean has previously shown several of her short works at CPH:DOX, and has made a free and open-minded contribution to the great current within contemporary culture which has turned to biology and the living to find new ways forward for both thought and action.