Martin Kiel originally wanted to be a forester but was discouraged from pursuing this career back in the 1980s. He was told that forests were dying and there would be no need for foresters in the future. Therefore, in 1989, he started to study biology, German literature, philosophy, archaeology, and art history at Ruhr University Bochum. After his graduation, he went on to work in various senior marketing and management positions for Thalia and Douglas. At present, Kiel is scientific director of the thinktank the black frame and teaches communication theory and verbal communication at Berlin University of the Arts.

In his book, Kiel takes us on a journey from education policy to hands-on innovation, from immersion theory to communication in action, and explains how all of these subjects link in with forestry. How and where will we be working together in the future? Where are we going to think? What does a shared workshop look like where knowledge and application are united? How are we going to develop new ideas in the future? How does one fail and why? In what ways must we learn to see from new perspectives?

As you read through the pages, a new text comes into a being – a new practice. The book inspires us to rethink our own practice. It presents the forest (photographed by Thorsten Arendt) where Kiel himself worked over 30 years ago. Pictures and essays thus merge into the kind of immersion that Kiel has termed “investigative aesthetics.”