Agnes Meyer-Brandis has received the European Commission’s STARTS Prize 2026 in the category “Grand Prize – Innovative Collaboration”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.

The long-term project has been developed in a close collaboration with the Climate Whirl Art&Science program at INAR (Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research), the Hyytiälä Forest Station University of Helsinki, as well as the Peatland and Soil Ecology Research Group at the University of Eastern Finland and many other scientific institutions world wide.

Congratulations for Agnes and all the OTM Agents!

Read more about the prize here:

Read the interview of Agnes 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 exemplifying 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 moment 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 exhibited in the Festival program. The last edition of the ARS Electronica 2025 gathered to Linz around 122 000 visitors.

The permanent Office for Tree Migration is open at Hyytiälä Forest Station daily until the end of October, 2026, as a part of Periferia exhibition.