
Janelle VanderKelen
Knoxville, TN
Janelle VanderKelen is an artist, curator, and educator based in Knoxville, TN. Her films and ceramic sculptures imagine alternative acts of relation between imperfect bodies (human, vegetal, geological, or otherwise). She uses experimental animation to make the agency of plants and fungi visible for human audiences.
Janelle’s award-winning films have screened at festivals including Ann Arbor Film Festival, True/False Film Festival, CROSSROADS, Revelation Perth International Film Festival, and Antimatter [Media Art] Festival. Recent honors include include a 2023 Mary L. Nohl Individual Artist Fellowship, a juried award at the 61st Ann Arbor Film Festival, and a 2023 MacDowell Residency.
Janelle is an Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Time-Based Arts in the School of Art at the University of Tennessee. She received both her MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres and her MA in Intermedia Art from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.

Janelle VanderKelen, The Golden Thread, 2027. Still from 16mm film transferred to video + sound. Photographer: Janelle VanderKelen
Janelle VanderKelen, The Golden Thread, 2027. Still from 16mm film transferred to video + sound. Photographer: Janelle VanderKelen
Janelle VanderKelen, The Golden Thread, 2027. Still from 16mm film transferred to video + sound. Photographer: Janelle VanderKelen
The Golden Thread
Janelle VanderKelen’s award-winning films use experimental animation to make the agency of plants and landscapes visible for human audiences.
Artist BioThe Golden Thread is a 16mm feature film that highlights ways unseen fungi help slow climate change and mitigate its effects. This experimental documentary will be filmed in Germany near the home of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century abbess, proto-feminist scholar, composer, and self-taught naturalist. Her copious writings demonstrate a sophisticated understandings of more-than-human agency and continue to influence environmental dialogues nearly a millennia later. Hildegard’s life was also marked by numerous mystical visions, and her writings mention intriguing images of golden strands connecting all life.
The Golden Thread reimagines the connective threads from Hildegard’s visions as the glistening fungal mycorrhizae that recent scientific discoveries indicate are integral to interspecies plant collaboration, human agriculture, forest conservation, and carbon sequestration. Throughout the course of the film, animated sequences will make the agency of these golden fungal threads visible as they envelope the architecture of the Abbey of St. Hildegard, a religious community founded by Hildegard that is still active today.