Spectres in Change:
Site-Sensitive Art-Science Research in the Archipelago Sea

Mon, 13 Feb 2023
18.00-21.00 GMT

George Wood Theatre
Goldsmiths, University of London

How do you know what you know? has been the guiding question for artists and scientists coming together on the island of Seili in the Baltic Sea since 2017 to share methods, protocols and rituals of ecological enquiry. As a microcosm reflecting acute planetary challenges of the present against complex historical trajectories, the island has acted not only as a site but as a conspiring catalyst and mediator in the multidisciplinary dialogues. Prior to the establishment of the Archipelago Research Institute, the island served as a hospital, a site of confinement for lepers and most recently as a mental asylum exclusively for women. Long-term scientific mapping of the rapid transformations in the marine ecosystem is haunted in Seili today by centuries of institutionalised othering.

In the symposium, curator Taru Elfving introduces the collaborations addressing the myriad spectres of Seili. Insights into the ongoing work include Post Glacial Rebound by FoAM Earth, a soundwalk encouraging listening as the biological time of generations intersects with the slow time of tectonic forces, and the Band of Weeds’ interspecies cantata The New Pangaea, composed of field recordings of plants signalling diverse modes of migration to and disappearance from Seili. Artist and filmmaker Lotta Petronella presents her work-in-progress Själö Poeisis, a critical study of power structures on the island through plants, especially the common plants – the weeds, the vulgaris. The project consists of an artist book, a tarot herbarium, lecture performances, a choir work, an apothecary, botanical sessions and sleepings with plants.

Matterlurgy will share their work Field Casting, a research project and exhibition that investigates scientific ‘fieldwork’ as a site and subject of study, zooming in on the practices, tools and perspectives embroiled in the production of climate data. They will discuss the relationship between field practice and automated data collection and highlight knowledge as an event that is materially entangled with the lives of humans and nonhumans.

Fraud discuss Fields of May, a permanent installation within the Archipelago Research Institute in Seili. It is built with discarded naval wares from the museum-ship Sigyn (1887), a vessel which bore witness to transatlantic colonialism and the timber trade, as much as to the changing nature of Finnish forests. As an architecture of engagement that draws from legal and juridical traditions, Fields of May coalesces a diverse ecology of practices and historical-material specificities with the aim of cultivating the conditions of possibility that might conjure worlds attuned to non-extractive rhythms.

Spectres in Change symposium is chaired by Dr Ros Gray and hosted by the MA Art & Ecology and the Critical Ecologies research stream at Goldsmiths, University of London. The symposium is organised in collaboration with CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago, which has been leading the research project Spectres in Change in Seili since 2017, in partnership with Archipelago Research Institute of Turku University and supported by Kone Foundation, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and Oskar Öflund Foundation.

More information on the symposium and registration here.

Participants:

Dr Taru Elfving is a curator and writer based in Finland focused on nurturing undisciplinary and site-sensitive enquiries at the intersections of ecological, feminist and decolonial practices. She is artistic director and co-founder of CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago. Her previous curatorial research projects include Hours, Years, Aeons (Finnish Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2015), Frontiers in Retreat (HIAP Helsinki 2013-18), and Towards a Future Present (LIAF Lofoten 2008). She has a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Lotta Petronella is a filmmaker, artist and curator based in Turku, Finland. She is co-founder of CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago and has worked with and on islands for nearly two decades. Since her internationally awarded film Själö – Island of Souls (2020), she has been leading the collaborative research Själö Poeisis in Seili. She will premier new work at Helsinki Biennial in 2023. Petronella is also a devoted medicine and flower essence maker and tarot scholar.

Matterlurgy is a collaborative practice between London-based artists Helena Hunter and Dr Mark Peter Wright. Their work engages with the environmental sciences: its methods, processes and technologies for sensing, translating and predicting climate change/damage. Working across disciplines and media, they combine the production of artworks with co-constructed events, exhibitions and live performances. Recent works include Air Morphologies (Wellcome Collection/Delfina Foundation), Hydromancy (John Hansard Gallery/Onassis Stegi) and Sensitives Streams (Arts Catalyst/Whitechapel Gallery).

FRAUD (Dr Audrey Samson & Dr Francisco Gallardo) is a duo whose practice examines the extractivist gaze embedded in the management of raw materials. Their work develops modes of art-led enquiry into thinking materially about decolonization as a geosocial process. Somerset House Studios alumni, the duo has been awarded Artangel’s Making Time Fellowship (2023), the State of Lower Saxony – HBK Braunschweig Fellowship (2020), the King’s College Cultural Institute Grant (2018), and has been commissioned by the Istanbul Design Biennial (2020), RADAR Loughborough (2020), and the Cockayne Foundation (2018).

Dr Ros Gray is Programme Director of the MA Art & Ecology and Reader in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research is concerned with ways in which artists engage with ecological crisis, with particular focus on cultivation practices, soil care, and decolonial, feminist and queer approaches. Recent work includes co-editing of the Third Text special issue The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions and the podcast The Coloniality of Planting for Camden Art Centre’s series Botanical Minds. She was Principal Investigator of the Natural Environment Research Council’s Creative Climate Partnership Sensing Soil. She is a member of the Critical Ecologies research stream.

3.2. & 19.2.2023
Titanik Gallery, Turku

During the exhibition Field Casting by Matterlurgy (Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright) two public events introduce the artworks and the marine research the artists have been following at the Archipelago Research Institute on the Island of Seili since 2019. The exhibition and the accompanying events invite participation in the ongoing multidisciplinary dialogue and highlight the significance of fieldwork in the face of the escalating ecological emergency.

Fri 3.2. at 15.00

Introduction to the exhibition followed by discussion about field research of environmental changes in the Archipelago Sea: How is climate data stored, for example, within the ear bones of fish? How is this information interpreted and what can it tell of the possible futures of the Baltic Sea? The artists and curator of the exhibition in conversation with professor Jari Hänninen and researcher Katja Mäkinen from the Archipelago Research Institute. The event is in English.

Sun 19.2. at 14.00

Tour of the exhibition and discussion about art-science collaboration and fieldwork on the island of Seili. Professor emeritus Ilppo Vuorinen in conversation with curator Taru Elfving. The event is in Finnish.

Field Casting is part of the programme How do you know what you know? Exercises in Attentiveness which presents new artworks commissioned by CAA in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute (University of Turku) in the project Spectres in Change. 

The exhibition and the events are produced by CAA in partnership with Titanik Gallery and the Archipelago Research Institute (University of Turku). With support from the Kone Foundation, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and Oskar Öflund Foundation. Thanks to Eero Merimaa and sculpture students at Turku University of Applied Sciences, Tom Ranson, and Alex Ball at the Natural History Museum in London, UK.

3.9.2022 at 12pm until late
Ruissalo, Kino Diana & Manilla, Turku

For the past four years, CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago has been nurturing the sharing of methods, protocols and rituals – some inherited or borrowed, others invented or emergent – between artists visiting the island of Seili and scientists with decades-long embedded practice at the Archipelago Research Institute. We invite the audience now to take part in this ongoing experimentation with exercises in attentiveness.

On Saturday 3rd September, the public programme continues in Turku. A series of exercises on the island of Ruissalo will take place during the afternoon for small groups. In the evening new artworks commissioned by CAA will be presented in performances, screenings and discussions at Kino Diana and Manilla.

How do you know what you know? Exercises in Attentiveness events are organised collaboratively by CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago and New Performance Turku. The programme and the presented art works are produced as part of CAA’s project Spectres in Change in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute, and have been supported by Kone Foundation, the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and the Oskar Öflund Foundation.

PROGRAMME

12-15 Exercises in Attentiveness at Saaronniemi, Ruissalo (participatory activities, pre-booking required):

Själö Poeisis: Reading with Plants – Lotta Petronella with Cecilia Westerberg (pre-book here)

Buoyant – Maija Mustonen (pre-book here)

16-17 Film Premiere at Kino Diana (pre-booking plus places at the door depending on availability):

The Scent of the Changing Sea – Kati Roover (pre-book here)

18.30-00 Exercises in Attentiveness at Manilla
(performances & discussion, plus DJ set):

Fields of May – Fraud with Ilppo Vuorinen

The New Pangaea – Kalle Hamm & Band of Weeds

followed by DJ Antti-Juhani Manninen

EXERCISES IN RUISSALO

Själö Poeisis: Reading with Plants
Lotta Petronella with Cecilia Westerberg

A private reading with plants from Seili. Ask the island. Let it enter your imagination, your dreams.

The exercise is part of a larger body of work Själö Poeisis, a critical study of power structures through plants, especially the common plants – the weeds, the vulgaris. Själö Poeisis consists of an artist book, a herbarium, lecture performances, a choir work, an apothecary, botanical sessions and a set of 26 plant cards loosely based on the cosmology of tarot.

More detailed information will be sent to those who sign up for the event.

Buoyant
Maija Mustonen with Ami Karvonen and Even Minn

Imagine your weight and weightlessness, the movements of the sea on your skin under the autumn sky, you are floating.

The 70% watery human body is approximately 37°c whereas the seawater at Saaronniemi beach in Ruissalo is now about 18°c. The salt content of human tears and sweat is close to the salinity of the Archipelago Sea. The buoyancy varies between different water bodies. Every water has its own character.

Floating exercise is a meeting between seawater, a giver and a recipient. Buoyant is a participatory exercise by Maija Mustonen with a working group (Ami Karvonen and Even Minn). We will help you to float in short one-to-one sessions.

It is also possible to go to sauna. There is a unisex dressing room in the event and also a possibility for private dressing rooms. Please bring a swimsuit. More detailed information will be sent to those who sign up for the event.

SCREENING AT KINO DIANA

The Scent of the Changing Sea
Kati Roover

This video essay weaves together multisensory experiential knowledge and scientific observations in a poetic reflection on the distant past and possible futures of the Baltic Sea. Using archive material and new recordings of sound and video from Turku Archipelago, Roover looks for knowledge in between linear and circular thinking in response to this point in history, which calls for both old and new ways of navigation through an unknown future.

PERFORMANCES & DISCUSSIONS AT MANILLA

Fields of May
Fraud (Audrey Samson & Francisco Gallardo) with Ilppo Vuorinen

In conversation with professor emeritus Ilppo Vuorinen, Fraud presents Fields of May, a semi-permanent infrastructure installed at the Archipelago Research Institute this summer. The salvaged old masts of the museum ship Sigyn bear witness to colonialism and timber trade as much as to the changing nature of Finnish forests. They act now as a structure to chair multidisciplinary events to discuss the potentiality of more-than-human legal ecologies.

The New Pangaea
Kalle Hamm & Band of Weeds

Hamm plays The New Pangaea, a forthcoming new album by Band of Weeds that reflects the complex entanglement of human and plant life on the island of Seili. The interspecies cantata introduces 20 plants, which represent diverse modes of migration to, and disappearance from, the island. The cantata has been composed of field recordings of plants translated into sounds audible to the human ear.

Programme details available in Finnish on the New Performance Turku website.

Archipelago Research Institute, Seili
Thursday 4.8.2022, 13.15-00.00

This one-day workshop, held at the Archipelago Research Institute in Seili, invites participants to engage with the world of insects from both scientific and artistic perspectives. Taking place on Thursday 4^th August, the event, which guides attendees through the island’s current insect research, will be co-led by Metsähallitus conservation biologist Sampsa Malmberg and artist Arja Renell.

In summer 2021, Metsähallitus carried out an extensive insect survey with a particular focus on the endangered beetle species living in Seili. Amongst the numerous insects observed by the survey was the highly endangered Kärsämö beetle; Seili is now recognised as the beetle’s last remaining habitat in Finland alongside one site in Åland.

The artistic starting point for following insect research has been to document and reflect on the importance of long-term scientific research. Despite the immediate use of data obtained through species surveys – for example, in nature conservation activities such as population management to assist endangered species – the true value of research can sometimes only be determined after decades; it is by no means possible to predict all of its benefits.

During the upcoming Beetle Day, participants will become acquainted with the study of insects, as well as the interconnected relationship between the researcher and the subject. Questions such as how does the relationship with the species group, species or its individuals develop in long-term research? what kind of information is left out of scientific research? what can we learn from another species? and how can we practice the approach of another species so that we allow our senses to observe and find connections? will be asked throughout the day via a series of presentations, discussions and exercises.

The event will be held in Finnish, with English used as a second, intermediary language. Participants are welcome to use either Finnish and English for the discursive components of the workshop.

For the full itinerary (in Finnish), visit our Facebook event. Alternatively, for more information or to register, email info@contemporaryartarchipelago.org

Beetle Day is part of the series How do you know what you know? Exercises in Attentiveness which brings together and publicly shares a multi-year collaboration between artists and researchers at the Archipelago Research Institute on the island of Seili. The series is part of the CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago’s project Spectres in Change and it is supported by the Kone Foundation and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

12.8.2022 at 9:30-18:30
Seili Island

How do you know what you know? How to pay gratitude to all that makes our thought and labour possible? How to attend to that, which has been left unnamed and unnoted? How to withhold from the urge to name?

For the past four years, CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago has been nurturing the sharing of methods, protocols and rituals – some inherited or borrowed, others invented or emergent – between artists visiting the island Seili and scientists with decades-long embedded practice in Turku Archipelago. We invite the audience now to take part in this ongoing experimentation with exercises in attentiveness.

On Friday 12th August, a programme of performances, walks, sittings and other exercises will present new site-specific works commissioned by CAA for the island of Seili in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute. The participating artists include Band of Weeds, Foam Earth (Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney), Fraud (Audrey Samson and Francisco Gallardo), Kalle Hamm, Lotta Petronella, and Matterlurgy (Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright).

Seili and its myriad spectres have been guiding the work of CAA together with artists and scientists. The ghosts of environmental transformation, histories of othering, and reproductive labour of care have not called for explanation or exorcism, but rather invited acts of conjuring and conspiring with them. They have demanded a reckoning in the face of the abundant inheritances, so as to recall knowledges and sensibilities that lie hidden in the long shadows cast by traditions considered reasonable.

How do you know what you know? Exercises in Attentiveness events are organised collaboratively by CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago and New Performance Turku. The programme and the presented art works are produced as part of CAA’s project Spectres in Change and have been supported by Kone Foundation and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

For more information, visit the Facebook event.

Limited spaces. Book your ticket directly via Holvi.

Art Works & Exercises

Band of Weeds
The New Pangaea

An interspecies cantata performed in the museum church of Seili. The cantata reflects the complex entanglement of human and plant life on the island. It introduces twenty plants, which represent diverse modes of migration to and disappearance from the island. The cantata has been composed of field recordings of plants translated into sounds audible to the human ear.

FoAM Earth
Post Glacial Rebound

A soundwalk to encourage intimate connections with the island. Subtle resonances and disturbances, ecological transformations hovering on the edge of perception. The many sounds of flight. The signalling of plants and plankton. Listening as the biological time of generations intersects with the slow time of tectonic forces.

Matterlurgy with Katja Mäkinen
Otolith Reading

A conversation and practical demonstration about how scientists read climate data from the non-human world. Matterlurgy in collaboration with scientist Katja Mäkinen will share methods across art and science for listening with and reading information in the ear bone (otolith) of the Baltic Herring – a fish whose changing physiology has been linked to climate change and the shifting conditions of the Baltic Sea.

Fraud
Fields of May

An infrastructure converging practices and historical-material specificity which create the conditions of possibility to conjure worlds attuned to non-extractive rhythms. The salvaged masts, which compose the seating area, bear witness to colonialism and timber trade as much as to the changing nature of Finnish forests. Together with the herring windsock, they act as a structure to chair multidisciplinary events to discuss the potentiality of more-than-human legal ecologies.

Lotta Petronella
with Jasmin Inkinen, Lau Nau, Anna Karhu-Cormier, Cecilia Westerberg, Seppo Parkkinen
Själö Poeisis

Lament to Pine Trees is a polyphonic, collective gesture towards the girdled pine trees in the south forest of Seili performed by a small choir. A scent altar guides us back to the island. The Apothecary is an installation of medicine, environmental essences, scent archives and plant colours. Botanical Session with Henbane is a reading and observations with henbane on the grounds of the old hospital.

Archipelago Research Institute, Seili
2.6.2022, 10.00–16.30

Stressed Herring (Stressaantunut silakka), a day-long workshop at the Archipelago Research Institute, opens up the world of researchers and the changing realities occurring under the surface of the Archipelago Sea. Docent Marjut Rajasilta, research doctor Katja Mäkinen and artist Arja Renell will guide you through multi-generational herring research from the perspectives of both science and art.

Read the field notes for Stressed Herring

Since the 1980s, research related to the growth and reproduction of herring has been conducted at the Archipelago Research Institute in Seili. The research shows how the species adapts to a changing environment across a period of 40 years. One of the many trends that the data indicates is that the herring’s habits and characteristics have altered in response to changes in the Baltic Sea ecosystem.

The artistic starting point of following herring research has been to document and raise questions about the meaning of long-term scientific research. The real value of long-term research can sometimes only be determined decades later, and it is not possible to determine all of its benefits in advance. For example, the data collected on herring decades ago can be used to retrospectively map the development of climate change and its effects on the Baltic Sea.

Long-term research also reveals how prevailing trends in science at certain periods determine the importance of the research. An understanding of the context that determines one’s own choices and the limitations of the information that supports decision-making helps the researcher to understand broader entities and to be aware of making quick conclusions. The notion that an individual is part of a continuum of researchers is meaningful in itself.

During the day, participants will familiarise themselves with the institution’s herring research and its different phases, as well as the relationship between the researcher and the researched. How has a species or group of species been selected as the subject of research? How does the relationship with the research object develop in long-term research work? What information is left out of scientific research?  The topic will be approached through a variety of presentations, discussions and exercises.

The purpose of the workshop is to open up different approaches to both scientific research and being with another species.  A series of discussions will be held in response to the following questions: What can we learn from another species? How can we practice approaching otherness and being with it so that we give our senses space to observe and find connections? How can we learn to be a more equal part of this multiplicity of organisms, plants and minerals? How can we respect it as an independent value and not just as commodities intended for humans?

The event will be held in Finnish, with English used as a second, intermediary language. Participants are welcome to use either Finnish and English for the discursive components of the workshop.

Registration for the event and optional overnight stay on the island, 2-3 June, is required as places are limited. Accommodation and meals are at your own expense (for pricing information, Visit Seili).

For the full itinerary (in Finnish), visit our Facebook event. Alternatively, for more details or to register, email info@contemporaryartarchipelago.org.

Stressed herring is organised in cooperation with the Archipelago Research Institute (University of Turku) and CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago. It is part of the event series, How do you know what you know? Exercises in Attentiveness, which brings together and publicly shares a multi-year collaboration between artists and researchers at the Archipelago Research Institute on the island of Seili. The series is part of the CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago’s project Spectres in Change and it is supported by the Kone Foundation and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

Archipelago Centre Korpoström
21.5.2022 at 13.00-16.00

The short film Archipelago Science Fiction was realised in collaboration with the islanders in Turku Archipelago in 2011. Their fears and dreams for the future come together in four different visions of what the archipelago might be like in 2111.

The screening of the film will be followed by an open discussion with the artists Tellervo Kalleinen, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Antonia Ringbom: How did the future look like in the archipelago ten years ago? What has changed since then? Does anything seem even more timely today?

Archipelago Science Fiction was commissioned for the exhibition Contemporary Art Archipelago, as part of Turku 2011 European Capital of Culture programme. Artists Tellervo Kalleinen, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Henrik Andersson did numerous interviews in the archipelago, wrote scripts in workshops together with the islanders, and realised the film with more than a hundred locals as actors. Artist Antonia Ringbom created animations for the short film.

The film screening and discussion is organised by CAA in collaboration with the Archipelago Centre Korpoström. The event is part of the programme Ecology of Change, supported by Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

13.00-14.00 film screening
14.00-16.00 discussion (in Finnish and Swedish)

The film is 25 minutes long, in Finnish and Swedish with English subtitles. The event is free.

Turku to Seili
6.7.2021

The Midsummer Mast was disassembled on the Varvintori square in Turku and floated from the river Aura to the island of Seili by boat in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute of Turku University. Once on the island, together with local carpenters and boat builders, the museum ship Sigyn’s old masts and deck planks will be refashioned by FRAUD into an outdoor public sculpture Fields of May.

Warmest thanks to Jari Hänninen and Petri Kinnunen of the Archipelago Research Institute of Turku University for making this last maritime journey of the masts possible, to Lotta Petronella for the environmental essence created for the journey, and to Tuomo Rinne and Atte Pylvänäinen for the expert assistance on the floating of the masts.

Midsummer Mast and Fields of May by FRAUD are commissioned by CAA as part of Spectres in Change, funded by Kone Foundation. Fields of May will be inaugurated in the spring 2022 in Seili as part of an exhibition and a public programme in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute.

Midsummer Mast has been presented in Turku in co-operation with Forum Marinum and supported by the City of Turku. The mast was first hoisted in Fiskars as part of the exhibition Meadow during summer 2020 in collaboration with ONOMA. The work has been realised in collaboration with Entisöinti Rinne Oy.

Read more on the Midsummer Mast here.

4.9.2020
New Performance Turku

In collaboration with the New Performance Turku Festival, CAA invited festival audiences to travel to the island of Seili from the city of Turku on a day trip, 4 September 2020. The aim of the day’s programme was to share the ongoing processes of working with artists and scientists on the island. The talks, walks and performances were loosely framed by the idea of caring knowledge, with an emphasis on practices of observation as sticky entanglement. With a focus on diverse artistic and scientific methodologies, CAA invited the visitors to follow their own traces among the entwined sediments of natural and cultural histories on the island and the surrounding archipelago: how do we know what we know? How to situate our practices in the midst of ceaseless change?

The group of thirty visitors from Turku were guided on the island by filmmaker Lotta Petronella and professor emeritus Ilppo Vuorinen. Artist Saara Hannula’s tea ceremony drew attention to perennial plants on the island and the experiential knowledge stored in them. At the Archipelago Research Institute biologist Jasmin Inkinen introduced the lively microscopic underwater community of plankton.

Lotta Petronella drew from her four years of immersed study of the historical hospital archives of Seili and the women’s stories buried in there, while she also followed closely the ongoing scientific environmental research on the island for her recently premiered documentary film Själö – The Island of Souls. Petronella also shared her current research that recalls the multilayered narratives of the island through the spirit of the plants.

Ilppo Vuorinen worked as the director of the Archipelago Research Institute of Turku University in Seili between 1992 and 2016, but he first came to the island as a biology student already in the 1970s. Vuorinen recently published a book on the history of the island and the scientific research carried out there over the decades, such as the time series documenting the changes in the Archipelago Sea ecosystem.

Saara Hannula’s Matara introduced perennial plants growing on the meadows of Seili, such as lady’s bedstraw, St. John’s wort, yarrow, meadowsweet and red clover. Most of these are archaeophytes that have arrived in the Turku Archipelago as a side effect of seafaring and agriculture. They may also have been used as medicinal plants at the hospital in Seili. Matara is part of Hannula’s perennial artistic research into the traces of cultural and scientific practices performed on the island over centuries.

The day-trip was organised in collaboration with New Performance Turku as part of the 2020 festival Mobilities. The programme in Seili was coordinated by curator Taru Elfving, with the assistance of Saskia Suominen, as part of the Spectres in Change project by CAA and funded by Kone Foundation.