Red Herring
Red Herring
– Island net/work for art and science across the Baltic Sea
Red Herring is a network that brings together artists and scientists across the Baltic Sea to address the intertwined ecological and societal changes affecting the shared marine environment and the communities around it. Its goal is to create a platform and methods for interdisciplinary collaborations that attend to the specificities of different island contexts, but also weave connections between local, regional and planetary scales. Centring environmental phenomena, the network strives to open up novel perspectives on the interdependency of ecological, cultural, geopolitical and socio-economic changes, histories and possible futures. The network takes the Baltic herring – “a political animal” – as a starting point, which allows insights into the transformations of the Baltic Sea region from diverse perspectives.
The pilot phase of Red Herring focuses on the development of a long-term network between three islands, where the partner organisations are based: Gotland (Sweden), Hiiumaa (Estonia), and Seili (Finland). The activities of the network in 2024-25 have been structured around research visits that bring together the partners with artists and scientists working on the three island contexts. The first field trip was hosted by Baltic Art Center on Gotland in October 2024; the second field trip by Kordon Residency on Hiiumaa in February 2025; and the third field trip by CAA on Seili in April 2025.
These visits focus on key marine species in each location as focal points for interdisciplinary dialogue on how the entangled cultural and natural histories affect the present and the possible futures. The aim of these activities is to reflect on the potential and challenges of transferring situated practices between places, and to consider what kind of curatorial mediation and support structures long-term collaborations will require, in each specific context and in between them.
The Red Herring network is co-organised by Contemporary Art Archipelago (CAA), Baltic Art Center (BAC) and Kordon Residency with support from the Nordic Culture Point.
Island visits
As part of the pilot phase, participating artists were commissioned to write fieldnotes on their respective island visits. We invite you to read these reflections:
