Kati Roover
1.-3.6. / 12.-13.8.2022
Seili and Nauvo
“That’s when the last sentences of the final version of The Scent of the Changing Sea were born,” recalls the artist Kati Roover as she reflects on her residency on Seili and the neighbouring island of Nauvo. During the summer months of 2022, Kati spent time thinking, moving, filming and recording with the many human and nonhuman narratives woven within the geologies of land and the sediments of sea.
In June, the artist photographed and filmed a Jatulintarha (a maze made of rocks) in Nauvo as well as a tranquil area of Seili in which mosses and rocks entwine with each other. Through her engagement with this particular Jatulintarha, Kati remembers: “I was thinking about the layered history of the islands and the connection between them. While walking through the Jatulintarha, I noticed a change in my state of consciousness, and in that state I thought about how different modern people’s patience and timescales are.”
Her work on Seili focused predominantly on making visual and audio field recordings at locations across the island, while also researching the different historical and ecological phases of the Baltic Sea with the aid of Professor Emeritus Ilppo Vuorinen. In addition to this, the artist participated in Stressed Herring – a workshop led by Docent Marjut Rajasilta, research doctor Katja Mäkinen and artist Arja Renell. She says, “I remember studying the Baltic Herring and thinking about the changes in the Baltic Sea from their point of view. It was really great to get to know the Archipelago Research Institute’s herring research as well as its climate change observations.”
Kati’s tactile experiences with culturally and ecologically layered sites along with the multi-decade research shared by the institute fed into the artist’s ways of thinking and working – something that can indeed be found in the closing lines of her film: “The mosses and rocks remember that this is not the first time the glaciers have melted. They have taught me to move slowly, softly, sensing my surroundings.”
Kati Roover’s film The Scent of the Changing Sea has been presented in two versions (2020, 2022).
Read more about the artist’s work in this CAA interview.
