Field_Notes – The North Escaping starts this Sunday at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. The two-week-long field laboratory entails developing, testing and evaluating specific interdisciplinary approaches under the theme of The North Escaping in the sub-arctic Lapland. Field_Notes is an unique opportunity for artists, scientists and other practitioners to set things in motion through intense fieldwork. The programme includes, among other things, hikes, excursions, lectures and discussions.
There are three groups of five, of which the participants have been chosen via an open call held in spring 2023. These groups are Andscapes, TALE and Wait and Hear, and they are lead by artist and writer Elizabeth McTernan, doctoral researcher, artist and curator Erich Berger and artist and scientist Till Bovermann. The groups will approach the theme of The North Esacping from different standpoints. There is also a fourth group called Second Order, which has a different working model than rest of the Field_Notes – The North Escaping groups. Second Order critically looks at the other groups' methods and practises of the field, which might include the encouragement to step out of predefined schemes or even to violate traditional field norms in order to experiment with new ideas. The Second Order group has always been important and instrumental to each Field_Notes edition. More information about all the groups can be found below.
The Andscapes group will critically engage with questions of scale and the tools we use to understand our surroundings. How does one measure an unruly world? During the two-week work period, the group members will embrace andscapes and their roughness – both in the sense of irregularity and resistance, and in the sense of guesswork, sketching, and imprecision. In their fieldwork, which will comprise observations, reflections, and interventions, roughness will not be a barrier to knowledges, but an index of difference and uncertainty to be celebrated. The group members include visual artist Aleksi Jaakkola, artist-researcher Jill Sorensen, freelance artist and cultural coordinator John Grzinich, research-based visual artist Laure Winants and filmmaker Leena Lehti. The group is hosted by Elizabeth McTernan.
The TALE group (soft and messy TranstemporAL Exploration) will set out to navigate the plurality of times that present themselves in the landscape in and around Kilpisjärvi. The group will ready themselves to leave the ‘shallow time’ of human-centered temporalities behind, with the goal to enter into ‘deep time’ and to traverse and explore ‘other-than’ and ‘more-than-human’ temporalities. The ambition is to de-temporalize and see how the initial questions of The North Escaping change when the temporalities and scales they originate from are shifted. The group members include multidisciplinary artist and Ph.D. candidate Aurora Del Rio, artist / scientist Christina Stadlbauer, multidisciplinary artist and doctoral candidate Katri Naukkarinen, professor María Antonia González Valerio, contemporary artist Solveig Settemsdal and artist Taavi Suisalu. The group is hosted by Erich Berger.
The Wait and Hear group proposes an open exploration based on listening. It extends an invitation to encounter, experience and comment on Kilpisjärvi – the region, the lake, the settlement, the living – as what the group will refer to as Organism(s), through which a manifold of consequences and influences of human intervention, their diffusion, and their interrelations are starkly noticeable. While the group spends time in the field and critically analyzes their surroundings, themselves, and their interrelation to the different forms Kilpisjärvi presents itself, they will try to resist the urge to immediately engage for as long as possible. Instead, they will gather on fells listening to wind, stones and water. The group participants include social anthropologist Alicja Staniszewska, artist researcher Bartaku, social designer, researcher and writer Jan Christian Schulz, artist Joshua Le Gallienne and multidisciplinary artist Mari Mäkiö. The group is hosted by Till Bovermann.
Second Order group is composed of journalists, artists and anthropologists who will embedded themselves into the other groups with the aim to document their work, gain insight into their approaches and offer counter perspectives. The group will focus on observation, foster awareness of emerging practices and will assist in learning from one another. In order to study and intervene in the other groups, Second Order will employ various inventive methods and pilot new ideas. The group members include post-doctoral research fellow Jonathan Carruthers-Jones, journalist Elsa Ferreira, transdisciplinary artist Teemu Lehmusruusu and anthropologist Roger Norum.