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"what is our field" asks Leena Valkeäpää
we are looking for it
walking around Saana mountain in the mist, it is magical, and strange
we hum in the bog, a nearby permafrost site
we are taking samples to make sense of the soil
through paper flowers
winter is coming, up north
the equinox requires us to think of the planet
and we are identifying north
where Elina is from
the northern lights bring out the unafraid fox
we keep reading to each other
in an intimate conspiracy
trying to hold together the unevenness, the generations and cracks in our pasts
a form of dissonance training
to overcome the incapacitation
that has befallen us
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read more & listen to to the bog-song here: 'living methodologies' - language- listening - bog(ing)
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Critical collectifness, positioning, listening, dissonance training and self-critical reflection - methologies of the moment, when we recalibrate the field, this is where we are working from!
On-the-fly, fluid, constantly adapting artistic methodologies, we move, awake and with backbone (Haltung). Evolution requires listening, requires, awakeness, attention and compass.
I joined Biartsoctiey after my 2011 residency in Kilpisjärvi, 3 years after I moved with my family from Berlin to the island oof Hailuoto, in the Bothnian Bay in Finland. At the time I was considering to start a complex project around rural remote sound art and wind called Hai Art.
Since I have participated in field_notes; Hybrid Matters 2015 "sonic wild code" as a co-curator with Till Boverman and later joined again together with my daughter to participate in field_notes Ecology of Senses & Reciprocal Sensing (Insensible Sensibilities) with Kira O'Reilly in 2018.
For years I have been working on interspecific social sound, from "sonicwilderness" developed togther with Till Boverman to weaving feminist and other marginalized networks. With rec-on.org an online exhibtion space for political sound & listening, artists try to create new ideas, how to express and respond to the world with the tools we have.
Carving out methodologies such as "queer feminist sonic technologies" or "audiocollectifness" represents this creation, proposal and search for an alternate reality to market capitalisms and art industries.
That was the reason to travel more North than I already live and meet like-minded artists and practicioniers for a field camp about "living methodologies" in 2025.
But the mood in recent years has shifted, criticality has become more depressed and pushed into corners, the wars throw their shadows, covid left enhanced powerful anxieties and words are not enough anymore to adapt the complex realities and layers of consequences that change the land/ field.
It becomes clearer, no one knows how to slay the "monsters" of de-life-ization, I am coming away with the realisation, while we have to double down in our critical and self-critical collectifness, resist agendic capture and train to be ready for taking on responsibilities with all the skillsets we can aquire. Critical collectifness must stay rooted in the multi-layered reality of the field.
Listening is the beginning!
Onwards!
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Thank you to Bioartsociety crew for facilitating, organizing, caring and keep envisioning, thanks to Astreida and Aleksija for showing us their work and inspire us to think about protocols, methodology and care infrastructure, thanks to all my fellow artists and practitioners for the inspiration!