Spectres in Change
Hints, Traces and Resonances - Experiencing Ecological Uncertainty
Monday, May, 13, 2019, 15–17h
SOLU Space, Luotsikatu 13
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The first public event of Spectres in Change features a lecture performance by Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney of FoAM, followed by a conversation with curator Taru Elfving. Seasonal refreshments including spring teas and trans-local spirits will be served. The event is organised by CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago in collaboration with the Bioart Society.
Spectres in Change is a platform for artistic investigations, reflecting on acute planetary challenges of the present against complex historical trajectories, on the island of Seili in the Archipelago Sea. Long-term scientific mapping of transformations in the local ecosystem entwines on the island with centuries of institutionalised othering and histories of illness, rationality, and gender.
At the Spectres in Change, FoAM offers a contextual and aesthetic backdrop for their fieldwork on Seili. Through an interplay of sound, text and image they suggest varied relationships with animate, inanimate and partially animate critters inhabiting the world. It is an invitation to pay attention to a multitude of voices, omnipresent but often too quiet to notice amidst the noise of human activity. A lure for listening and noticing the Earth unfolding at different timescales. Attuning to matter in its myriad forms and flows. Unexpected resonances lurking in the gaps of a seemingly seamless reality. Liminal disturbances and barely audible crumblings hinting to a perpetually wavering restlessness. Composed with/by/for the beings and phenomena encountered in the Sonoran desert, the sacred forests of Kumano Kodō, and the coastal habitats of the Adriatic and Archipelago Seas.
Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney are co-founders of FoAM, a transdisciplinary network of labs at the intersection of art, science, nature and everyday life. They currently work as the nomadic entity FoAM Earth, exploring futurecrafting as a way of re-enchanting the present. True to FoAM’s motto “grow your own worlds”, they create propositions, immersive situations and (peak) experiences. As an act of resistance against dystopian fears of uncertainty, they cultivate kinship networks and circumstances for conviviality and collaboration, while exploring animist approaches to time, attunement and interconnectedness as transformative practices for contemporary techno-materialist culture. Their works and ways of working invoke new worlds, summon echoes of voices otherwise unheard to entice collective imagination and solidarity. In order to align the work itself with their ways of living and working, FoAM experiments with distributed forms of financing, administration and sharing infrastructure, while navigating between open-resource ethics and mainstream economic realities.
More information on FoAM:
https://fo.am/activities/resonances/
https://fo.am/activities/spectres-in-change/
Spectres in Change is developed by curatorial collective CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago (Taru Elfving and Lotta Petronella) in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute of Turku University. The five-year project is funded by Kone Foundation, with additional support from Konstsamfundet, Arts Council of Finland, and Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.
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Image: FoAM / Spectres in Change