Field_Notes is an art and science field laboratory organised by Bioart Society at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki in Sápmi since 2011. The previous Field_Notes editions include Cultivating Grounds (2011), Deep Time (2013), HYBRID MATTERs (2015), EOS (2018), The Heavens (2019) and Traces (2021), and The North Escaping (2023).
As part of the Feral Labs Network, Field_Notes deconstructs the concept of the traditional scientific laboratory in favour of research and knowledges that are situated and responsive to locales and contexts. Here the land and human/more-than-human ecosystems are not something to simply research in or about but research with.
Field_Notes – Living Methodologies responds to shifts in the field of art and science insisting that how we research matters. Engaging with specific sites via a range of methodological approaches has been vital to previous Field_Notes; building on past iterations, this feral field lab attends to the methodologies themselves.
Methods carry ethical and political weight; methods are not simply instruments to be selected at will, but practices that have consequences for the relationships, bodies, materials and knowledge systems they engage with. They demand attentiveness to context, accountability to the beings and environments involved, and an openness to being shaped by the process itself. Rather than treating methods as extractive or universally applicable, they require a commitment to ongoing negotiation, care, and responsiveness, resisting the tendency to instrumentalise knowledge for convenience or efficiency.
How do fieldwork encounters call us into ethical relationships with the lives—human, more-than-human, material—that they engage? How might we rethink “data” in ways that honor the complexities of lived, entangled field experiences? How do we cultivate methods that emerge through lived, embodied experience rather than imposing external research logics? What kinds of practices, commitments, and collaborations enable research methodologies to be reshaped by plurality rather than merely incorporating it?
During the laboratory a group of 15 participants will work together to examine, exchange and experiment with different methods and approaches towards shaping a future ethics and politics of researching in the field in Kilpisjärvi and beyond. The group will be composed of 7 practitioners selected from this call, and 7 practitioners who are invited to bring methods, prompts and provocations for the group to collectively test and trouble in site-sensitive ways. While some activities will be guided, Field_Notes – Living Methodologies embraces a slow pace and gives space for questions, actions and responses to emerge from and with the site and the group. Invited guests include: Anastasia (A) Alevtin, Sam Nightingale, Astrida Neimanis, Aleksija Neimanis, Leena Valkeapää, with more to be confirmed.
Field_Notes – Living Methodologies is part of the Feral Labs Network and Creative Europe project Rewilding Cultures 2022-2026 joining partners from eight EU countries (Finland, Slovenia, France, Austria, Greece, Croatia, Denmark, Portugal) in their common interests in art-science and art-technology research and in capacity building of creative communities and hubs, to host process-based activities like peer learning, field work, research and co-creation, instead on presentation of finished artworks.
Photo: Till Bovermann, Field_Notes - North Escaping, Wait and Hear group, 2023