Neal Cahoon, Espen Sommer Eide, Erik Fallgren, Christine Hvidt, Anne Lindgaard Møller, Hilde Methi and Hannah Wiker Wikström
The North Escaping: Grasping Transformations
30 October – 1 December 2024
SOLU Space, Panimokatu 1 (3rd floor), Helsinki

Thu–Fri 13–18h
Sat–Sun 12–17h
or by appointment

Please join us for the exhibition opening on 30th October from 18:00-20:00.

The North Escaping: Grasping Transformations brings to Bioart Society’s SOLU Space elements of research, processes and works emerging from artists and curators Neal Cahoon, Espen Sommer Eide, Erik Fallgren, Christine Hvidt, Anne Lindgaard Møller, Hilde Methi and Hannah Wiker Wikström who had their The North Escaping residencies at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station during the Spring and Summer of 2024.

Each residency fellow responded in their own ways to The North Escaping, the red thread thematic of Bioart Society’s programme from 2022 to 2024. The theme engages with the ways in which climate change is rapidly transforming weather, ecosystems, habitats, livelihoods and cultures with an emphasis on those situated in the northern latitude. With these transdisciplinary research residencies still fresh, this exhibition is an exciting opportunity to make public the methodologies, mediums and materials they explored in an attempt to grasp the shift in time and space of this unique locale.

During her residency, Christine Hvidt explored the electrostatic nature of the alpine ecology in Kilpisjärvi: the electrostatic receptivity and navigation of bumblebees and butterflies, and the atmospheric electricity of the area. In addition to following the fieldwork of visiting research groups gathering data on different species of Lepidoptera, Hvidt created experimental electrostatic sensor impressions which are displayed in the exhibition as sound sculptures expressing an intimate composition based on field recordings from Kilpisjärvi.

Hannah Wiker Wikström approached The North Escaping framework through her long-term research on time-space-matter imagination and film considering energy, industrial heritage, transcorporeality, emotional/relational work and poetics as a strategy. During the residency, Wikström dug into the concept of a “weather-body”—a transcorporeal understanding where bodies, landscape, time and matter constantly pass through each other. In the exhibition, she presents an installation of durational sculptures and film as a diffracted reading responding to fetal-maternal microchimerism, bodies as landscape and the industrial heritage and the new waves of industrialisation in the Northern regions of Nordic countries.

Neal Cahoon, Espen Sommer Eide, Erik Fallgren, Hilde Methi and Anne Lindgaard Møller are a constellation of artists and curators who collaborated in residency on a set of place-based ideas and relational approaches. Their work is conceived as a radio play and is presented in a scenography consisting of artefacts, artworks, video, and other materials representative of their experience of being together at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. In dialogue with seasonality, multispecies communities, local knowledge carriers and other residents, their collective research engaged with the sun’s light, the cultural events taking place on and under the lake ice in the month of May, the modes and limits of technology and sensitivity, the relationships between art, tourism, and everyday living in Kilpisjärvi, as well as the role and purpose of the Biological Station itself.

The North Escaping program consists of transdisciplinary residencies at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. The aim of the residencies is to explore the current and approaching transformations in the North, investigate the possible consequences of these developments, and how we can build cultural capacities to deal with them. The residencies call for the arts to work with design, architecture, natural sciences, humanities, engineering, Indigenous stakeholders, the public at large – and others who feel they have a say in this – in transdisciplinary collaborations to develop new skills and knowledge. The program is supported by Nordic Culture Point.

Neal Cahoon is a researcher-practitioner working across the fields of poetics, listening, publishing, and curatorial practices. He was part of the curatorial team for LIAF 2019 and worked as the curatorial leader at Pikene på Broen in Kirkenes between 2020 and 2023. Neal is a member of the Mustarinda Association, the Post Humanities Hub, and now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lapland within the Intra-living in the Anthropocene research team.

Espen Sommer Eide is a composer and artist based in Oslo, Norway. His artistic practice involves time-based media with a special focus on music and sound, characterized by an experimental approach to instruments, archives, places and languages. His recent practice forms long-term relationships with specific areas – the border area between Norway/Russia/Finland, and the nature reserve of Østensjøvannet in Oslo. These ongoing works build webs of connections between nature, culture, history and sound of these places, often building unique instruments either inspired by forgotten pre-electric, analogue technology or based on artificial intelligence models trained on local datasets. His most recent solo works have been exhibited and performed at Marres House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht, Borealis Festival in Bergen, bb15 in Linz, Barents Spektakel and Festspillene i Nord-Norge. Sommer Eide is also a member of the performance/art collective Verdensteatret, with extensive international touring and exhibitions. https://sommer.alog.net/

Erik Fallgren (lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden) is a maker, designer and jack of all trades. Formally trained as an artist he has since art school worked in many creative fields among others in Swedish film- and TV-series productions as scenography assistant and set decorator. Since 2019 he has been affiliated with Tromsø kunstforening/Tromsø Art Association building and shaping art exhibitions. Recently he relocated to Stockholm and is currently studying the architecture programme at the Royal Institute of Technology. Erik’s tacit knowledge of the hand and body has a wide range of trade skills but he finds himself most at home in the wood workshop where he often creates unique objects and solutions from scrap wood.

Christine Hvidt is a Danish artist based in the Netherlands and Denmark working through different media, materials and disciplines such as sound, visuals, electronics, listening, performance, writing, and more. Christine explores respectful and intimate connections with other fellow planet companions such as bumblebees, earthworms, and more. Pivoting around questions such as how to create situations for overlapping the life worlds and expressions between different people and planetary creatures? or how to nurture sensibilities between bodies across different scales of time, space, and scope of perception? Christine applies principles of systems thinking, emergence and ecology through computational organisms, sonic attention, and relational work between situated bodies. An infant body of work evolves around the relation to the land and life there in the perspective of farming, the European colonial heritage, and animist practices focussing on Danish and Dutch cultures. As a part of the Soil life programme organised by Platform DIS and Stichting Bodemzicht Christine collaborates closely with farms establishing slow and long term relations with the flora, fauna, fungi, farmers, and forces in these lands.

Hilde Methi is a curator living in Kirkenes, Norway. Her work investigates the relationship of her own locale to a larger geopolitical setting. She builds ongoing collaborations infusing artistic ideas in local contexts. She curated & produced the Sámi Dáiddafestivála with artist Kristin Taarnesvik (2008-2012); Dark Ecology (2014-2018) with Sonic Acts; was lead curator of LIAF 2019 incl. The Kelp Congress, and with artist Signe Lidén involved in the durational Academy of Rhythmorphology (2020-) exploring rhythm, form and the tide. She is currently formulating a network responding to soils and three Northern forest regions with some artists and partners, TRE TRE TRE -with Sentient Soils Study (Mustarinda, 2023) being one initial part.

Anne Lindgaard Møller (b. Mørke, Denmark, lives and works between Tromsø and Stockholm) is a visual artist working with photography, text and installation. In 2018 she moved to Northern Norway to let the wind, the weather and the different seasons have a greater influence on her everyday life and art practice. Her works are often site-responsive, based on materiality and histories of place. Process and transformation are important elements in her practice as well as language, poetry and storytelling. Central to Anne’s explorations is an interest in our connectedness with the more-than human world.

Hannah Wiker Wikström is a Swedish artist and filmmaker. She holds a master’s degree in Fine Arts from KHIO in Oslo and Konstfack in Stockholm. With a history of collective processes, Hannah’s work circles between film, text, performance and performative installations, exploring queer, new materialist and posthumanist approaches in relation to form and aesthetics, spatiality and temporality. Hannah is a co-founder of several collective platforms such as Post Post, Omställning Skärholmen, Glada Sprutan and Eternal spring – sites for art and ecology. Previous work has been shown at several sites and film festivals, such as Oberhausen Kurtzfilmtage, Malmö Konsthall, CHART Art Fair, SALTS, Intercultural museum in Oslo, etc.

Photo: Christine Hvidt