Walks in the Steam of Cryosphere
Caused by global warming, the melting permafrost releases microbes that have been frozen since prehistoric times. These microbes such as viruses can potentially cause a risk to the current ecosystems, but what could lay beyond pathogenicity?
Could this inevitable encounter be considered as a potential moment of resilience? How to encounter these time travelers and their life originating from thousands of years back in time?
Mari Keski-Korsu’s exhibition is a study of the life that is released by the melting of the permafrost in the Arctic palsa mires of Swedish Lapland and the changes in the more-than-human relations caused by climate crisis. The exhibition is part of Keski-Korsu’s artistic doctoral research, which investigates the role of more-than-human rituals and the changes within them during ecological polycrisis. She has done field research as part of a multidisciplinary art and science research group at the Abisko scientific research station in the subarctic area of northern Sweden.
The methods used by Keski-Korsu include (barefoot) walking as ritualisation, folk healing performance – especially peat treatment in sauna – and intuitive communication within the more-than-human realm. The exhibition features the video work Walking with Permafrost, including walking through the movements of microbes in a small palsa mire called Storflaket, and the Cryospheric Steams Repository, which consists of samples of sweat, permafrost melted water and peat collected from numerous sauna healing performances. Cryosphere in the name of the exhibition refers to all Earth’s water in solid form, for example (continental) glaciers and permafrost.
Mari Keski-Korsu (b. 1976) is a postdisciplinary artist whose work is based on multispecies collaboration. Her medium of expression is a hybrid combination of participatory performance, visual and live art. The exhibition is part of Keski-Korsu’s dissertation at the Department of Art and Media in Aalto University. The artistic research was partly realised in the indigenous lands of North Sápmi, where Sámi people have lived since time immemorial. Keski-Korsu states: “I pay respect to the land, water, and air that sustain humans, and to all their relations.”
The exhibition is the first part of a whole investigating ways to create resilience in a world filled with crises. The second part of the exhibition highlights works by the Swedish artist Hanna Ljungh. The exhibition has received support from the Finnish Heritage Agency. Mari Keski-Korsu’s research is supported by Kone Foundation, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
marikeskikorsu.net
