The artist collective Cesar & Lois has been selected for a residency at the Oulanga research station and the artist Felicia Honkasalo at the Pyhäsalmi mine. There were about 280 applications, congratulations to those who have been selected!
Residency participants are paid a residency and production allowance of €15,000 for a two-month (2-month) period of residency and independent work, the end result of which is a new work. The residencies are part of Photo North – the international More Than One Understanding of Planet collaborative project, which develops environmental literacy during space exploration, artistic work and collaboration in 2022-2025. The project is a prelude to the cultural capital year of Oulu in 2026.
The residencies of the project and the artists selected for the residencies:
Meander/Boreal Forest
Location: Oulanka Research Station, Kuusamo, Kainuu, Finland
The More-than-Planet // Meander/Boreal Forest residency provides access to the Oulanka Research Station for artists interested in intersections of art and science. The research station and its surroundings provide opportunities for research and art in a wide range of fields including climate, biodiversity, extreme conditions, stream ecology, coniferous zone research, land use change and transformation, biology, remote sensing and past, present and possible futures. The area provides opportunities for study of the various impacts of climate change on local populations, nature and the vitality of the area.
Artists in residence
In their project titled Forest Floor to Planet: Hyphae-nated Intelligence the collective Cesar & Lois will contemplate the complexity of the floor of the boreal forest and create an artwork incorporating what they describe as “boreal intelligence.”
To do so, during the residency, in cooperation with the scientists and naturalists that are already working at the Oulanka Research Station, they will design and place several sensors alongside with existing climate and environmental test areas that will provide the information of different layers of the forest.Their goal is to create their own network at Oulanka to collect the information and data provided by the living microorganisms that will be used to develop their final artworks: “By contemplating the boreal forest and carefully creating a system-artwork that allows the articulation of the complexity and intelligence of the boreal forest, we intend to give visibility to the equity of non-human existences and ecosystems.”
Cesar & Lois collective
The artist duo consists of Lucy HG Solomon (USA) and Cesar Baio (Brazil). Lucy HG Solomon is artist and a Fulbright scholar whose global project probes microbiological connections across distant terrains, spanning from the microbiology of the Arctic to the Amazon. An educator in the Department of Art, Media and Design at California State University San Marcos, she leads the DaTA Lab (Laboratory for Data and Transdisciplinary Art).
Cesar Baio is a scholar whose postdoctoral work at i-DAT (Institute of Digital Art and Technology) at Plymouth University is on data and the city. He is a professor in the area of art and technology at Universidade Estadual de Campinas and the director of actLAB.
Cesar & Lois received the 2018 Lumen Prize in AI, exhibited in Singapore’s Global Digital Art Prize triennial (2019) and were artists in residence at Coalesce Center for Biological Arts (2020 and 2021).
Deep
Location: Pyhäsalmi Mine, Pyhäjärvi and Oulu, North Ostrobothnia, Finland
The More-than-Planet // Deep residency provides access to the 1,444-metre deep Pyhäsalmi Mine. The station and the environment provide opportunities for research and art across an extensive range of fields including extreme environmental conditions, geology, particle and space research, analogue astronautics, industrial transformation, underground safety, security and testing, biotope art, renewable energy (geothermal and hydroelectric), and remote sensing as well as the past, the present and the potential futures. The site allows for the study of the impact of the mine and its closure on the local population, the nature and the vitality of the area. The residence partner is international, multidisciplinary research and development centre Callio Lab.
Artists in residence
Felicia Honkasalo
Her proposal for the residency at Pyhäsalmi Mine is to work on a project merging technology, fantasy, historical and personal archives together with everyday human experiences, creating a new video work that juxtaposes rescue operations carried out at the mine with perspectives of the local community. In this sense, she is specifically interested in how economic, political and cultural relations in Finland but also abroad have shaped the essence of the mine area. “The work invites the viewer on a meditative journey into the depths of the earth through never ending tunnels of loneliness. Encountering ever stranger phenomena, the journey descends into an underground world, filled with scenes of complete destruction but also salvation.”
Felicia Honkasalo (Finland) lives and works in Helsinki. She has a Masters degree from the Department of Time-based Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki, and a BA in Photography from Camberwell College of Arts, London UK. Her work has been shown in Finland and abroad in solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and at international film screenings. Her first publication, Grey Cobalt, was published by Loose Joints in 2019.