We received again many excellent applications for our Ars Bioarctica residency at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. We want to thank everyone who applied for this opportunity. The final selections have now been made, and the artists will be travelling to the North later this year and in 2026. Below short introductions to all the selected projects.
Barbara Pollini will address bioreceptivity factors for lichen in the extreme environment of the subarctic climate. By incorporating lichens into bioreceptive art, she hopes to create living sculptures that could provide scientific data on environmental conditions.
Laura Heiss and Laura Benech aim to reflect on environmental changes, particularly Atlantification, in Arctic ecosystems whilst positioning water and salt as living archives of climatic, cultural, and ecological shifts.
Lauri Lähteenmäki's primary focus will be in academic writing in the fields of environmental humanities, philosophy, and art history.
Nikki Sheth is going to record soundscapes of the low arctic melting zones, capturing sounds produced by the warming climate to tell a story of disappearance.
Ellie Ballantine will examine the Spring temporalities at play in the trails around Kilpisjärvi and how these initiate complex rhythms and negotiations between people, plants and weather.
Petter Yxell is interested in how to develop and visually translate taxonomy and inventory as possible artistic methods.
Ernest Truely will examine the intersection between artists, researchers, seasonal workers, tourists and local residents of Kilpisjärvi by engaging in intimate social connection through rituals such as artist-led hairdressing.
Veli Lehtovaara will working on his doctoral research project, focusing on and around Lake Kilpisjärvi.
Emily May Armstrong will create a responsive soundscape to, and for, the polar summer through iterative sonification. The soundpiece will be accompanied by a residency-developed written meditation considering plant-human dormancies, a progressive loss of circadian attunement, and extreme environment adaptation – critical as climate change accelerates.
Martin Manojay Dusek is going to work on his long-term audiovisual project, a film mosaic, which explores the concept of time in relation to climate change.
Jon Macleod's and Frances Simmons' project uses somatic techniques as well as concepts from ecofeminist frameworks both as a mode for better observation and also as metaphor for belonging.
Isa Araújo plans to deepen her inquiry into interspecies collaboration and ecological temporalities through the lens of *de/compos(t)ing*, an artistic methodology inspired by rhizomatic systems such as mycelium, that explores cycles of *decomposition* and *composition*.
Photo by Venla Helenius, from Ars Bioarctica residency of Paula Kramer, Gesa Piper and Venla Helenius (Feb 2025)