.
"what is our field" asks Leena
we are looking for it
walking around Saana mountain in the mist, it is magical, and strange
we hum in the bog, a nearby permafrost site
we are taking samples to make sense of the soil
through paper flowers
winter is coming, up north
the equinox requires us to think of the planet
and we are identifying north
where Elina is from
the northern lights bring out the unafraid fox
we keep reading to each other
in an intimate conspiracy
trying to hold together the unevenness, the generations and cracks in our pasts
a form of dissonance training
to overcome the incapacitation
that has befallen us
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Read more & listen to the bog-song here: 'living methodologies' - language- listening - bog(ing)
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Critical collectif-ness, positioning, listening, dissonance training and self-critical reflection – methodologies of the moment, when we recalibrate the field, this is where we are working from!
On-the-fly, fluid, constantly adapting artistic methodologies, we move awake and with backbone (Haltung in German). Evolution requires listening, awakeness, attention and compass.
I joined Bioart Society after my 2011 residency in Kilpisjärvi, three years after I moved with my family from Berlin to the island of Hailuoto, in the Bothnian Bay in Finland. At the time I was considering to start a complex project around rural remote sound art and wind called Hai Art.
Since I have participated in Field_Notes – Hybrid Matters in 2015 "sonic wild code" as a co-curator with Till Boverman, and later joined again together with my daughter to participate in Field_Notes – Ecology of Senses: Reciprocal Sensing (Insensible Sensibilities) hosted by Kira O'Reilly in 2018.
For years I have been working on interspecific social sound, from "sonicwilderness" developed together with Till, to weaving feminist and other marginalized networks. With rec-on.org, an online exhibition space for political sound & listening, artists try to create new ideas, how to express and respond to the world with the tools we have.
Carving out methodologies such as "queer feminist sonic technologies" or "audio collectif-ness" represents this creation, proposal and search for an alternate reality to market capitalism and art industries.
That was the reason to travel further North than I already live and meet like-minded artists and practitioners for a field camp about "living methodologies" in 2025.
But the mood in recent years has shifted: criticality has become more depressed and pushed into corners, the wars throw their shadows, covid left enhanced powerful anxieties, and words are not enough anymore to adapt the complex realities and layers of consequences that change the land/ field.
It becomes clearer. No one knows how to slay the "monsters" of de-life-ization, I am coming away with the realisation, while we have to double down in our critical and self-critical collectif-ness, resist agendic capture and train to be ready for taking on responsibilities with all the skillsets we can acquire. Critical collectif-ness must stay rooted in the multi-layered reality of the field.
Listening is the beginning!
Onwards!
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Thank you Bioart Society crew for facilitating, organizing, caring and envisioning, thanks to Astrida and Aleksija Neimanis for showing us their work and inspiring us to think about protocols, methodology and care infrastructure. Thanks to all my fellow artists and practitioners for the inspiration!
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Performing as AGF, East German-now Finland based poetess and media artist Antye Greie-Ripatti utilises language, music & explores the quantum within the depths of sound & listening on rec-on.org and @poemproducer