Saaronniemi beach, Ruissalo

SENSORY EXCURSION
Regenerative Void, and What Floats to the Shores

Riikka Armanto, Kirsikka Paakkinen, Kenneth Siren, Heini Uusisilta-Immonen

This excursion requires signing up in advance by Monday, 21 August here. Please note that the excursion is only for registered Aboagora participants.

We have looked at ways of arriving at the void, and many of them have been surprising. They could be a surprise to you, too. A gesture and a ritual with no true ties to anything could lead to nourishing encounters or to more considered ethical action. What ends up being created if futures are seen and felt as looming, delightfully welcoming nothingness?

Collaboratively, we have been delaying making decisions and determinations. We have been illustrating the thoughts we no longer have: all the material contested and abandoned that still ends up floating to the shore afterwards as flotsam. We have been dwelling on the flows of notions, turning with the tipping points constantly present and still not yet here. And we have been part of what emerges while attempting to conceive how. The emptiness comes in waves. But, on the shores of Ruissalo, we welcome you to join us in performative and reflective practices to sense the void with us and within. Could void serve us a pause, creative freedom from engagement, attachment, prediction and understanding, allowing for important questions to arise without immediate answers?

Some words we keep repeating and some experiences we return to. Some moments at the brink may bring us to the brink of something new.

Our multidisciplinary team is as follows: Riikka Armanto is an ecologist and doctoral researcher in the field of Futures Studies, at the University of Turku, focused to study on how futures are used (imagined, contested, created and pursued). In her thesis, she examines how climate-wise farming is performed through anticipation within farms’ dynamic socio-ecological processes and various human and non-human interactions. The issues of de-colonizing futures and inclusion in participatory futures research are especially in her interest. She wishes to explore her own paths of academic work through intuition, embodiment and creativity to engage with the biosphere. Kirsikka Paakkinen is a Karelian-Finnish filmmaker and artist. She lives and works in Rovaniemi, Finland. Paakkinen has graduated with an MFA in Film from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her first short documentary film, When the Mill Hill Trees Spoke to Me, has been screened at numerous festivals in Europe and won the Films for our Future award at Lucca Film Festival in 2022. She is curious about humans’ relationship with nature in its various forms and contradictions. Cultural history and anthropological perspectives as well as dreamlike visions and experiences of the sacred in nature inspire her. Kenneth Siren is a doctoral researcher in theatre arts at the Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke) of the Theatre Academy, and a lecturer in University Pedagogical Studies in the Arts. Their research incorporates Deweyan pragmatism and collaborative theatre practices that allow participants to identify and transform their habits. Often, their performances combine lyrical text with movement and touch on topics relating to gender diversity. Heini Uusisilta-Immonen is a visual artist living and working in Järvenpää, Finland. She is currently studying in the Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art Master’s Programme at Aalto University, after receiving her BA from Kankaanpää School of Fine Arts, Satakunta University of Applied Sciences. She likes to combine and experiment with different mediums. Collaborative art-science projects as well as projects that focus on care and sensitivity towards our surrounding environment have been at the centre of her work in recent years.