The study of the functionality of climate art activism and outlining

the affecting features of art activism


In my dissertation, I study the audience reactions to the climate art pieces. My aim is to find the impressive features of art. What is affecting in art, ( if that something is affecting)?
The climate- themed  art pieces, whose communication properties I am clearing out
, have been made in the practical part of my study,  ​The Climate channel project, in collaboration with organizations and artists. The project was produced by Jatkumo ry.

My role in the project was:  initiator, producer, spokesperson, social media communicator, public relations representative, graphic designer, curator, director and interviewer. 
Currently I am doing the analysis of the audience interviews. 

 According to the working plan, the raw version of the dissertation will be complete by the end of  2023.

I have been a doctoral candidate and doing research in the University of Lapland since 2018.
  

2018-2021 I had the honor to work with a three-year grant from
The Finnish Cultural Foundation.

During 2023 I am doing my doctoral research at Tieteen ja toivon talo
/ The house of science and hope, Puistokatu 4. 


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The route is clear!/Spillage in winter wonderland/  Yule bock in the swamp
Tufted rug 2022

Artistic processing of the research theme

Mean while using more traditional research methods I am testing my own abilities in the same experimental challenge that was posed to The Climate Channel artists. In the Climate Channel, artists had to make art pieces of pre-defined climate-themes.  These art pieces had a communicative objective: to touch the audience, convey climate facts and even possibly change the thinking of the audience, at least for a moment. To make a crack in the reality that allows change, as Rancière would put it.

In the artistic processing of the research theme I give precedence to the esthetics and intuition over filling up the art pieces with facts. Nevertheless the art pieces reflect the themes of the practical part of my study: disappearing winters, bioenergy problems, run-down of fossil energy, anthropocene, climate anxiety, climate and economy etc. 

In addition to being related to the dissertation, the art pieces are also an independent artistic entity.
​Through art, new surprising orders can be created between things.
Eliminating confusion in one sphere of activity, such as an art piece, can contributeto eliminating it elsewhere (Vuorinen, 1997)

Farewell fossil Utopia! 2021-22

I have implemented the Farewell fossil Utopia!- art pieces with embroidery and felting techniques on eight old traditional heavy woven rugs, called raanu. Raanus that I am using are made in the 70s.  I update them artistically with the vastly changed reality of my own lifetime (1977- ). Delusional abundance and the era of limitless resources have changed into a time of strange contradiction, in which, as climate change progresses and in the midst of an ecological catastrophe, finnish everyday life still goes on within the fossil utopia reality. 

 

The city's spectrum of change symptoms 2023-

As a final stage of my artistic processing of the research themes, I will do

a series of rugs with tufting technique.  
I will start working in spring 2023. 

These art textiles  will incorporate climate themes, Helsinki's landscapes, omens of the future in urban space  and human presence.
Climate change is a topic that needs to be brought close, straight to the skin, otherwise it will be remote and easy to distance or even reject.
Personally, I have found climate change distressing, disturbing and close since my kids were born in (2007 and 2008).
Climate change is a natural, mandatory, albeit tough and difficult source of artistic work for me.

​Green gold, 150x220cm, detail of a sketch for a jacquard, 2020

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