At the Edges of Knowledge
Exhibition At the Edges of Knowledge, curated by the Contemporary Art Archipelago brings together art works produced as part of a long-term collaboration between art and science on the island of Seili at theArchipelago Research Institute (University of Turku) in celebration of its 60th anniversary. The presented works attend to observations and experiences at the edges of our knowledge and senses, tacit knowledge in science, voices absent in the archives, immeasurable variables in scientific monitoring, life invisible to human eyes below the surface of the sea, and plants deemed worthless as weeds.
Hand drawn time series of seawater temperature data, from the archive of the Archipelago Research Institute. Photo by Johanna Naukkarinen.
The exhibition draws attention to the significance of art and science collaboration in the face of the urgent societal and ecological challenges today. Seili is like a microcosm that offers a unique multifaceted prism for scientific and artistic enquiries: time series of data collected on the ecological transformations of the Baltic Sea meet here research on global climate change and the biopolitical history of the island’s institutions.
In dialogue with science, art opens up views in Seili into that which falls in between different modes of knowing, in the gaps in the archives and in the shadows of power structures. On the shifting shorelines of the Archipelago Sea the artists have focused their attention microscopically close-by but also woven connections across the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea to planetary circulations and between diverse temporal paces of change.
The exhibition presents works by the artists FoAM Earth (Maja Kuzmanović and Nik Gaffney), Fraud (Audrey Samson and Francisco Gallardo), Kalle Hamm and Band of Weeds, Matterlurgy (Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright), Lotta Petronella and Arja Renell.
A series of events is organized as part of the exhibition starting with the Herring Day, which opens the Archipelago Research Institute for the public on the 8th August 2024. The programme of the day sheds light on the changes of the Archipelago Sea from the perspective of the Baltic herring and the 40 years of herring research in Seili.
The exhibition At the Edges of Knowledge is part of a long-term collaboration between the Archipelago Research Institute and CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago since 2017. The art works have been produced with the support of Kone Foundation, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, Oskar Öflund Foundation and John Nurminen Foundation. The exhibition programme in 2024 is supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
https://contemporaryartarchipelago.org/.../at-the-edges.../
