Climate Utopias
Main Exhibition
Artists:
Ismail Odetola, Miia Autio, Nuño de la Serna, Sophie Allerding
Space:
Vesijärvenkatu 20
Open:
15.11.–30.11.
Mon–Fri 15–20 / Sat–Sun 12–18
Our capacity to create change depends on our ability to envision alternatives. Only the things that we can imagine are possible.
It has been said that people living in Western societies can better imagine the end of the world than an alternative to the capitalist system. According to researchers, a lack of collective imagination and alternative images of the future are some of the most significant obstacles in the struggle against the climate crisis. We are effective at building dystopian visions of the future, brought on by passivity. But what if we changed our outlook and act now? What might a future in the midst of the climate crisis look like?
In the main exhibition of the festival four international artists open up visions, imaginations and alternative futures. How could the mythical figure of the mermaid help us build solidarity with the ocean as it is blanketing cities? Could the catastrophe brought on by covid-19 help us identify with a future amidst the eco-catastrophe? Is it possible to redirect media images towards climate action? What will our relationships with technology, communality and non-human actors be like in the future?
To Teach a Bird to Fly
Movie by:
Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts
Space:
Rautatienkatu 11
Open:
15.11-30.11
Mon–Fri 15–20 / Sat–Sun 12–18
Screenings begin every 30 minutes.
To Teach a Bird to Fly (2020) imagines a future where the effects of climate change have been reversed. The documentary-fiction film creates a multi-layered narrative that explores bird extinction, interspecies relationships, and climate change – from the perspective of a very different future.
A woman relates events from the past – today’s world – when her 25-year-old grandmother worked as a foster parent to the critically endangered Northern Bald Ibis. The story follows the young woman as she hand-raises the alien-looking birds, spending her days, weeks, and months living with the Ibises, and eventually teaching them to migrate across the Alps to their wintering grounds in Italy.
To Teach a Bird to Fly imagines a world where the relationship between humans and nonhuman species is not one based on exploitation, but on cohabitation and collaboration. It reverses the predominant dystopic imagery of climate change and extinction narratives upside down, replaces them with a very differently imagined future. The film offers us a glimpse into a world changed for the better, and gives us reason for hope – and action – in the present.
Transporter
Artists:
Jukka Silokunnas
Space:
Rautatienkatu 21
Open:
15.11 - 30.11
24/7
The stop-motion video by Jukka Silokunnas follows a van through a process of decomposition and vanishing. The piece can be viewed from the street at all hours of the day for the duration of the festival.
The space for the work has been provided by the local family-owned business Eurokangas.