Oulu Art Museum, in the Adaptation exhibition space
14.11. – 15.00–16.30
Event is included in the price of the art museum entrance ticket.
Discussion in English.
Adaptation has long been understood as biological or cultural adaptation to changes in the environment and the prevailing forces, or as a means of coping with difficult situations. But what could adaptation be instead of simply submitting to the situation? What if adaptation were a wild rebellion?
Artists Erich Berger and Maija Tammi, participants in the panel discussion, direct our gaze beyond the human scale and the limits of immediate perception. In Berger’s works, invisible radiation, geological processes, and deep time reveal a world with timescales spanning from millions to billions of years. Tammi’s Milky Way, meanwhile, traverses the distance from the microscopic realm of cells to the cosmic scale—linking the reproduction and biological transformation of life to the matter forged in the cores of stars, which also constitutes the human body.
In the works of both artists, human senses and the scale of life prove to be limited. We cannot see, hear, or experience everything happening around us directly. Science, technological instruments, and art, however, can expand our capacity for perception, bringing into the realm of our experience phenomena that would otherwise remain invisible—from processes occurring within cells to radiation, geological time, and cosmic scales.
The panel discussion explores what happens to human beings—and to our understanding of the environment—when we no longer view the world solely through the lens of our own era, our senses, and our own scale. The discussion is moderated by Antti Tenetz, chief curator of the Adaptation exhibition.
Erich Berger is an artist, curator, and doctoral candidate whose artistic and research work explores the intersections of science, technology, and art, as well as the materiality of knowledge. His research focuses on temporalities that exist outside the human timescale—such as deep time and hybrid ecologies—and the social and political implications of geological and radiogenic processes. (picture by Mari Kaakkola)
Maija Tammi is a Finnish artist and Doctor of Arts whose photographic and video works explore the realms between mortality and immortality, science and art, and the human and the non-human. Tammi approaches societal issues through what she calls speculative poetry, combining research, imagination, and playful storytelling. (picture by Heidi Strengell)
Read more about Adaptation from the exhibition page.