PERFORMING LANDSCAPES NORDIC/BALTIC

Worlding Northern Art (WONA) is a research group at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Its mission is to advance research in art history and in visual, material and social culture across Northern Norway and the Circumpolar North, while integrating curatorial practices and artistic research.

Operating at the intersection of disciplines, WONA explores a wide range of material, regions, and historical contexts. At the heart of WONA’s work is the understanding of art as a vital social and political force. The concept of worlding refers to a manifold of philosophical, conceptual, critical and methodological understandings, yet serves as a productive framework for our research. Research within the group investigates the thematic clusters; Art and identity, the ways in which art shapes, reflects and negotiate identities, including its significance for indigenous perspectives; Art and environment, examines art’s role in addressing environmental and social ecologies, particularly within the context of Northern ways of life; Art and science, viewing art as a form of knowledge and exploring the dynamics between artistic research, academic inquiry, and performative methods.

The Posthumanities Hub, founded in 2008 by Cecilia Åsberg at Linköping University, is an evolving research centre where ecology and landscape are understood as entangled naturecultures. It operates as a “platform of platforms” and a “network of networks,” bridging arts, sciences and societal actors through collaborative, more-than-human inquiry.

From early outreach and interdisciplinary events to international programmes like the Seed Box, the Swedish environmental humanities initative, the Hub has been a key starting point for environmental humanities in Sweden, cultivating ecological thinking, multispecies relations, and experimental knowledge-making.

As an online and physical collaboratory, hosting scholars, artistis and grant projects, it enables research creation across borders, connecting scholars, landscapes, and communities in shared efforts to rethink life, environments and futures.

The Centre for the Social Study of Microbes at the University of Helsinki is a hub for social scientists and artists conducting research on human-microbial relations. We aim to develop theory and methods to better make sense of the complex relations between humans, nonhumans, microbes, and their environments.
socialmicrobes.org

Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts is a residency, education and contemporary art centre located on the Curonian Spit, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape between the Baltic Sea and the Curonian Lagoon. Its programme brings together artists, researchers, students and cultural practitioners working across visual arts, performance, sound, moving image, writing, socially engaged practices and artistic research. NAC’s activities are deeply shaped by its specific environment: dunes, forests, winds, waters, borders, seasonal rhythms, ecological vulnerability and layered local histories. Through residencies, exhibitions, workshops, public events and research-based projects, NAC supports artistic practices that engage with the landscape as a complex field of relations between (more-than-)humans, technology, geopolitics, and ecology.

Since 2010, non-profit association Mustarinda promotes dialogues between arts and sciences, the diversity of natures and cultures, and the role that arts and sciences—especially contemporary visual art—can play in ecological reconstruction. The association’s core activities are artistic, exploratory, and collective in nature, and its boundary-crossing research is directed at individuals, local communities, and broader society.

Through hosting 50-70 residents annually at the Mustarinda House, located next to the Paljakka Nature Reserve in the Kainuu region, Finland, the association brings together multidisciplinary practitioners to research, discuss, experiment, and explore more sustainable ways of working and thinking. Activities include a residency program, exhibitions, education activities, volunteer program, workshops, events, publications, and long term development and lobbying projects such as the Vaara-Kainuu Art National Park.

Intercult is an independent, Stockholm-based platform for international and intercultural collaboration, active since 1996. Working as a resource centre and production hub, it connects artists, cultural organisations and networks across Europe, with a long-standing focus on artistic practice that engages waterfronts, water and climate through site-specific, socially engaged work.
Its practice treats artists as agents who can shift how communities and decision-makers relate to landscape and environmental change, pairing artistic production with cultural planning methods drawn from urban and environmental research. This has run through a continuous line of projects: Memory of Water, S.O.S. Climate Waterfront, and the current Turning the Tide, which works with artists and residents in Stockholm, Gdańsk, Evia and Vienna to address climate emergency in coastal and riverside cities. Intercult also co-founded River//Cities, a network linking cities, cultural actors and environmental partners around fair, rights-based approaches to waterfront development.
Based in Stockholm, Sweden.

WEAVE is an initiative at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. It is run by the research group WEAVE Systemic Transformation - a transdisciplinary team of explorers, makers and thinkers. Our mission is to enable systemic transformation towards a sustainable and resilient society through culture and arts. We have experience in weaving together artistic research and practice, participatory design, futuring and prototyping, systemic transformation, organizational development and leadership, innovation, lifelong learning, sustainable AI integration, participatory action research, and facilitation and curation of complex learning journeys that connect thinking and doing.​ WEAVE holds space and creates a home for communities of transformation enablers and leaders across societal sectors through co-learning, research projects, co-created events, living labs, and artistic interventions at the intersection of art, ecology, technology and society. The artistic research is led by Janna Holmstedt.