Убежище / Suoja / Shelter

Maria Safronova Wahlström works with themes of collective identity and social boundary maintenance. The Last Stone (2019) explores moral and ideological self-ascription as the cornerstone of our self-representation: a practice we perform collectively, and share with our predecessors throughout history. What matters in a given paradigm is not our behaviour, or our similarity to one another, but what we say we are, and what we say we stand for. The granite plate is part of the last unshipped remains that had been ordered by the German state during WWII. Cut for victory memorials, the stone was never delivered and has now been turned into a memorial for our contemporary battle for all that is good.

Amateur Bird Watching at Passport Control (2016-2017) focuses on the birds which are featured on passport covers from countries around the world. From eagles to doves, from Albania to Tonga, this series explores the intersection of nation and nature. Birds are often one part of a national system of hereditary symbols or a coat of arms, and appear debossed in metallic gold on passport covers. The artist spotted 50 birds or bird-related creatures on 43 passport covers.
Nature of Nations (2019 – ongoing) is a series of fictional national animal symbols, inspired by heraldic design, coat of arms, history, national animal representatives, geographical borders, folk fables, and stereotypes. Each work in the series portrays a black-washed watercolor animal symbol centered on the paper. An outraged bear with double-headed eagle head instead of feet and wings instead of paws, is a combination of two symbols, the bear of Soviet Russia and the double-headed eagle of contemporary Russia. A bird of prey, the bald eagle, freed from the USA coat of arms with a halo made of two olive branches is staring at the viewer, its claws are empty of weapons. A lion with a foot in its mouth is outlined by the UK's borders. The national animal of Italy, a wolf, with the boot-shaped body, mimicking its country's geographical borders, looks conformed but joyful with its tongue out. An amused panda sits with the map of China outlined on its belly. A European rabbit of Monaco is generating the smell of money. A smirking sexy fox of Algeria stands and a sword-shaped horn wingless unicorn goat of Iraq, all these symbolic animalistic creatures make up the Nature of Nations dictionary, a geographical zoo of personalities, individual in its nature and representative of its nation.

Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica is one of the last unclaimed territories on Earth. The Antarctic Treaty came into force after WWII and only permitted peaceful activities (this guiding principle was later applied to the Moon and outer space). Today, much of Antarctica is covered by a number of territorial claims with varying levels of recognition. Although annexation of the continent is now difficult, tensions over Antarctica are intensifying due to its (supposed) potential in natural resources, oil and gas. Ongoing geopolitics might disable the treaty after it expires in 2048, or even before that date. By dividing the surface of Marie Byrd Land to the number of the world population, each citizen of the world would receive approximately 0,20 sq.m. of land. The Last Land (2018) shows the shape of Marie Byrd Land re-scaled in proportion to this ratio.

Culture (2019) is a series of sculptures made of fir that approximate the form of fir trees. The sculptures try to convey a more accurate image of the Swedish forest than the prevalent idealized and romanticized one that is so deeply intertwined with the idea of Swedish national identity. For what is the Swedish forest if not a hyper rationalized response to the demands of the market of a neoliberal capitalist hegemony? The sculptures are part of an ongoing series of works that investigate different aspects of the Anthropocene thesis and aims to explore how we as a species and as individuals relate to our habitat economically, intellectually and emotionally.

Mind your mind (2019) is a series of documentary-based texts elaborating on how our contemporary culture deals with freedom of speech and purity of thought. The texts take the form of warning signs, customary to public spaces, intended to inform us of possible dangers and help us navigate through today's public discourse.

(fo)rest (2019): In terms of the psychopolitical theory of reality that deals with political science and history through psychopathology*, "depression is the most important part of contemporary mood policy. Its mass spread is associated with the absence of a collective "vision of the future", with the "end of utopias", as well as with the work of a state and capitalism, which is aimed to instill the idea that the current order is unchangeable, and any "fantasies of socialist utopianism" is only harmful". At the same time, the endless measurement of work productivity and efficiency by the modern system, along with the requirements to be active and creative 24 hours a day, are penetrating into all social relations and fields of activity. Quantitative and qualitative measurements form our modern socio-cultural reality, the continuous race of earning status. Failure to comply to the conditions of effectiveness in endless hurry and competition, one way or another, leads to frustration, a sense of worthlessness and, as a result, neurosis, insomnia, and sluggish depressive phases. In order to critically rethink the contemporary reality of neoliberal politics, one can practice to form aforementioned utopian constructions, or to produce evanescent communities, aimed at the repetition of the logic of a communicative construct without a final task. It may lead oftentimes to the fading of protest potential and partial reproduction of the existing political regime through the form of a fictitious idea of the allegedly continuous change and transformation of social reality for the better. What if we suppose that the answer to such situation in the policy of market and social relations could be the practice of slowing down and rest, aimed at the rejection of regular production and consumption? Then, the indemnity of lost sleep could become a procedure of returning to an adequate perception of reality and to the process of accumulation of energy resources.

* Harold Dwight Lasswell – political scientist and theorist, author of Psychopathology and Politics

** Mikhail Kurtov

Control Over The Cloud (2019) is a deceptive interactive installation. It depicts a storm cloud made out of hundreds of small images of a power button, crossed by what seemingly is a thunderbolt on one end and a growth curve on the other. The installation is of an illustrative nature, pointing intricate relations between climate, power and economy. While awareness is raising about how capitalism relates to global warming, geoengineering tends to emerge as a solution against climate change. On the same note, popular discontent is raging. With an increasing sense of impotence and fear of irrelevance, a number of us feel the urge to gain better understanding and greater command of environmental issues. Control Over The Cloud looks upon the promises and mirages of interactive technologies, and asks itself how to distinguish tools of empowerment from those of control.

Dark forest (2018) is dedicated to the Russian "stalkers" subculture: people who romanticize and explore the abandoned military zones. They have numerous blogs where they recount their adventures, which sound like contemporary fairy tales. Korotkova decided to find out how the echo of the prehistorical rites contained in traditional fairy tales penetrate contemporary life. Is there a connection between modern militarism and rituals of a primitive culture? In her drawings, military objects built during the Cold War and after, are seen throughout the forest. They remind us of ancient ritual architecture. The forest unites different kinds of plants, which can grow together only after an ecological disaster. Taisia uses black markers, keeping in mind the technique of fairy tale book illustrations. The foundation for her drawings is the backside of an oilcloth, a modern synonym of traditional home textiles. Using this material, she remembers the important role of women as fairy tale keepers, storytellers, and in the past, ancient leaders of the passage rites.

Post-Fossil Data? (2019) is an installation concerned with the materiality of digitality. It is a sound art piece in which the visuality is as important as the noise you are hearing.The objects exposed to the audience are a screen, two hard drives and a speaker built into a jerry can. The rest of the technology is hidden inside the podiums below. This way, the focus is on the essential things when considering the theme of the work.The automated program loops different file types and sizes between the hard drives, making the audible performance varied in time. This process is monitored from the screen. The energy consumption of the work is also measured via the energy meter connected to the circuit. For Salonen, the noise of the work resembles bodily sounds of hunger in one's own stomach. This way, the work also represents the infinite hunger of digitality (and technology in general) for fossil or non-fossil energy sources.