Chill Survive

  Singing for Lead A call to sing a spell for Lead: a collaboration with Viennese singers   Rehearsals: three weekdays in November Final Event: 25th of November at 7PM Contact   piuska@mac.com   for more information According to Finnish healer-traditions the place of Lead is in the depths of the Earth, where it cannot poison living organisms and wreak havoc on nerve cells. However, Lead has been dug up to the surface by us humans - to serve our industrial and economic - even belligerent - motives. Lead is a preferred metal in bullets, due to its density and stability in heat. In the act of shooting, a shooter inhales lead particles and eventually develops lead poisoning. A visible symptom of lead poisoning is aggression. War breeds war. On the 25th of November, as final event, during the Vienna Week, the singers will sing at a public site in Vienna of their choosing and in relation to local history of violence and war.   Singing for Lead in Central Pa...

Chill Survive opened a new website in November 2020 offering art, poems, interviews, and essays. Kuusamo workshops were transformed for online participation in December 2020, and you can check them out below (scroll, scroll, and scroll further down...): From Reindeer Poo-to-Paper by Chan'nel Vestergaard and Littlepink Maker Gravitational Shift by Marie Kølbæk Iversen and Katinka Fogh Vindelev Singing to the Virus by Pia Lindman Pandora's Box by Rozan van Klaveren All workshops are realised in colaboration and with the support of Kuusamo city and and Ulla Ingalsuo-Laaksonen. Thank you! Workshop details  and documentation below: From Reindeer Poo-to-Paper Chan'nel Vestergaard and Littlepink Maker This workshop gives you the protocols of how to make paper out of reindeer poo. The digestion system of a reindeer is so effective that its poo contains nothing more than fibers - and some microbes. This is why this material is well suited for paper-making. Let us up the up-cycl...

Part story telling, part exercise and performance, Pia Lindman re-enacted some of her experiences while journeying in Sompio and around the lake Lokka, Finland, in her performance at KAI Art Center, Tallinn, November 23rd, 2019. Click here to read the script . Traces after Sompio Lokka performance, Tallinn, Estonia

Lauri Linna: Maternal lineage A traditional kota in the Kitka siida. Now used for leisure. Arriving in Kuusamo after 12 h on train and bus from Helsinki. I take my bags to my grandmother’s place and get in Pia’s car. We drive to an area of Kuusamo that I can’t remember ever going to. I know that this is from where my grandfather’s line of fathers is, but not much else. We are trying to find remnants of the Sámi past in Kuusamo. I have heard, Sámi people used to live here before the settlers arrived from Kainuu in the South and Ostrobothnia in the West by the order of the Swedish King to farm and build houses. Since early childhood, I have wondered is this heritage in me. I’ve carried a strange feeling in me about it, but for whatever reason it has never been discussed in my family. Except for a joke my grandfather used to tell us: “Hey kids, we are lohilappalaisia (Salmon Sámi)! Hehehehehee! LOL. Just kidding.” He also used a lot of words that I didn’t understand. I ...

Korva and many versions of the last name are quite common in Lapland and many have the name because of their house/farm was called Korva. Korva means “an ear”. It also has other meanings. E.g. you could say that you live by the river -“asun joen korvalla”.  Or you can say “tavataan siinä 12.00 korvalla” = “Let’s meet around 12.00”. It is difficult to translate Finnish sometimes. At this point of my research I haven’t got any hard evidence of my family’s connections to other Korva families in Lapland. But there are interesting connections in Kuusamo still to talk about. I continued to research the name more. At first, I was finding more Finnish settlers coming and taking land. But then I stumbled upon another family: The Pitkä family. The family originates from a kind of a tribal chief or the elder of the tribe (again a bad translation of lappalaislautamies) of the Kitka siida, Marttinin Antti, who lived approx. 1624-1693. The family summer camps were in the Ala-Kitk...

In times when Gaia “has the power to question us all” (Stengers 2015:12), humans have come to the moment of reconfiguring their humanity and relations with the world. Our species’ doings have evoked “the intrusion of Gaia” (ibid) which cannot be undone with techno-scientific solutions. While grasping how to inherit human history and survive on a planet in chilling transformation, we, the participants in the Chill Survive, have been weaving a meshwork of trails in the Arctic while attempting to spin human/non-human narratives and practices for the future North (see Ingold 2010). In Greenland I was introduced to the indigenous concept of Sila, which is somewhat akin to the concept of Gaia, as argued by the Métis and anthropologist Zoe Todd (2016). At the National Museum in Nuuk, Sila is explained as a unity of the climate, the weather, the breath of a living being, consciousness and mind. As such, it interconnects human-nature relationships. To read full essay, click here.

Some precious moments of our explorations of Kuusamo in July 2019 Video   Sinkhole Video   Seppo

It was not only my first time to get to know Kuusamo and its surroundings, but also my first time to be actively involved in the Chill Survive Network. And I’m very glad I did! In a week time I found inspiration worth a month, fed my wish to focus on Finland and human relation with nature, and – perhaps most important – made new friends. As a multi-faceted group of artists, all with our own experiences and interests, we explored the local history and the contemporary mining activities. This way I learned about local building techniques, folk beliefs, mercury poisoning, radio-activity, micro-bacterial ecosystems in turf houses, visual representations of Kalevala-healings, and the tragic death of many local noaidi (shamans). Our fieldwork included a trip to the Juomasuo mine. This open pit mine is a study location pur sang: here an Australian mining company studies the local ore as they hope to extract uranium and gold. We deeply hope they will not. No matter...

Pia embarking to record Lokka. Photo: Lauri Linna After almost a month in Kuusamo with Tinna Greatarsdottir, Sigurjón Hafsteinsson, Rosanne van Klaveren, and Lauri Linna, I returned to my home in Inkoo via Savukoski, Tanhua, Sodankylä and eventually Rovaniemi, from where I started my long journey back to the Southern part of Finland.  I went to Savukoski to meet Anu Tossavainen, who was willing to meet with me and drive with me to Tanhua to Pessijoentie, to look for the site of eight unearthed graves. Archeologists think two of the graves belonged to noidas - one of them converted to Christianity, one not. (I will post my notes from visiting these graves soon.)  But I was looking for traces of the story of seven noidas who - the legend tells us - committed suicide once the new preacher told them that anyone holding on to sami beliefs and cosmology will burn in hell. I did not find them in Tanhua, I found something in Sodankylä, by the river bank of...

Rovaniemi and Kilpisjärvi This image above shows a poem by Pia Lindman. The poem was assembled in collaboration with Hannah Star Rogers and Karen Bishop, members of the Second Order Group at the Field_Notes Ecology of Senses residency at the Biological Station in Kilpisjärvi, organised by Bioartsociety, 2018. Pia constructed the poem from found objects around the station. The strips of words had been strewn across the area by Hannah and Karen, as part of an exercise given to all the Field_Notes residents. This poem reads thus (found objects in bold, found words in italics): an almost black stone blue strip and two pink strips please remember to take your shoes off bury your face in the soil turn then toward the world a piece of birch cork - one part of it almost black the other almost white a twig from a birch, black the white flowers of a Yarrow plant two blue strips to what does our attention turn? fixes a moment in time four red berries, a red leaf...

Pia Lindman and Alice Smits (curator, Zone2Source, Amsterdam), camping out through parts of Carelia and Lapland in Finland   Travelling from Kajaani to Valtimo Meeting up with Stop.Talvivaara activists Jari Natunen (molecular biologist) and Antti Lankinen (pastor and member of Kajaani City Council). Natunen and Lankinen have continued following the state of the lakes and forest in the vicinity of the mine formerly known as Talvivaara, but after the takeover by the Finnish State, now titled Terra Fame. Terra Fame is expanding its activities and is now applying for the environmental permission to collect Uranium ore. Natunen and Lankinen have been successful in suing Terra Fame for negligence in terms of environmental security and full disclosure of their activities in their reports. Their next court case in preparation will be in regards to Uranium. Visiting Omavaraopisto in Valtimo (School for Self Sufficiency), funded by Lasse Nordlund, Maria Dorff, and Marko Ulvila....