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FIELDS OF MAY

Fields of May is a commision that is permanently installed in Seili in the Finnish Archipelago as part the Archipelago Research Institute (Turku University). It will act as a location and conduit of Witness Seminars on the subject of the blue economy, the ecology of law, and the climate crisis. It is an architecture of engagement that coalesces a diverse ecology of practices and historical-material specificities with the aim of cultivating the conditions of possibility that might conjure worlds attuned to non-extractive rhythms.

The installation consists of salvaged discarded masts, spars and other maritime wares donated from the museum-ship Sigyn (Turku, FI), a wooden barque built in 1887 that crossed the Atlantic and Indian oceans - as well as the North and Baltic seas - for trade. As Seili is situated next to the old Baltic maritime timber trade route, where passenger ferries pass today, Sigyn routinely sailed past this island. In 2018, the ship needed new masts. Unlike last two centuries, when Finland provided most European Empires with the timber and tar to build their fleets, when scouting for mast timber in 2018, only a handful of trees were found to be of suitable size. The masts which compose the seating area bear witness to the commodification of trees, the transatlantic timber trade as much as to the changing nature of Finnish forests, now largely servicing pulp production or the blue bio-economy at large.

Transcript of the 2022 Witnessing Seminar link here.

Fields of May is commissioned by Contemporary Art Archipelago as part of Spectres in Change, and it is funded by Canada Art Council, Acción Cultural Española, and Kone Foundation.