Back in October I had the opportunity to deliver an
@algomauvisualart course in Finland that looked at nuclear waste storage plans and how artists might be involved in the long term cultural memory of Places where the waste will be stored. Seeing as the
@nwmocanada just announced Revell Lake (between Wabigoon Ojibway First Nation and Ignace) as the site for Canada’s first Deep Geological Repository yesterday I figured I should share some images of our time in Finland. First we introduced students to working with 16mm bolex cameras with
@marek.pluciennik in Helsinki. There, we also had the opportunity to do a studio visit with Erich Berger
@scopeofthereal . Later we traveled to Olkiliouto to visit Finland’s DGR, the first in the world besides the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Two artists currently completing PhDs at Aalto University,
@katrinaukkarinen and
@aurora_delrio joined us for the tour of the site. At Olkiliouto/ Onkalo we participated in the
@olkiluoto_fi tour and were able to film around the site and in the low and intermediary waste storage. We then traveled to Vaasa to develop and print film with
@filmverkstaden .
@brittalbusultan taught us how to develop with various plant-based developers, print positives through bi-packing and various hand manipulations of film. We ended our time in Vaasa with a screening of work by
@filmverkstaden members including
@dbeijar ,
@mattifnatt and
@gunnback ,
@brittalbusultan and artist in residence
@petridish.stopmotion . Before leaving Finland we returned to Marek’s studio where artists
@sepporenvall and Pedro Perelman put together a live cinema event. There is so much more to say but I want to express massive gratitude to the artists who met with us,
@heather.dougg for her incredible coordination of the trip logistics, to the amazing students for being willing to learn about this rather complex topic, and to
@gso.ecm for funding the course; I can’t thank any of you enough, it really was a dream come true to run a course so connected to my long term research interests and goals and to work with so many wonderful people. I might have to add another post to share more of the photos and the film results.
