Event: STORYTELLING FOR EARTHLY SURVIVAL with Marabouparken

Screening and Talk: 26 August 2018, 19:00–22:00

Film still from Kati Roover, 'Coexistence', Full HD video installation 22:44 min, 2018

Storytelling for Earthly Survival is a collaborative event between Index and Marabouparken, held in the garden of Marabouparken

To mark the closing of the exhibition Community Services at Marabouparken Konsthall and the opening of And Tomorrow And at Index, join us for a day of workshops, discussions and screenings exploring the exhibitions shared concern with questions of ecology, environmental care and the futures of inter-species collaboration.

The full program of workshops and talks for the day can be viewed on the Marabourparken website. Highlights from the program are below:

7pm Introduction to exhibition and Collective Manifesto readings by young artists from the Index summer course

The exhibition And Tomorrow And presents a demanding cacophony of voices questioning our collective futures. Ecological disaster, inter-species collaboration, cyborgian manifestations, from these new and altered states artists consider differing formulations of futures. It is an attempt to understand the role of artists in proposing distinctive and livable futures, to act as a counter point to the dominant ideals of the so-called Anthropocene. Within the exhibition, artists both emerging and established, have the ability to suggest and demand different futures, to come together and in the friction of this situation, develop new models for futuring. The exhibition And Tomorrow And opens at Index on 24 August, with text works by young artists who participated in the Index summer course alongside works by internationally established artists such as Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, Trieke Haapoja and Laura Gustafson, Institute for New Feeling, Jenna Sutela, Jess Johnson and Simon Ward, Alexandra Pirici and Raluca Voinea and The Otolith Group.

7.15pm Screening: Kati Roover, Coexistence (22 mins, HD video and sound, 2018), followed by a short q+a with Roover and curator Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris

The imagery of the Amazonian rainforest is often sold as ‘nature’ in its most pristine state and as an opportunity to experience a paradise on earth. However, as a site it has many faces and layers of human and non-human history and changes. The region’s forested landscapes have been shaped by human populations since hunter-gatherers first arrived in lowland South America. As Finnish artist Kati Roover walked in the forest with her camera, she attempts to capture it the rainforest as multi-dimensional presence with many layers of plants, soils, stories, sounds, smells, changes, knowledges and beings coexisting. She says of the experience, ‘It felt almost impossible to capture its essence.’ Coexistence is a collection of subjective thoughts and moments in the forest, combined with scientific knowledge and dreams affected by Amazon forest in the form of an essay film.

Kati Roover (b. 1982) lives and works in Helsinki. Her works are often based on different ways of forming knowledge in the midst of massive environmental changes. Roover’s interests include natural sciences, anthropology and documentary essay films. Roover received her Master of Fine Arts, Univeristy of Arts Helsinki in 2016.

8.30pm Screening: Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Survival, Directed by Fabrizio Terranova

Donna Haraway is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology, a feminist, and a science-fiction enthusiast who works at building a bridge between science and fiction. She became known in the 1980s through her work on gender, identity, and technology, which broke with the prevailing trends and opened the door to a frank and cheerful trans species feminism. Haraway is a gifted storyteller who paints a rebellious and hopeful universe teeming with creatures and futuristic trans species, in an era of disasters. The filmmaker Fabrizio Terranova visited Donna Haraway at her home in Southern California, living with her – almost liter- ally, for a few weeks, and there produced a quirky film portrait. Terranova allowed Haraway to speak in her own environment, using attractive staging that empha- sised the playful, cerebral sensitivity of the scientist. The result is a rare, candid, intellectual portrait of a highly original thinker.