Department of Art and Media

Art, Science & Environment (ASE)

Art, Science & Environment (ASE) research group focus on inter- and transdisciplinary work combining art, science, and cultural or non-human environment in the ethical-aesthetic framework from the perspective of new materialisms and posthuman theories.
Installation view from Teemu Lehmusruusu: Maatuu uinuu henkii (Respiration Field), Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, Helsinki, 2019. Photo credit: Telling Tree art+rsrch (2, close)
Installation view from Teemu Lehmusruusu: Maatuu uinuu henkii (Respiration Field), Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, Helsinki, 2019. Photo credit: Telling Tree art+rsrch

The group consists of members of faculty, and doctoral students doing artistic research focused on combinations of artistic thinking and scientific practices in biology.

The ASE group is led by Prof. Helena Sederholm who has recently co-edited peer-reviewed books on biological art (Art as We Don’t Know It, Aalto ARTS Books 2020) and avantgarde in Finland (Avantgarde Suomessa, SKS 2021), curated the Starry Skies of Art exhibition (2016) about art and astronomy with science writer Markus Hotakainen for the Serlachius Museum Gösta, accompanied by a book of the same name.

Doctoral students of the ASE research group:

Marjo Heino

Artisthood and participatory landscape conservation
Heino analyzes essence of being an artist, fellowship of artists working together, and varied roles of an artist in a framework of locally founded participatory art projects. The research focuses on the Kokemäki river and surrounding area and consists of project presentations and bringing forth thoughts of the participating artists.

molluheino.fi

Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen

The Intensities of Matter – Affective Encounters in Environmental Performance Art
This doctoral research will be discussing theoretical and philosophical positions within the field of affect, critical materialism and new materialism in dialogue with researcher’s own artistic creation of environmental performance art to facilitate an ethico-aesthetic engagement with climate questions.

Installation view from Teemu Lehmusruusu: Maatuu uinuu henkii (Respiration Field), Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, Helsinki, 2019. Photo credit: Telling Tree art+rsrch
Installation view from Teemu Lehmusruusu: Maatuu uinuu henkii (Respiration Field), Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, Helsinki, 2019. Photo credit: Telling Tree art+rsrch

Teemu Lehmusruusu

Trophic Verses – Soil as Mediation of Existence consists of media and environmental art installations produced between 2018–2021, and of a research part that examines the ontology of soil life and nutrition circulation. The theme is approached through artistic practice, transdisciplinary dialogue and theoretical reflection.

tellingtree.fi
Margherita Pevere. Wombs, Branko. Photo by Sanjin Kastelan 2019
Margherita Pevere. Wombs, Branko. Photo by Sanjin Kastelan 2019

Margherita Pevere

Pevere’s practice-based research “Living matter and vulnerability in biological arts” unfolds from her bioart works “Wombs” and “Semina Aeternitatis”. Rooted in feminist post-humanism, it borrows the concepts of “non/living”, “leaky bodies” and “vulnerability” to probe how vulnerabilities like transience and sexuality exceed a human-only experience and reveal a radically open embodiment.

margheritapevere.com
Bart Vandeput. Photo Title: B!ossom Photo by Bartaku – 1Ha Baroa Power Plantation, Aizpute (Lat), Sept. 11, 2017
Bart Vandeput. Photo Title: B!ossom Photo by Bartaku – 1Ha Baroa Power Plantation, Aizpute (Lat), Sept. 11, 2017

Bart Vandeput

In Aalto ARTS Bartaku carries-on his entanglement with Baroa belaobara, aka chokeberry, crossing biology, philosophy and technology. The workings depart from intuitions on a plantation in West-Latvia. They are plant-based attempts to enquire into light, energy and bodies. The work is process-based, transmedial and -contextual and tying various species. It materializes in interventions, exhibitions, talks, worklabs, and written and vocalized wordings.

Bartaku.net

Contact person

Helena Sederholm

Professori (Associate professor)
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