Public defence in Contemporary Art, MA Mari Keski-Korsu

Title of the thesis: Walks and steams: Artistic approaches to develop more-than-human ritualisation in polycrisis

Thesis defender: Mari Keski-Korsu
Opponent: Prof. Maria Huhmarniemi, University of Lapland, Finland
Custos: Prof. Laura Beloff,Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Humans, among many other animals, are ritualistic. Ritual connects, comforts and possibly increases empathy and understanding of the world - but it can be an activity traversing more-than-human relations. It transforms with the changes for instance in enviroments, technologies and politics. Thus, what are the possibilities of artistic approaches to develop more-than-human ritualisations in the changes of the planetary polycrisis era? Can a ritualisation foster well-being and ecocultural resilience, create awareness of more-than-human relations and propose ethical contexts to enmesh human concept within the nature-ecocultures?

The focus is on the changing conditions of palsa mires in the Circumpolar North, north Fennoscandia and especially the means of encountering the ancient microbes of the permafrost thaw who are unknown to the current ecosystems but released from their frozen state due to the warming climate. The research combines sensory ethnography and walking methodologies with ritualisation and emphasise intuitive knowing in the sentient ecologies. It facilitates the permafrost microbial encounter in the steam of sauna, an existing ritual. Experiences of the human participants were colleted by observation and discussing. Through artistic practices and new materialist theoretical framework, the ritualisation unfolds as part of Arctic aesthetics; within the contexts of art, science, and geopolitics, as well as through corporeal permeability on micro and macro levels.

The research consists of publications and an exhibition Walks in the Steams of Cryosphere (2024). The results propose methods of intuitive more-than-human communication to acknowledge more-than-human agency and consciousness as a relation. Method of walk-with ritualisation was developed to study sensorial, environmental relations in the Arctic that correspond to the scientific findings on environmental change, while the ritualisation offers a lens on  relational, plural values in practice. Furhermore, walk-with was examined as as a communal experience with the mire microbes. The exhibition gathered these method propositions, archived more-than-human ritualisation, and embedded artistic practices within transcorporeal ritual of sauna bathing. This underlines how existing rituals are affected by the polycrisis changes and how artistic practises can pinnacle these changes within rituals to become-with the constantly transforming more-than-human world. 

Keywords: Sentient Ecologies, Intuitive more-than-human communication, Arctic

Contact: mari.keski-korsu@aalto.fi, 040 506 5871, https://www.linkedin.com/in/mari-keski-korsu-4596a63/

Thesis available for public display 7 days prior to the defence at Aaltodoc.