In December of 2022, Zen Marie, Alex Arteaga and I, were asked to convene a creative workshop as part of the Kuva research days 2022, entitled the ‘City as Space of Rules and Dreaming’ a project funded by the Kone foundation. The workshop is based on our practice and research, we proposed to present a series of Prompts as the catalyst for a series of urban encounters; we would each lead a team of artists who would seek to dream within the city space.
Below are my short refections, and recodings of the working days. Which took place, in collaboration with Nanni Vapaavuori and Jelena Škulis.
‘Snow Studies’ mattering with Helsinki’s urban terrains.
Artistic practice workshop – KuVa research days, Uniarts Helsinki, Dec 8-16 2022.
Human beings are magical. Bios and Logos. Words made flesh, muscle and bone animated by hope and desire; belief materialised in deeds, deeds which crystallise our actualities. . . . And the maps of spring always have to be redrawn again, in undared forms. [1] Silvia Wynter
Prompt: Human beings are living matter, in living and actuating urban terrains, in the process of becoming.
Within unpublished essays, On being human as a noun, or being human as praxis, Sylvia Wynter suggests that to be human is a praxis – a process of coming into being ‘with’[1]. To quote from Mantuara and Valarie, the process of coming into “the realisation of the living.[2]” or becoming separate from the material world through which we flow. In his writing on cities, Heidigar suggests that what defines dwelling places is that they gather matter, both living and non-living, to themselves[3]. This suggests that if we are to explore being human within cities, then we need ultimately to learn to become with the matter of the city, which, if we are to take Mantuara and Valaieria at their word, is becoming with living urban matter. The body is itself constituted from the same matter from which we make our cities, living beings, submerged within living terrains.
We can similarly think of cities, as bodies, in the process of becoming subject to both processes of aggregation, and disaggregation, through weathering, fragmentation, and repair. Producing, discarding, and pushing back against the humans who dwell there. To quote Ingold, ‘materials traverse the body in the process of becoming, making of (cities) can be thought of as a process of growing’[4]. Ingold suggests that when we make things, the maker and material are in conversation through gesture, and thus it is in direct gestural contact with materials of the urban terrain that we may come to know their agencies.
For this prompt, I suggest that we go out into the city, without formal agenda, to explore the city’s materiality, the nature of the city’s materials, that can be known and encountered through bodily acts within its terrains. What can we come to know about Helsinki that would otherwise be hidden from us? What will be responded to, and what gestural acts will be performed?
[1] Katherine McKittrick, ed., Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2015).
[2] H. R. Maturana and F. J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, 1980th edition (Dordrecht, Holland ; Boston: Springer, 1980).
[3] Martin Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 151.
[4] Tim Ingold, Making. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, 1 edition (New York: Routledge, 2013), 21.
Day 1 :
We go out into the city, walking over the pedestrian bridge, drawn to the edge of the water, and the sizeable snow-covered pile of coal, adjacent. We, wade through the thick snow to the carpet washing station, learning of the tradition of social carpet washing undertaken by Helsinki locals in the springtime. An ancient tradition that remains in an otherwise modern urban city, conjuring up images of the summertime, swimming in the now December snow. The carpet station provides a high point for us to work, uninterpreted, in the knee-high snow. As we explore, we begin to contemplate what we will act with? And to what we will respond. Even in its mostly snow-covered state, the coal pile looms large; as we walk, we discuss issues of discards, of coal and of waste. As we have resolved to act, first, without to much intellectualising, we resolve to respond to the coal pile. Pushing up snow and creating a small replica of the coal on the carpet washing platform. Given we have no tools, we improvise with our hands and arms, using cell phone covers as tiny snow shovels. We continue in our practice until we can no longer feel our fingers. We retire to seek out some coffee, and warm, getting a view of the other side of the mound as we do so. We discuss perspectives and views and the limitations of the singular perspective of the body as we thaw, creating a tiny replica in sugar as we contemplate the mound.
Returning, we gather granite that is used to stop slippage in the city, discussing the issues of snow, granite waste and pollution hiding in the now-white snow. Already in places, the snow is being scraped into vast mounds, greying and filled with urban detritus and granite bits. Returning to our mound, we complete the replica, coal pile, and walk back to the school of arts, contemplating the giant snow piled up along the road edges, reflecting on its form as being similar to the coal mound replica we just made. Speaking of snow cleaning as an act of repair and urban care, as we return indoors.
Day 2 :
Snow matters
Snow-how
When water becomes stone
Snow still
We resolve to think and act more directly with snow, today it has nowed in the night, and snow was continually falling as we walked over to the KuVA arts centre along the snow-covered lake edge. We begin by returning to the coal pile miniature, observing that while we have been away, others have come to encounter. We spend some time discussing the acts of snow, bodily habitas with snow, building a giant snowball, what snow how we each have. Mine is rather limited. We discuss cleaning again and begin to sweep up a path around the snowball, cleaning the city, which becomes – a snow gesture. Tiring of our snow explorations as it again begins to snow, we speak of, knowing how cold it is, based on the texture of the falling snow, like this, -10 or more. I film the falling snow. We speak of the line between research and serious play, how one came to snow- how, if often grounded in childhood memories. Time spent, at the cabin, cleaning the wilderness. Drawn in search of mittens, we set off into the city, drifting along the snow-covered streets, making discoveries of other snow-play, walking beside the now black greying, snow-ploughed piles, cars become immobile, and the owners walk the city rather than drive. The snow gathers and clumps as we walk through the city, slowing the progress of people, trams and cars as it gathers thicker and thicker.
We speculate on cleaning; we have a broom and scoop with which, at intervals, we stop to clean the pavement and the stone’s surfaces. As we walk, we speak of care, as bodily habitus, of knowing the city. I consider its absence, present in my home city, how its absence leads to the unknowing of the city. We stop for lunch. After lunch, we wander the area further, walking and looking, thinking and reflecting, Drifting about the city without direction as we move through the altered terrains. We return hours later for closing thoughts and reflections on our work.
Reflections
Although snow may, in hindsight, seem to be an obvious medium of inquiry, we reflect that within Helsinki in the winter, it becomes a vibrant matter, shifting and changing the city and our behaviour within it. As an obstacle, movement and an alterer of landscape, it becomes an effective agent for change within the terrain. It reflects light and alters perception. Its presence generates longing for summer and facilitates conversation and reflection on the terrain and on city spaces. It becomes a medium for imagining the city anew.
What is snow, matter or medium?
Water or air?
Heavy or light?
Matter out of place?
Recalcitrant force?
Snow becomes a medium of meeting, of coming to know.
Cleaning snow is an act of caring for a terrain.
Bodily habitas of snowy bodies: pilling, meshing, meeting,
Snow as a social lubricant,
What is the voice of snow?
How does it affect the city? Create narrowed road and walkways, displaces vehicles,
Changes bodily actions, inhibits walking, becomes pushing through, lifting up, changes pathways walked, and paths taken, disrupts urban habitats, and forces new paths to be forged.
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