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18. June 2025

Investigating human-nonhuman entanglement through approaches in artistic research.

Panel at the 2025 ISCH conference: ‘Human/Nature – Entanglements in Cultural History’; 16–19 June 2025, Rovaniemi, Finland

Convenors: Alex Arteaga, Jaana Erkkilä-Hill
Panellists: Leena Valkeapää, Tuula Närhinen, Angela Bartram, Petri Kuljuntausta, Jan Schacher

This panel explores how we encounter the spectrum of life from different perspectives, in different environments, in different relationships, between human and non-human Others. The panel brings together representatives from southern and central Europe and different parts of Finland, all with considerable hybridised artistic and academic practices.

Based on the framework given by the arts-research project “How to live together in sound? Towards sonic democracy,” the panel opens up this discussion to investigate and share encounters with a wider group, expanding the practices, themes, perspectives, and dialogues therein. The project aims to expand and enhance sonic awareness for empowering sonic citizens and investigates ecologically sustainable and socially integrative, fair, and peaceful environments as well as structures of decision-making in production, organization, and distribution of sound. Our sonic environments are considered sonic commons, networks and agencies for sound perception, generation, and dissemination in which we should be able to live together in self-determined and sustainable ways. The project is funded by the Kone foundation and hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki.

The panellist’s themes are: encountering the Other through artistic research embedded in traditional Sami ways of living within contemporary society; seeing the world with a shifted perspective through the gaze of non-human Others; learning from non-human mammals though observed acts of empathy; combining place and sound performance towards an environmentally conscious approach to becoming one with nature’s orchestra; and shared listening in sonic relationships with/in man-made places and environments.

The format seeks to highlight intersections between the panelist’s propositions, based on their case-studies and referring to the main issue from their own practices; the moderators then frame these contributions in an overarching discussion around the central topic.

Leena Valkeapää: Living with reindeer: a dialogue with a flower and a stone in the form of a video (7 min)

Tuula Närhinen: Between the Eyes – challenging the premises of binocular vision

Angela Bartram: Be your dog & Reading horse theory to your horse

Petri Kuljuntausta: Towards Environmentally Conscious and Ecocritical Music Performance

Jan Schacher: Sonic Shifts & Shared Listenings: Exploring aurality, locality, and the sense of community through listening and sounding

Link to the conference page: here