Walk-with the Water and Beyond

The talk traces artistic research which bases on walk-with and multisensory ethnography especially in the Arctic environments, and that I call a more-than-human ritualisation in polycrisis. It engages with e.g. thawing permafrost and the ancient microbial life emerging from it, using site-specific walk-with as a way of studying environmental change through direct material encounter, emphasising how ecoside and more-than-human relations becomes perceptible through embodied presence. Building on this doctoral research and 25 years of eco-socially engaged art practices, the current research explores how art of walk-with could contribute to emerging discourse on the more-than-human personhood and complexities of Rights of Nature. Collaborating with e.g. ecocultures of the Torne River in Torne Valley and the Baltic Sea, I facilitate collective walk-with as a response-able, site-specific ritualisation to foster more than human relation and agency in human-centred decision making. The talk bridges artistic research, environmental humanities, traditional ecological knowledge, and folklore through…