plantationoseni
(Eng. my plantationocenie)
2021
Don’t break what you can keep intact. To brrreak is easy, to rrrebuild and to create new is difficult, darning and patching tedious and tiresome.
The end is an extension of temporality; we’re already in it, writing in a downward motion. Necropastoral: glyphosate, Solomons-seal sawfly, smut fungus, potato blight, chocolate cyst.
Peatburning fumes are carried by the westerly winds, and the bioeconomy rally that the frosty winter enabled makes the house tremble every day. The barren sod grass farm draws the inconsolable horizons of plantationocene. Yet somewhere on the fringes of monocultures and simplifications, the possibilities of building good life and death emerge among the beings of the inhabited world.
nabbteeri is a Finnish artist collective working with changing constellations of messy interactions between humans and other things. Alongside of borrowed or repurposed surplus materials, nabbteeri's stratified, mesh-like works include 3D modelling or other digital crafts. They think handworking is a tentacular and very species-typical human thinking tool.
About the artists
Multispecies constellations teach us indispensable things in relation to ourselves and the world, helping to unravel the individualistic, destructive ways of human living. In our recent work we have observed multispecies cultures, hoping to relearn how to form communities and share spaces, whether bodies, other cavities or clearings, with other critters.
Our practice strives to adapt meaningfully to the prevailing circumstances. The concept of focality works as a tool in helping to find toehold in the contemporary oil-lubricated experience. The prerequisites for focality (Lat. focus, fireplace) are practices and objects that require concentration, commitment, and skilfulness. The focal artworking has to form in an intense relationship with the existing material possibilities as well as the local strata of knowledge. At its best, working with local, in-situ matter also connects firmly with ecological artwork production. When acclimatizing oneself to materials, relations, and places, brittleness and interdependence become important. nabbteeri's practice is characterized by the preconditions of working in changing locations. Their polymorphic works are compositions based on somewhat messy interactions and fusions between the artists and other things. Alongside of borrowed, recycled and remodeled surplus materials and objects, nabbteeri's stratified, mesh-like works can include elements created with 3D modelling or other digital technologies. These often ephemeral works change their form throughout long processes.
video credits / texts scavenged and chewed to pieces, in order of appearance
Maria Jotuni (1880–1943), Maria Jotunin aforismit. Otava 1984.
Elena Salminen, Hämäräekologinen moninkirjoittaminen – Outoja kohtaamisia piilevässä luonnossa. An art education bachelor’s thesis about dark ekological pluraristic writing practices, Aalto University 2020.
Margaret Atwood (1939–), Myös sinun nimesi (contains texts from Interlunar Poems 1976–1986, and Eating fire: selected poetry 1965–1995). Suomentanut Tero Valkonen, WSOY 2001.
Olli-Pekka Tennilä (1980–), *Yksinkeltainen on kaksinkeltaista. *Poesia 2012.
kasvinsuojelu.fi, instructions of use for plant protection chemicals.
Pieta Hyvärinen, Sienestystä pohjoisilla puupelloilla: metsien moninaiset taloudet ja plantaasiosentrismin ongelma (Mushroom-foraging on northern tree plantations: diverse forest economies and the problem of plantationocentrism). Luonnon, työn ja talouksien materialismit, Alue ja ympäristö, vol 49 nro 2, 2020.
Donna Haraway (1944–), Sowing worlds. A Seed Bag for Terraforming with Each Others, published in Beyond the Cyborg: Adventures with Donna Haraway edited by Margret Grebowicz & Helen Merrick, Columbia University Press 2013.
Henriikka Tavi (1978–), Kaksitoista, Poesia 2012.
Hélène Cixous (1937–) & Susan Sellers, Three ladders of writing, Columbia University Press 1990.
Felix Guattari (1930–1992), Kaaosmoosi (Chaosmosis, 1992). Suomentaneet Mariaana Fieandt-Jäntti ja Heikki Jäntti, Tutkijaliitto 2010.
Minna Hietakangas, meillakotona.fi/artikkelit/taimistoviljelijoiden-suosikit-pulmapaikkoihin, professionals recommend their favourite perennial plants that thrive no matter the circumstances, 2019.
Bruno Latour (1947–), Emme ole koskaan olleet moderneja (Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d'anthropologie symétrique, 1991 / We have never been modern, 1993). Englanninkielisestä laajennetusta laitoksesta suomentanut Risto Suikkanen, Vastapaino, 2006.
Herakleitos, or Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 535–475 BCE), Fragmentit tulesta (fire fragment CXII/B7 Aristotle, in Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1979). Kreikankielisestä tekstistä suomentanut Jari Möller, niin&näin 4/2013.