Avi-Alarm, Hanna Tuulikki (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Invasion Ecology)

Artist Hanna Tuulikki connects plantation landscapes in Finland, Scotland, and across the South West of England, making kin across species and with birds.

Glasgow-based artist, composer, and performer Hanna Tuulikki considers ‘reworlding’ in times of planetary crisis. Avi-Alarm (2023), a collection of augmented reality filters for social media, transforms the faces of user-participants into hybrid human-avian beings. Each one recalls a critically-endangered bird in the British Isles archipelago – the capercaillie, curlew, lapwing, mistle thrush, and puffin. Their alarm calls signal danger, a form of communication that crosses species boundaries, and can save many recipients of different species simultaneously. This altruistic behaviour challenges Darwinian evolutionary theory, the idea of ‘natural selection’ or 'survival of the fittest' or that also underpins capitalism.

Standing amongst the silver birch trees at Southcombe, Hanna details her practice across environments, from Helsinki in Finland, to Scotland. We discuss works both inspired by and critical of romanticised representations of natural landscapes, contrasting the 'wilderness' with the reality of Finland’s monoculture plantations, and their role in establishing Finnish independence from Sweden in 1917. Hanna details how national identities and ideas of masculinity are constructed through folklore and traditions. Through the practice of mimesis or imitation, and participatory performance, we explore how they've made ‘more-than-human’ kin with other animals like deer, cows, and seals. Hanna shares their work for British Art Show 9, which travelled from COP26 in Glasgow to Plymouth, addressing contemporary eco-anxiety or grief over biodiversity loss. We discuss their recent work with bats, connecting between rave and electronic music, and echolocation, as a model for ecological coexistence - and find another link between Scotland and the South West, at Buckfast Abbey.

⁠Invasion Ecology⁠ is co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Southcombe Barn on Dartmoor. It is a season of contemporary land art across South West England in summer 2024, questioning what we mean by ‘native’ and what it means to belong. The central group exhibition, featuring Ingrid Pollard, Iman Datoo, Hanna Tuulikki, Ashish Ghadiali, Fern Leigh Albert, and Ashanti Hare, runs from 1 June to 10 August 2024.

The wider programme includes anti-colonial talks and workshops with exhibiting artists, writers, researchers, and gardeners, reimagining more empathic connections between humans, plants, animals, and landscapes. For other 'invasive species' in the Gardens, join EMPIRE LINES in conversation with Iman Datoo and Jessica J. Lee, author of Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging, on 30 July 2024.

For more information, follow ⁠Radical Ecology⁠ and ⁠Southcombe Barn⁠ on social media, and visit: radicalecology.earth/events/invasion-ecology-exhibition. You can also listen to the ⁠EMPIRE LINES x Invasion Ecology Spotify playlist⁠, for episodes with Paul Gilroy, Lubaina Himid, Johny Pitts, and Imani Jacqueline Brown, plus partners from the University of Exeter, KARST, CAST, and the Eden Project in Cornwall. Read about under forest cover (2021) in Deep Rooted at City Art Centre in Edinburgh, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/edinburghs-environmental-exhibitions-the-local
Hear about another performance at Glasgow International, with Paul Maheke's Taboo Durag (2021) at MOSTYN in Wales.

And listen to Ingrid Pollard’s episode from Carbon Slowly Turning (2022) at the Turner Contemporary in Margate, marking their participation in Invasion Ecology (2024).

IMAGES: Jassy Earl, Amber Amare.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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