Shift Register: The Invisible Earth

Abstract

The Earth Observation Source (EOS) workshop at Helsinki University Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station sets out to bother and to complicate the linear stories of deep-time, geology and anthropocenic discourse. EOS seeks to re-jig the history of the bones and stones with a vitalist writing of the earth and peat, of whiskies, bogs and tree sap, of mycelium and the blinded imaginaries of all earthly, airy and extraterrestrial creatures. We wish to untether planetary futures from an auto-destructive laboratory planet, exploring in the process how linear histories and geologies inform instrumental sciences and industries which are implicated in the initiating of this destroyed planet through effects such as global warming and technologies of resource management and extraction.

Within the context of the exciting work of the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station in forest and atmospheric studies and peat-based measurements, the workshop will explore a more actively aesthetic relation to planetary phenomena such as climate change and to the measurements and research which inform the study of these large-scale objects. Through action and discussion we will ask questions such as: -How can we imagine other non-linear terracentric histories and geologies informed by re-cyclings and recursions?

-What kinds of event impact on, for example, tree ring formation and how could we have a bodily experience of these instances and events? -How can we immerse ourselves in natural-technical-industrial cyclings such as of tree fluids, and carbon cycles, sinks and sources?

The workshop will be hosted by Jamie Allen, Martin Howse and Ulla Taipale with special guests Erich Berger, Mari Keski-Korsu, and Timo Vesala as part of Shift Register and Climate Whirl.

The workshop forms part of the Shift Register Earth Observatory Array series in cooperation with Climate Whirl by Department of Physics and Division of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Helsinki, and Capsula. Shift Register investigates and renders legible the material evidence of human activities on earth, registering these not as indicators of human achievement, but as ambiguous negotiations and signposts of planetary exhaustion. Shift Register is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Embrace confusion - the bog experience

As a part of the Shift Register Workshop artist Mari Keski-Korsu lead the participants to a Siikaneva peatland. The bog running and bog sensing experience provoked a great range of reactions, that were discussed in the evening, after a sauna session by the fire at "kota".