While the global biennial craze shows no signs of abating, for many the pressing issue of sustainability remains an afterthought. This is not the case with the Helsinki Biennale in Finland, which was founded with the mission of pioneering a new model of environmentally conscious artistic programming. Returning this month for its second edition with 29 participating artists, it hopes to build on its past successes and setbacks.
The exhibition returns to the archipelago island of Vallisaari but has also expanded to the mainland, with five works in the centrally located Helsinki Art Museum (HAM) and a few more scattered by the main port of the city. The title “New Directions May Emerge” this year, is borrowed from a quote from the American anthropologist Anna Tsing which was hugely influential in the art world: “As contamination alters plans for creating worlds, mutual worlds – and new directions – can emerge.”
For curator Joasia Krysa, who is best known for her work on Documenta 13 and the 9th Liverpool Biennale, the idea of contamination was particularly relevant. The Baltic Sea which washes up on the shores of Helsinki is among the most polluted waters in the world, while the biodiversity haven of Vallisaari was repeatedly invaded by military operations until it was abandoned in the 1990s .
Adrián Villar Rojas, from the series The end of imagination (2023). Photo: © HAM/Helsinki Biennale/Viljami Annanolli.
The overgrown island is once again busy, this time with 17 works of art and a steady stream of tourists arriving by ferry. The majority of the land is still closed for conservation and necessary facilities have been kept relatively minimal, with cafes, bathrooms and a shop concentrated around two harbours. The site-specific exhibits are scattered along a pre-existing path that circumnavigates the island and respond well to their surroundings, but do they justify our intrusion?
An installation by Helsinki native Alma Heikkilä works hand in hand with nature as it slowly changes over the summer. Co-adapted with (2023) contains a sculpture that acquires its color when rainwater mixes with natural vegetable dyes and drips onto the plaster. THE Materia Medica of the Islands (2023) by Lotta Petronella, from Ruissalo Island, reintroduces age-old ways of living with nature, including an apothecary for alternative herbal medicines and essences made from foraged local flora. Parts of The end of imagination (2023) by Argentinian artist Adrián Villa Rojas blur the line between the artificial and the organic. Embedded in the landscape, they sometimes catch the eye of passers-by, bringing our attention back to our environment.
Elsewhere, damp powder cellars left over from the island’s military past have been repurposed into eerie but intimate gallery spaces. Isolated from the blazing sun and visual clutter of the outdoors, they give indoor video installations an otherworldly and eerily piercing feel. Highlights include Lithuanian artist Emilija Škarnulytė Hypoxia (2023), a semi-mythical meditation on the replica of oxygen depletion in the Baltic Sea, and one by Sami artist Matti Aikio Oikos (2023), a dreamlike evocation based on childhood memories of reindeer herding.
Matti Aikio, Oikos (2023). Photo: © HAM/Helsinki Biennale/Kirsi Halkola.
Everyone wants to drink the kool-aid when it comes to sustainability promises, but there are times when ambition seems distant. During the press preview, plastic bottles and disposable food trays circulate at lunch and not one but two tote bags are thrust upon me. Now they lie in a pile of accidentally single-use bags in the corner of my room, forgotten until the next big cleaning. These quibbles are a drop in the ocean compared to our flights to Helsinki and back. This year, the biennium has chosen not to offset flights, but to focus on reduction.
The Helsinki Biennale can however boast of a series of initiatives implemented to reduce its environmental impact, such as the choice of second-hand equipment when possible, the reuse of discarded materials and careful systems waste management. All sites where artwork has been installed are monitored by a conservation biologist and a Finnish heritage agency, and the area is continuously monitored for signs of erosion. So far, these flawed attempts at impact reduction seem like the best one could reasonably hope for.
Perhaps more radical are the ways in which the island’s natural features and rudimentary infrastructure necessitated curatorial and artistic innovation. It offers ways to adapt to the world, rather than contorting and relentlessly controlling our surroundings until they become ideal conditions. In doing so, we are rewarded with the irresistibly wild and beautiful landscape that envelops the works rather than having to face yet another blank wall.
Keiken, Angel Yōkai Atā (2023). Photo: © HAM/Helsinki Biennale/Kirsi Halkola.
Counterintuitively, the integration of emerging technologies is what has allowed many works to feel infinitely expansive without overwhelming the local ecosystem. On a land bridge to one of the neighboring islands of Vallisaari is Angel Yokai Ata (2023) by the artist collective Keiken. The artwork was inspired by a visit to a magical spirit house in Thailand and, looking through the windows, visitors can glimpse a fantastical post-capitalist future for humanity that extends, via a QR code, into an interactive online experience. London-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley has also imagined an alternate universe, creating a new mythology for Vallisaari by You won’t assume (2023), which invites participants to meet characters whose stories are then elaborated online.
In the case of the Berlin company Jenna Sutela pond brain (2023), however, the ecological balance of the technology seems more difficult to rule out. The pleasantly peaceful work is housed in a dark, disused building and combines the audio of an AI trained on the polyphonic sounds of nature in harmony with the deep reverberations of a bronze bowl filled with water that hums in response. to human touch. “Obviously any type of computing has an environmental impact, especially large models, but it’s not a crazy impact on the scale of things,” Sutela told Artnet News. “I can’t give exact numbers, but it might be good. I should check.
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley You won’t assume (2023). Photo: © HAM/Helsinki Biennale/Sonja Hyytiäinen.
It’s not uncommon for strident mission statements from conservatives to highlight the importance of nature or the urgency of the climate crisis, but anything more concrete is complicated to calculate and all too easy to ignore. For their part, the organizers of the biennale take this less exciting side of environmental commitments seriously. A report on the inaugural edition of the biennale assessed its impact according to the categories of waste, material purchases, energy consumption, logistics and mobility.
In 2021, waste volumes were measured at 37 tonnes of mixed waste, 7.9 tonnes of bio-waste and 2.5 tonnes of cardboard waste (these figures do not include the dismantling of the event). During the entire duration of the exhibition, 235 MwH of energy was consumed from renewable sources, which apparently corresponds to the annual electricity consumption of around 16 Finns. Unsurprisingly, flights were the biggest contributor to the event’s carbon emissions. The total footprint corresponded to the annual emissions of approximately 100 Finns.
Did these impact quantification experiments give hope that a biennale of this scale could be sustainable? This is what the biennale’s environmental coordinator, Kiira Kivisaar, thinks. “These events will always have some kind of impact. Maybe it’s about balancing the positive and negative impact because otherwise we would all be sitting at home,” Kivisaari said. “Being aware of the impact and finding ways to reduce it as much as possible is probably the best way forward.”
The “Helsinki Biennale: New Directions Can Emerge” runs until September 17, 2023.
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