My 69th year was my first year as a pensioner, and in the beginning that seemed like a big change. Because I had a working grant the years before the change was not that remarkable; I continued with my practice at my own pace and accepted some small teaching or reviewing assignments on the side. After the three-year project Pondering with Pines, which ended in 2024, I created an informal project, Joining Junipers, as a transition activity. And that has worked rather well, including monthly meetings with three junipers, two of them in Helsinki and one in Stockholm, published as podcast episodes as well. The major change looming on the horizon, which I have been preparing for and which will take place only this coming spring, is leaving my studio on Harakka Island, where I have been since 1997. And the challenge is not only in sorting all the stuff but also finding a new studio, probably or hopefully in Lapinlahti, the old hospital in the park near the city center.
I have travelled to Stockholm with the cats Pipo and Pompe every month and also made some trips without them, including two doctoral summerschools, one in Oslo in the spring and the other in Stameriena castle in Latvia in the summer, both of which I really enjoyed. The project Gifts from the Sentient Forest ended this year with an exhibition in Rovaniemi, which I was gallery sitting for a week in the summer and a weekend retreat in Äkäslompolo in the autumn. And I have had the opportunity to join three conferences, the 16th SAR (Society for Artists Research) conference in Porto in May, the IFTR (International Federation for Theatre Research) conference in Cologne in June – where I joined the excom (executive committee) meeting for the last time, since my term ended now – and last but not least the 30th PSi (Performance Studies international) conference in Fortaleza in Brasil in December, where I now serve on the board as one of the archivists.
Regarding exhibitions and screenings this has not been a prominent year, although I did have my usual solo show in the Telegraph gallery on Harakka in the summer and participated in the joint exhibition Artists’ Island there in the autumn. And of course I had a work in the Gifts from the Sentient Forest exhibition, too. An old work was shown in Pimento gallery in Oulu in the spring and another one in Bioart society’s screening, but nothing much else to boost of. With publications I have been more prolific, partly because some delayed ones have now finally come out; see the lists below, with the latest on top.

Exhibitions, events and performances in 2025
“With the Juniper on Fredhäll Cliff” (performance response) in the Artistic Research Working Group of PSi (Performance Studies International) at the PSi #30 conference XXX – Cruzo, Cruising, Crossroads in Fortaleza, Brasil 11-15.12.2025.
Year of the Dog – Sitting in a Tree (2007) and Time with a Pine , video poster at Kuva Research Days, Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki 9-12.12.2025.
Shadow of a Pine – Remix in Artists’ Island exhibition on Harakka Island 10.-28.9.2025.
“More Pines – Lisää mäntyjä – Mera tallar” in the Telegraph Gallery on Harakka Island 12-17.8.2025 See also
Day with a Mountain Birch in Night of the Arts at SOLU space: To Notice is to Remember 14.8.2025.
With a Pine at Äkäslompolo in Gifts from the Sentient Forest – exhibitionin
Villa Vinkkeli, Rovaniemi 10.6.-1.8.2025
Day with a Mountain Birch in Bioart Society members’ screening 7.6. and online until 15.6.2025.
“FlowerPower” in the Impossible week peace agora exhibition on Harakka Island 22-25.5.2025.
With the Tarri Pine, Pimento gallery, Oulu, 22.1.-16.2.2025 See info in Finnish

Publications in 2025
“Duration through Repetition – Revisiting as Method”, HUB – Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society, 5 (2025) https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2797281/2797282/0/0
“Walking in the Woods.” Global Performance Studies 7 (2) (2024). https://doi.org/10.33303/gpsv7n2a122
Arlander, Annette & Pilvi Porkola “Performance” in Karin Murris
“Sunnuntait männyn kanssa – performanssia ja performatiivista kirjoitusta” [Sundays with a Pine – performance and performative writing ] in Pilvi Porkola (ed.) Kirjeitä ja Meritähtiä: Näkökulmia performatiiviseen kirjoittamiseen [Letters and Starfish – Perspectives on Performative Writing] Nivel 22, pp. 57-73 https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-353-100-0
“Talking about sentience” as one of the testimonials on the Gift from the Sentient webpages https://www.sentientforestproject.com/annettearlander
“Liikkuvaa ja lähes liikkumatonta kuvaa mäntyjen kanssa: Miten kohdata puu subjektina?”. [Moving and almost immobile images with pines: How to encounter a tree as a subject?] Lähikuva – audiovisuaalisen kulttuurin tieteellinen julkaisu 38 (3) 2025:51-68. https://doi.org/10.23994/lk.173157
“Esityksestä julkaisuksi. Miten tehdä asioita esityksellä -tutkimushankkeen kokemuksia konferenssiesitysten julkaisemisesta” [From performance to publication] in Teo Kurki, Jari Martikainen, Tuija Saresma, Saara Jäntti ja Sari Pöyhönen (eds.) Taide tietämisen tapana. Nykykulttuurin tutkimuskeskuksen julkaisuja 137, Nykykulttuuri 2025.
“Pondering with Contorta Pines – Towards Post-humanist Approaches in Performance as Research”. Näyttämö ja Tutkimus [Stage and Research] Vol. 11 No 1 (2025), 11-32. See https://journal.fi/teats/article/view/145411
“Public and archivable” in Mika Elo and Maiju Loukola (eds/toim) In Line, online, off the grid / Linjassa, linjoilla, katveessa. Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki 2025, 252-255.
“Pondering with Örö Pines: Talking with Trees as an Undisciplinary Method”. Plant Perspectives. 2025 https://doi.org/10.3197/WHPPP.63845494909748
“Trees as experts in Site-specificity” in Hunter, Victoria and Cathy Turner (eds.) Routledge Companion to Site-Specific Performance, London & New York: Routledge 2025, 318-328. See here

Talks, papers, presentations and other tasks in 2025
Joining Junipers at the Crossroads (presentation) in the Artistic Research Working Group of PSi (Performance Studies International) at the PSi #30 conference XXX – Cruzo, Cruising, Crossroads in Fortaleza, Brasil 11-15.12.2025.
Examining a performance by Karolin Poska, Estonian Academy of Arts 12-13.11.2025.
Lecture at Aalto doctoral school 6.11.2025.
Panelist in the online event “Plants, Memory, Belonging” organised by Oak Spring Garden & Plant Perspectives 8.10.2025 See poster PMB_2026_Final
“On creating podcast episodes” at the Sentient Forest retreat in Äkäslompolo 5-7.9.2025.
Presentation in Teo Kurki, Jari Martikainen, Tuija Saresma, Saara Jäntti ja Sari Pöyhönen (eds.) Taide tietämisen tapana. Publishing event (webinar) 27.8.2025.
Lecture and workshop at International Doctoral Summer School in Latvia 18-22.8.2025.
“Junipering” (response to Denise Ackerl’s Mermaiding) in the online gathering of the Artistic Research Working group of Psi (Performance studies international) 18.6.2025.
“How to do things with Pinecones: Carnivalizing the undisciplinary?” in the PAR (performance as research) working group at IFTR conference in Cologne 9.-13.6.2025.
“Documenting and Sharing” at seminar 2 of the Norwegian Artistic Research Program, Oslo 13-15.5.2025.
”Performing for a Pine – Resonance in Repetition” at SAR (Society for Artistic Research) conference on Resonance in Porto 8-9.5.2025.
Participating in the Kone Forest Dialogue conversation as part of the Gifts from the Sentient Forest project 2.4.2025
“Finding the Research Question in Speculative Creative Practice” conversation with Roy Hanney in the seminar series Research for Creative Media: Practice and Pedagogy (online) 12.2.2025 See recording
 
 
 

A happy winter solstice and a peaceful yuletide!
 
 
 

When my three-year project Pondering with Pines officially ended at the end of the year I was already fairly sure that junipers would be my next companions, and I started a small tumblr-blog called Joining Junipers. I’m not going to form any other separate blog for junipers, but I did create a media archive with the same name on the RC platform, Joining Junipers. Although this is not a formal project I will gather material about my encounters with junipers there. I’ve already chosen three junipers to have conversations with, two in Helsinki and one in Stockholm. With the juniper in Stockholm I speak Swedish, with the Juniper on Harakka Island Finnish and with the one in Suomenlinna English, in a series called With the Juniper in Suomenlinna. The project as a whole is called Joining Junipers, because Joining the Junipers would assumably mean linking together junipers rather than me joining them.

The most important thing that happened to me during this year of wars and disasters are the two cats Pipo and Pompe that came into my life in July and radically changed my days. There were other exciting things, too, old and new projects and people, some of them listed below, but nothing as overwhelming as these two characters whose wellbeing I am now responsible for and whose constant benign presence I can enjoy.
 

 
Projects and ongoing events in 2024
As an auspicious start for the year I was elected honorary member of Artists’ Association MUU (2024-), see here, and an interview in Finnish, here.
Pondering with Pines – Miettii mäntyjen kanssa – Funderar med furor (2022-2024), my main concern and a development and continuation of my previous projects related to trees was concluded this year, although I will continue working with the materials. See presentation in English at Uniarts website, the three-lingual blog here and the archive on the RC, here. One example is The Pine of the Year – The year of the Pine, see here.
I have had the opportunity to participate in the project Gifts from the Sentient Forest, which will continue in 2025, see project website and my personal archive on the RC.
The podcast Talking with Trees – Puhetta Puille – Talar med Träd on Soundcloud, here will continue in some manner.
Animal Years via qr codes on location on Harakka Island, see map here was temporarily out of function, but will be repaired in the Spring.

Exhibitions, events and performances in 2024
Tala om det för Tallen (Tell it to the Pine) in Hippolyte studio 1-24.11.2024. See here.
With the Pine in Kaivopuisto Park 2-3-1 at Muu Mediataidetori 17-21.10.2024.
Männyn kanssa – With a Pine – Med en fura, Telegraf gallery on Harakka Island 20.8.-1.9.2024. Se here.
Citizen Pine, installation as part of City is sound, city is quicksand 21-23.5.2024.
Screening of With the Master Pine – mix and Dearest Pine Tree in pop-up exhibition, Yögalleria 10.4.2024.
Rakas Kuusi (Dear Spruce) in the compilation Tuhon ja tunteiden metsä or Trees and Destruction by AV-arkki at the Tampere Film Festival 7 and 9.3.2024. See program book.
Day with Pine in the MUU Gala compilation at Taidekeskus Itä, Lappeenranta 17.2.2024.
Listening with a Pine (mix) as part of the program The Strolling Creatures of Light at MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre 27.1.2024.
Performing in Auringonvihreä – hommage to poet Gunnar Björling by Sanna Kekäläinen at the Helsinki Observatory 25-27.1.2024.
Pondering with Pines – Conversation in Three Languages, exhibition at Muu Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre 7-21.1.2024. See info. Small review in Finnish here.

Publications in 2024
How to Do Things with Artistic Research – Animal Years Revisited. Acta Scenica 65, University of the Arts Helsinki, 2024. See here.
Arlander, Annette, Barton, Bruce, Householder, Johanna and Man, Michelle. 2024. “The Work of Sharing: Discussing Performance in the Mode of Performance”.Performance Philosophy Journal Vol.9 No.1 (2024): Performance Philosophy Problems, 121-135.
“Workshop with a Pine” in Mend-Blend-Attend: Advancing Artistic Research, Proceedings of the 13th SAR International conference on Artistic Research, 86-95.
“Revisiting the Rusty Ring: Ecofeminism Today?” A video essay from 2020 reprinted in Special Retrospective Issue of PARtake: The Journal of Performance As Research, 6(2). See here.
“Writing to Trees with the Trees – experiments in NIROX and Mustarinda” in Taub, Myer (ed.) Forests and Fences, London & New York: Routledge, 2024, 29-47.
”’Kertaa ja koosta’ – työmenetelmä ja julkaisumuoto” [Upprepa on sammanställ – arbetsmetod och publikationsformat] in Järvinen, Hanna (ed.) Miten tehdä esityksellä [How to do things with performance], Tampere: Vastapaino 2024, 191-223.
Conversation in Jatun Risba, Daniele J Minns, O.Pen Be: “Queering ecologies to cultivate unity”, Antennae issue 64, 2024, 165-176.
“Practicing with Trees” in Sondra Fraleigh and Shannon Rose Riley (eds.) Geographies of Us: Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages, Routledge 2024, 219-224.

Talks, presentations and academic tasks in 2024
Opponent for Alexandra Ianchenko, “Estranging Trams: Atmospheres of Trams in Art”, Tallinn University 12.11.2024.
Lecture in the course Research through Art and Design, Aalto Arts 7.11.2024.
“Pondering with a Pine in the Park”, Metsäsuhdeklubin iltapäivä [Human-Forest Relationship Research Club] Metsä, kestävyys ja dialogi at Forest science’s day 23.10.2024, see here
“In Assemblage with a Pine” at PSi#29 Assemble in London 20-23.6.2024.
“Pondering with a Pine Near You” for the Artistic Research Working Group of PSi at PSi#29 Assemble in London 20-23.6.2024, see working group blog
”Miettii mäntyjen kanssa – miten kohdata puu subjektina taiteellisen tutkimuksen kontekstissa” [Pondering with Pines – how to encounter a tree as a subject in the context of artistic research], see <program for seminar in Lusto 27-28.5.2024.
Performance and response at Artistic Research Working Group online meetings 19.4. and 3.5.2024.
Presentation “Repeat, revisit, recreate – Revisit, recreate, reflect” at Helsinki Photomedia conference 11-14.4.2024.
Seminar with MA students of Contemporary Dramaturgy and Performance Research at Uniarts Helsinki 5.4.2024.
Seminar on autotheory, autofiction, autoetnography and performative writing for doctoral students at Uniarts Helsinki with Hanna Järvinen and Pilvi Porkola (2023-2024).
Seminar on Documentation and Sharing for doctoral candidates in Oslo 7-8.2.2024.
Lecture on documentation for MA students at SKH (Stockholms Konstnärliga Högskola) 2.2.2024.
Conversation with Karoliina Lummaa and Olga Cielemecka at Muu Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre 13.1.2024 See info
 
Thank you
for all these opportunities to collaborate with fascinating people and beings of all kinds, and best wishes for the coming year 2025!
 
 

QR codes are supposed to be reliable and practical but I have encountered some problems, again. This time, to my surprise, the free QR code generator program that I used in 2023 has changed owner or policy and now want to lease the QR codes for quite a sum each month, which is not an option in this case. Probably they have changed the static codes to dynamic codes (see screenshot blow) but how you can do that in retrospect, I cannot understand. Anyway, before I can make new metal signs and place them on top of the old ones, probably only next spring, the videos are temporarily visible on this page
 

Two grown-up male cats from Turku, Pipo and Pompeo, are now living with me and have already changed my way of life. Probably they will change my art making too at some point. For now I am learning how to take care of these miraculous beings:
 

Pipo

Pompeo