My new contact tree and collaborator in Lappviken, the large birch at the outskirts of the park towards the highway, has helped me to feel connected to my new environment, the former mental hospital Lapinlahti or Lappviken built already in 1841. The tree has a huge branch that is easy to sit on as if on a lap of some wise wizard. I began visiting the birch immediately in April when I had signed the contract for my studio in the building, and decided to record a conversation once a month, as I had done with the junipers the year before. I felt like speaking Swedish with the birch and planned to read a poem by Josef Julius Wecksell each time. He is not at all as famous as Aleksis Kivi, whose room is a small museum in the same corridor as mine, but Wecksell lived forty years of his life as a patient here. Besides these monthly conversations spiced up by an old-fashioned poem, I have enlisted the assistance of the birch several times this spring, and recorded brief conversations in English for various purposes. They are all linked to a page on the Research Catalogue called simply Lapinlahti – Lappviken.
The first of these extra conversations was made for a performance called Birch to Birch in Bodø, Norway, and for that performance I simply breathed through a blues harp in and for the birch and recorded it as a form of greeting to the birches up in the north. The audience could see the video via QR codes hanging from my hat while I was “playing” for the birches there. The second conversation is called Asking the Birch and it was made for a lecture titled At the Edges of Disciplinary Conventions – Asking Trees for Advice in University of Agder, in Kristiansand Norway. The third conversation called Birch Response, I made for the meeting of the Artistic Research Working Group of PSi (Performance Studies international) in Jakarta. In fact I recorded two conversations, the first in response to the preoccupation of a participant who cancelled her trip and the second version, Repetition with Birch, in response to the preoccupation of another participant who joined later. The latest conversation, so far, Side effects with Birch I recorded for the meeting of the Performance as Research Working Group of IFTR (International Federation for Theatre Research) in Melbourne. These conversations were all recorded in June and the birch really helped me in responding to all those challenges in different contexts. Now I feel I can turn to the birch with almost any problem I encounter and I really feel more at home in Lappviken, despite having spent more time travelling than in my new studio here.
Category Archives: English
Goodbye Harakka
Today I left my keys on the table and locked the door. When I go to the farewell party tonight I don’t have a studio on the island any longer, I go as a guest. As a souvenir of sorts I placed the four bricks with I Ching trigrams painted on them that I made for the library exhibition (2001-2005) at the four entrances of the artists house. In the original exhibition they were combined with photos of the bricks taken in respective parts of the island.
(Northwest)
(Southwest)
(Southeast)
(Northeast)
entrance facing northeast, entering towards southwest
entrance facing southwest, entering towards northeast
entrance facing southeast, entering towards northwest
entrance facing northwest, entering towards southeast
I hope they will stay there for a while…
The Slow Goodbye
The Slow Goodbye – With the Juniper on Harakka
video works by Annette Arlander
Telegraph Gallery on Harakka Island
12 -17. May 2026, open noon to 5 pm
In 2025 I talked once a month with a juniper growing on the southeastern shore of Harakka Island and recorded the conversations on video. Summaries made of these are presented alongside the original conversations.
Works
Hitaat jäähyväiset – Harakan katajan kanssa, 2025 (28:45)
(The Slow Goodbye – With the Juniper on Harakka)
Hitaat jäähyväiset – Harakan katajan kanssa, 2025 (36:23)
(The Slow Goodbye – With the Juniper on Harakka)
Hitaat jäähyväiset – Harakan katajan kanssa 1-12, 2025
(The Slow Goodbye – With the Juniper on Harakka 1-12)
1 (7:30), 2 (8:40), 3 (12:51), 4 (11:15), 5 (9:05), 6 (20:46),
7 (15:34), 8 (14:49), 9 (7:46), 10 (10:34), 11(10:34), 12 (11:05)
Revisiting the Juniper – with text, 2019 (21:50)
My seventieth year
To celebrate staying alive for seventy years I decided to return to an old work – Sitting on a Birch – which I also call My fiftieth Year from 2006, when I travelled to Koivumäki every Sunday and sat on the outgrowth of a birch there. And decided to make it easier and choose a tree to sit on in my vicinity, one in Stockholm and one in Helsinki. The oak (probably an oak) I lean on the 10th January 2026 in the image above is growing on Fredhäll cliffs in Kungsholmen and the willow (probably a willow) I sit on the 17th January 2026, in the image below, is growing in the southwestern corner of Kaivopuisto park. The time is Saturday, if possible, Saturnus’ day. The blue and grey scarf is the same. If all goes well this will become two video works or perhaps a two-channel installation.
Thank you 2025 – Welcome 2026
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
Yuletide
A happy winter solstice and a peaceful yuletide!
Shadow of a Pine – Remix
Shadow of a Pine – Remix, Video 4k 19 min 15 sec.
Shown in the exhibition Artists’ Island on Harakka Island 10-28. September 2025.
In spring 2024 I returned to a pine tree growing on the western shore of Harakka Island – I had performed as the shadow of that tree weekly in the year of the dog 2006-2007 – and repeated for the camera what I remembered of my performance. Now I inserted the old video work Shadow of a Pine I-IV into this new material.
The old video work is part of the series Animal Years (2003-2014), performances for camera filmed for twelve years on Harakka Island and named after the Chinese calendar. The performances were repeated for a year about once a week in the same place, with the same framing of the image, with the video camera on a tripod.
Since 2023 one can get acquainted with one work from each year of the series on Harakka Island. On twelve filming locations there are aluminum signs with QR codes, which link to a video work online filmed on that site. Shadow of a Pine, however, is not part of that selection but can be viewed only here.
QR -codes in place again!
Now they work again, the QR codes linking to a selection of videos from Animal Years performed and recorded on Harakka Island 2002-2014. They are in the same places as before. Some of them are easy to spot, others are harder to find. Here are close-ups of the sites, in the order they were performed:
Year of the Horse 2002-2003
Year of the Goat 2003-2004
Year of the Monkey 2004-2005
Year of the Rooster 2005-2006
Year of the Dog 2006-2007
Year of the Pig 2007-2008
Year of the Rat 2008-2009
Year of the Ox 2009-2010
Year of the Tiger 2010-2011
Year of the Rabbit 2011-2012
Year of the Dragon 2012-2013 (East)
Year of the Dragon 2012-2013 (South)
Year of the Dragon 2012-2013 (West)
Year of the Dragon 2012-2013 (North)
Year of the Snake 2013-2014
More Pines – Lisää mäntyjä – Mera tallar
More Pines, video works of performances and conversations with pine trees in the Telegraph Gallery on Harakka Island 12-17 August 2025 noon to 5 pm. See also
Lisää mäntyjä, videoteoksia performansseista ja keskusteluista mäntyjen kanssa Lennätingalleriassa Harakan saarella 12-17.8.2025 klo 12-17. Katso myös
Mera tallar, videoarbeten om performance och samtal med tallar i Telegrafgalleriet på Stora Räntan 12-17.8.2025 kl 12-17. See också
Information in Finnish – lisätietoja – info på finska.
Works – Teokset – Verken:
For the Pine of the Year 2024
36 m 57 s, orig. 4k
With the Pines 1-12 2024
3 h 9 m 38 s, orig. 4k
Joining Junipers
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.
Performing Landscape 