Umeå universitets logga

performance with live stream on Instagram

There’s no future in ice traces the olfactory relationships between lichen, water, reindeer and anthropogenic environmental change. The Arctic is a vortex for climate change, warming four times faster than anywhere else. Unpredictable and extreme weather events are increasing, freezing lichen in ice and trapping lichen odorants. Reindeer can no longer smell their winter food, and they starve. These seemingly small biochemical changes have significant ecological, cultural, political and economic consequences for this fragile environment.

This peformance and videopresents evocative documentation of our acts of noticing and rituals of culpability, responsibility and solastalgia for disappearing and lost places, performed during the season of Dálvi in Ubmeje Sápmi / Umeå, Northern Sweden, the lands of the Sámi people. As non- Sámi artists from the hot sands of Whadjuk Nyungar Boodja / SouthWestern Australia, the snow and ice-covered forests of Ubmeje / Umeå are incomprehensible to us. We walked through the lichen, snow and pine, learning the smells of this place. We collected reindeer lichen (jeagil and lahppu (Northern Sámi) / renlav (Swedish)) and water from Ubmejeiednuo (Ume Sámi) / Umeälven (Swedish) / Ume River (English), transformed the smell of the lichen into fragrant water and froze the water into small sculptures. Warmed by our hands, the ice sculptures melt, returning the lichen-water to the forest, releasing the smell of jeagil and lahppu, and calling to boazu (reindeer) long gone. 

There’s no future in ice was supported by UmArts, Umeå Institute of Design & Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University, Västerbottens museum, Umeå, and the Department of Creative Industries, Tourism and Sport, Western Australia.

Two simultaneous SoS actions in association with EcoArtSpace Australian Dialogues: Place-based interventions in three time zones and the University of Tartu Traces of Extinction Conference for World Environment Day 2024.

Perth, Australia: Sue Hauri-Downing & Nien Schwarz; Location: Wireless Hill Museum; Time: (UTC+8) 2pm-4pm

This collaboration between Schwarz and Hauri-Downing involves the public distillation of fragrant hydrosols from trees in a quarantine zone in Perth, Australia. Performed simultaneously with a similar action in Tartu, Estonia, this is part of an ongoing collaborative exploration of smell, place-making and solastalgia. Using steam distillation, odorants are extracted from plant material significant to a current biosecurity situation impacting Perth’s urban landscape. An exotic beetle, the Polyphagous Shot-Hole Borer, is reproducing in specific host trees. When an infestation is detected in a tree, the tree is eradicated. The artists create a fragrant memorial.

Tartu, Estonia: Tarsh Bates & Linda Knight with Curated Biodiversity, Tartu; Location: Oecologicum, University of Tartu; Time: (UTC+3) 9am-11am

This action is a collaboration between Knight and Bates involving the public distillation of fragrant hydrosols from site-specific plants in Tartu, Estonia and a scent marking performance. Performed at the Traces of Extinction conference, University of Tartu, simultaneously with a similar action in Perth, Australia, this performance is part of Tarsh’s ongoing collaborative exploration of smell, place-making and solastalgia. and Linda’s counter-mapping project. Using steam distillation, odorants are extracted from plant material significant to the locations. Members of the public use the hydrosol to mark and map the plant smells onto a human body ‘protected’ by a hazmat suit. A fragrant and ephemeral memorial is performed.