Umeå universitets logga

video performance

The There’s no future in ice performance and video trace 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.

The video presents 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 smells 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.

Public exhibition:

• Resonance Dialogues in Art & Ecology, Painted Tree Gallery & Southern Forest Arts, Northcliffe, Western Australia, 29 November-1 February 2026
• Relate North 2025 online exhibition, 3-4 November 2025
• To Notice is to Remember, SOLU Space, Bioart Society, Helsinki Biennale and Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Helsinki, 7 June 2025