Field_Notes – Traces
Bioart Society in collaboration with Björn Kröger, Finnish Museum of Natural History (Luomus)
2021
In 2013, pristine trace fossils were discovered on the slopes of Mount Saana at Kilpisjärvi, Sápmi. Saana was long known to potentially contain fossiliferous rocks, but previous expeditions and geologic mapping campaigns produced only a few poorly preserved samples. It took the persistence of two artists from Bioart Society, Antero Kare and Erich Berger, to find the right spot. The fossils were found during Bioart Society’s Field_Notes – Deep Time art & science field laboratory.
The fossils are scientifically important because they belong to the world’s oldest traces of animal life and are unique in Finland. They come from the geological strata of the Dividalen Group (DG) and are of the earliest Cambrian age (c. 541 million years ago). The fossiliferous strata are sandwiched between billion-year-old crystalline bedrock and a massive younger quartzite layer and exposed only in small spots just at the boundary between the two ancient continents of Laurentia and Baltica.
The fossil traces record a snapshot of animal activities that – hundreds of millions of years ago – shaped the seascapes and landscapes of what is today Saana. Deep time connects the sedimented Cambrian traces with other imprints recorded by the landscape; be they geological like the Caledonian mountain orogenesis or from animals like reindeer and humans, the latter leaving tracks not only by foot but also with machines and waste.
During a two-week field trip in September 2021, artists and scientists invited by the Bioart Society formed a group of critical enquirers to find out more about this ever-ongoing activity of tracing. Starting from the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki, the group shouldered its backpacks and followed the geological outcrops in search of the fossils. They practiced tracing and landscape reading, orientation, trace-making, documentation, and decision-making on sites of bifurcation. This may be called a (paleo)ethology of tracing.
FIELD ACCOUNTS
Field account by Jaakko Pesonen, Judith van del Elst & Leena Valkeapää
Field account by Björn Kröger
Field account by Erich Berger
SESSION VIDEOS
Tomorrow’s Fossils by Judith van der Elst and Jaakko Pesonen
Protocol for geological mapping and fossil collection by Björn Kröger, Elisa Koski and Sacha Marcet
_Experiencing trace fossils – to make art at the moment I feel like it_ by Sirja Moberg
Documents contained in the compressed folder:
- Field_Notes – introduction + report (introducing the project and a field report / 1830 KB)
- Field_Notes – production how-to (production how-to including instructions for preparations, planning, during the workshop and post production / 462 KB)
- Field_Notes – protocols (describing three individual fieldwork protocols also depicted in the ‘session videos’ above / 295 KB)
- Field_Notes – technical setup (describing used software and hardware / 289 KB)
- Field_Notes – workshop bibliography (a list of workshop bibliography / 153 KB)
Credits
Field_Notes – Traces, September 10th to 25th 2021 at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station
Participants: Erich Berger, Lisa Kalkowski, Leena Valkeapää, Judith Van der Elst, Jaakko Pesonen, Sirja Moberg. Björn Kröger, Elisa Koski, Sacha Marcet
Field_Notes – Traces was developed and produced by Bioart Society at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in the framework of the ARC-HIVE collaboration and co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union, The Ministry of Education and Culture Finland, the Kone Foundation, and the A.P. Moller Foundation.
Photography by all participants
Video footage by Erich Berger and Lisa Kalkowski
Video editing Laura Kaker