30 sec excerpt from the podcast "The Gift of Scent" Norway - Owls in the Moss. Artist Randi Nygård is in an interview with me introducing her research on bogs in Norway. The narration is telling the backstory behind The Gift of Scent, a project we have collectively contributed to the Chilean pavilion at the Venice biennale 2022.
Down in the Bog - Thinking with Peatlands is led by an ambition to create cross-pollinating meeting grounds for art, environmental issues and the public. The exhibition project emphasizes the sharing and embodying of knowledge and awareness to create attention towards the need for increased care of peatland areas, locally, nationally and internationally. Practically and conceptually the topic of peatlands will throughout the three chapter project at large, act as a guiding map and compass to learn about historical, cultural and contemporary changes in the environments around us in Sápmi, Northern Norway, Estonia and selected locations internationally.Slowly growing, like peat forming, this is a project in process. The works, workshops, hikes, a discursive and live music program, aim at large to give poetic, imaginative and dreamlike nutrition to more sturdy layers of awareness, care and action. To learn together from the ecosystems of Peatlands.
Hibernation, the first of the three chapters of the overall project Down in the Bog - Thinking with Peatlands, was presented at Romsa Dáiddasiida / Tromsø kunstforening, followed by chapter two, Sporulation, at EKKM (Estonian Contemporary Art Museum) in Tallinn. Third chapter was Thinking with Peatlands symposium, a three day program with hikes, live performance and presentations in the are of Romsa / Tromsø and in collaboration with Romsa Dáiddasiida / Tromsø kunstforening. All three chapters were realized during 2024. The prelude On the Border - Down in the Bog - a five day hike, happened in 2023.
In Down in the Bog - Thinking with Peatlands I am working through prisms such as decolonial, feminist, visceral and collaborating practices. The curatorial method focus to tune in to multiple channels simultaneously, and zoom out, in a micro-macro perspective to join polyphonic compositions examine the diversity of «landscapes" that the peatlands can contain. Sound is also investigated as one of several vehicles and communication formats of the "landscapes" where narratives are nested.
I am a "learning curator" who has a conversational, collaborative and theme-driven practice. In my projects, I am often motivated by context and do not see it necessary to act only withininstitutional spaces defined from a Western colonial standpoint. I am interested in and challenged by in-the-prosess work, improvisation and the complexity of situating oneself. My practice is grounded in a collaborative discourse that practically involves joint processes, hands-on work and long-term presence with immersion in selected themes, issues and/or selected locations. The collaborations I initiate or at any time am part of, take different forms. I decide on my role in the various collaborations and define it for each project. As a collaborative and learning curator, my desired working method is to be in close dialogue with my collaborators, in order to jointly learn, share, understand and examine the context in which one acts at any given time.
Acting in the art field nationally and internationally, I work from the point of view that art has an important role in society and that it should benefit a publicthrough varied mediation and physical accessibility also outside the big city centers and main populated regions.
Karolin Tampere (b. Tallinn, Estonia) is a PhD Research fellow at Tromsø Art Academy, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway and Faculty of Fine Art, University of Bergen.
Karolin Tampere (b. Tallinn, Estonia) is a visual artist and curator currently based in Tromsø, Norway.
Her practice is led by a particular interest in collaborative and sociopolitically engaged practices, sound, music and listening. Since 2004 she has regularly contributed to the “forever lasting” art project Sørfinnset Skole/the nord land with artists Geir Tore Holm and Søssa Jørgensen, and together with artist Åse Løvgren the ongoing collaboration Rakett was initiated in 2003. During 2013 and partly 2014 she was serving as director of Konsthall C in Stockholm and transformed the directorship into a collaboration named the Work Group/Arbetslaget with artists akcg(anna kindgren and carina gunnars) and Anna Ahlstrand.
Karolin is since 2011 part of Ensayos - a collective research practice centered on multispecies dialogues, coastal health and peatland protectionenacted by artists, scientists, activists, policymakers, and local community members. Sustaining focus on the ecopolitics of archipelagos for the past decade, Ensayos have developed distinct inquiries into extinction, human geography, and coastal health. Between 2017 - 2022 Karolin served as curator at the North Norwegian Art Centre in Svolvær, Lofoten archipelago and amongst other realized several projects with artists across the region of Northern Norway. Together with Hilde Mehti, Neal Cahoon and Torill Østby Haaland she co-curated LIAF2019 which received the Norwegian Critics price of honor.
In 2022 she was contributing to the collective project «The Gift» where Ensayos supported the Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol- the Chilean Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale curated by Camila Marambio. Ensayos collaborators Caitlin Franzmann (Australia), Christy Gast (New York, United States) and Randi Nygård (Norway) were working with “pods” of artists and ecologists to explore the ecology and culture of peatlands local to their regions. The three groups, with collaborators including Freja Carmichael (curator and Ngugi woman of the Quandamooka people), Denise Milstein (sociologist), Renee Rossini (ecologist), Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel and Karolin Tampere (curator/artist)conjured gifts of scent from international peatlands that contributed to the multisensory experience of the pavilion in Venice. TURBA TOL- HOL HOLthe book (edited by Carla Machiavello and Camila Marambio) is a compendium of the extensive eco-cultural thought of Latin American and Caribbean authors who center their attention on struggles, ways of doing, and experiences of care from the South. It is featuringthis project and available for download: https://turbatol.org/turba-book.html