The drive up from Kittilä was already an experience, with the one-hour break at Muonio, feeling the landscape changing and turning more and more spectacular at the same time as the mountains grew higher and the trees turned smaller. First the spruces disappeared, then the pine-trees, and around Karesuando where the first reindeers ran across the road, the pine trees started to vanish as well. I was sitting in front in order to see the world changing, and enjoyed watching the busdriver stop every now and then in the middle of nowhere, when there was a big box by the road side, and throw in a newspaper or other mail, like an expert basket ball player, as a fellow passenger remarked. There was almost an incident developing when we arrived at the gas station at Kilpisjärvi village, since a bunch of Norwegian snowmobile drivers had left their vehicles lying around so the bus could not turn. Luckily they appeared to remove them, peace prevailed and the trip could go on a few more kilometers. I had no problem finding my way to the station, since two elderly ladies (well, I am an elderly lady myself) on the bus were headed there, too. And the station is next to the road.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the mountains looked exactly like they should in a proper travel advertisement, the buildings were covered in glittering snow, in fact everything was covered in snow. Snow makes things beautiful; it makes the landscape into one whole. In small doses snow can turn any landscape clear and apprehensible, by reducing unnecessary detail and making the main forms and lines stand out. That kind of cosmetic snowcover is not needed in a landscape like this, with the mountains providing all the form and clarity (or obscurity) you might wish for. In contrast to their imposing majestic shapes the small birches abounding everywhere, with their dark twisted stems and branches standing out against the snow provide the decorative details. I was breathing deep faced with all this beauty and then slowly started to realize that I would not be able to move without skis or snow shoes. And my first impulse was to look for a place where I could place my camera on tripod within reach from the opened paths and still get a view of the lake. Then I realized that instead of making some kind of emergency decisions, I should perhaps accept that I might have to alter my plans and think again, look again, and give this new world a chance to appear without imposing my expectations and plans. And perhaps I should try to borrow some snow shoes (which I did, the next day). I snapped some photos with my phone without actually seeing anything in the dazzling light, as if wanting to gather evidence of what I saw around me, (two of them you can see here at the end), as if the view could disappear at any moment. And in fact it did, and does. The weather changes all the time, as on the Atlantic coast, when the clouds keep rolling in. Probably the sea really is close by, behind the mountains. While I am writing this, the snow is falling again, covering the landscape in an ever thicker white carpet. So I guess I have to start planning how I might be performing snow…

The weather really changes quickly. This morning there was a constant snowfall and it looked like it would never end. I imagined us sitting here inside, with the snow slowly covering the windows, time passing. And suddenly, before noon, the sky cleared. A colleague having coffee in the kitchen explained that you have to go with the weather here: If it is bad, you wait, if it is good, you go out at once. And so I went out in order to practice walking with snowshoes. A friendly biologist, who had an interesting talk about the flora and fauna in this area at the nearby visitors’ center the first night I was here, explained to me how the shoes should be fastened and used properly, and yes, it was a lot easier that way. I took a small walk on the ice, about one hour, and realized that it might be possible to walk there without snowshoes as well. At lunch time the good weather was gone, the heavy snowfall was back for more than an hour, and I decided I would simply have to try whether my camera could take the snow or not. By the time I was down on the ice the snowfall was over, and I made my first attempts at 2 pm with clearing skies. I chose the iconic Malla fell as my main character and placed my tripod near a wooden construction at the shore. Then I walked a few meters out on the ice to have a human figure in the image, and made some marks in the snow to find the same spot again. In the by now bright sunshine it was hard to see if the horizon was horizontal, so I made two attempts and went inside to see what they looked like. I left the tripod there and decided to return after one hour to see how the weather had changed. One hour turned to two, so my next image was at 4 pm, the following at 6 pm and the last one for today at 8 pm, a blue moment. The changes in the light are fascinating even without the abrupt weather changes, because they completely transform the image, partly because I use automatic focus and white balance. I cannot show still images from the video here; for that I would need another kind of computer, but I took some snapshots with my phone, so you can get an idea:

This is what the world mostly looked like today, although to human eyes it looked much whiter, brighter, despite the clouds and the snowfall.

The snowstorm actually started only in the evening, so these images are from my last sessions. The very last image was completely blurred because of the snow melting into water drops on the lens of the camera. It did not look bad, but of course the automatic focus was pumping back and forth, and what was even more annoying, as I recognized afterwards, the framing was completely wrong, or too much to one side. Well, this was my first attempt, and I will try again tomorrow, or probably next week, when the weather is supposed to be clearer. Any way I have now one hour of material of Malla Fell, and sometimes me as well, as a tiny figure on the ice. I should be able to edit something out of it,  a mix of five minutes or so…

My real adventure today was going skiing in the morning. I have not stood on a pair of skis for more than thirty years, yes, I am not exaggerating, and I thought it might be interesting to see if my body would remember anything. And yes, it did. With the help of a friendly lady here at the station I managed to attach a pair of forest skis (the wider variety) to my boots and started off across the yard, holding on to the ski poles for my dear life. And after a while it did not feel so bad. My kinesthetic memory was useful in the slope towards the lake, since when the skis started to glide downwards my body immediately remembered how to get up and thus also down by turning sideways. It must have looked hilarious when I was carefully climbing down the small slope. Nevertheless I ended up on the ice safely and really enjoyed moving on skis on a flat surface. And I soon realized that I had too much clothes on, since skiing quickly makes you warm. Although I did not go very far, this short skiing trip was in any case an adventure worth experiencing. Funny enough, while concentrating on moving, you do not notice much of the surroundings. At least when inexperienced, you do not see much of the environment, except the part that is directly in front of your feet, although you are completely embedded in it, literally performing landscape.

After a windy morning the afternoon was bright and only partly cloudy. Leena Valkeapää, an artist who lives not so far from here came to town and we met for coffee, sitting on a terrace in the sunshine like any old ski tourist. I have never been to the north for vacation, so I would not have known, but Leena initiated me to this custom, and told me about life here, between two worlds, the Norwegian weekend visitors and tourists from the south on one hand and the reindeer herding Sami people trying to maintain their traditional way of life on the other. I was fascinated by the fact that on the other side of the lake is Sweden, and I could simply walk there over the ice. There is a reindeer fence, however, near the shore, she told me, which keeps people out, as well. In older times the Sami people used to follow their reindeers across the borders, but now these movements are blocked.

Today I spent most of my time socializing, a small walk northwards in the morning and a small round on the ice with my skis in the evening, for practice, and of course the walk to the village to meet Leena. No video images today. I photographed an art photo in the dining room, depicting the same Malla Fell I videoed, in summertime. Unfortunately I do not know the photographer. With the reflection from the window it becomes something else, however.  Although recognizable it looks rather surreal:

Monday was a working day – and with a beautiful sunshine most of the day! Today I made the “real” version of what I now, preliminary, call A Day With Malla (working title), a short performance for camera, or should I say a video documenting the changes in the landscape seen from the lake towards Malla fell during one day in April. I started early in the morning, the first session at 7 am, down at the lake, very near the place where I made my first attempt. The light was bluish, of course, but I guess I could have started already at six o’clock, because the sun was up. Then I continued by repeating the same image every second hour, at 9 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 5 pm, 7 pm and the last session at 9 pm. All morning and day the sun shone from a deep blue sky, it was rather cold and the snow glittered with thousand tiny sparks. In the afternoon clouds started to gather and some snow was falling every now and then. No real snowfall but something like a mist or fog with snowflakes, beautiful and eerie. The clouds remained until the last session, and at eight o’clock it was snowing heavily, but luckily the sky cleared somewhat after that. No glorious sunset to end this piece, but a sunset nonetheless. I guess it is better that way.  - I started to write a text, in Finnish, to use as a voice-over to the video today, but I am not sure if it is needed or how to use it. If it turns out ok I might try to record it at some point tomorrow.

The snapshots with my phone from the first and last session will give you an idea what Malla looked like today; what is missing is the sunny part between them. And to explain what I mean by saying there is a lot of snow here, I include a snapshot of the view from the kitchen window, taken this morning.

This is my last day and last night in Kilpisjärvi – for now. I already know I want to come back and see what this landscape looks like without snow. Today I spent most of my time indoors, but I finally managed to write a small text to use as a voice-over for the video  A Day with Malla. I even managed to record a few versions of it, without a proper microphone though, only with my camera, which makes the editing easy, later. The next step will be to translate it into English, for subtitles (in case I want to use them) and I almost did the translation, too, today, but it still needs some reworking. The text as such is what it is now, not very clever or interesting or poetic, but something. – There are no images for today, except of the house number, which shows that we are here at the end of a very long road.

When I have edited the video I will add it to vimeo or perhaps send it to the AV-archive, and add a link there on my website annettearlander.com But that will take a while.

For now, thank you to bio art society for this opportunity, and good luck to the artist who comes here after me!

Great to be back after almost two months – everything is the same and everything has changed! Most of the snow is gone, but a lot of it still remains here and there. I knew there would be ice on the lake, but I expected the birches to be in bloom, at least slightly greenish, but no, not yet. The spring is only beginning here. The sun is incredibly bright and warm and stays high up in the sky, its dazzling light both energising and exhausting. Arriving here yesterday I soon realised I cannot simply continue to work from where I stopped when I left. Or in some way perhaps I can, by making a second part, which will be different, of course, and still somehow resemble the first part.

What is changing, what remains the same? A colleague agreed to help me by sending a challenge, a prompt, a question, a quote, something to act as an impulse I could start from. This morning I received a brief poem by the great modernist poet Gunnar Björling that almost made me cry. The text is impossible to translate here without destroying it; about the defiance in looking at the world as if nineteen, of remaining nineteen through age and time and wrinkles. Perhaps even remaining true to who you are, which is a scary thought. It is easier to think of life as a form of becoming. When the mountain slopes are filled with brooks that sing of spring it is easy to feel forever young, or at least in the beginning of a journey. Everything around is waking up as if born again. Life is so fragile, the time for growth so brief, that each creature feels precious. Or perhaps, on the contrary, the plants and animals that live here are extraordinary strong. How else could they survive? I sure wish I could grow new hair each spring, like all these other growing things.

What is changing, what remains the same? I tried to recreate the image I repeated for a day in April, and found almost the same spot for my camera tripod; the wooden construction I used as a signpost was still there. Almost, that is, because the shores are open, I cannot walk on the ice, of course, and even the slight shift in the angle of the camera transforms the image. I will probably make a version, one day every second hour, without the human figure, nevertheless. Another option I tried was sitting on a rock on the shore. I placed my blue scarf as a marker for the snapshot, which I made without a tripod, as a note. There is too much information in the image with branches and rocks and whatever, but I have to accept that, if I want to face Malla Fell as before. Everything changes; perhaps something remains the same.

What should I change and what should I try to maintain as the same? A delicate balance; in some sense nothing is ever, ever the same. That is the beauty of  it, the whole point of performing landscape; it changes all the time. And that is why repetition is needed, to somehow artificially produce an impression of something remaining the same in order for all the small changes to become discernible. By saying that, I repeat myself, again. Tonight I repeated my attempt to climb up to Saana, which I gave up in April, and this time I succeeded; not all the way to the summit, but high enough to be on the mountain, to have an other view of Malla. And for a brief moment I felt nineteen.

Light and air everywhere – only towards evening some clouds have appeared. I would never have imagined that I would be waiting for clouds here, to have some relief from the glaring sun! A second day of warmth and already some signs of green surround the birches. The spring is gaining momentum now. The melting snow runs down the slopes, only the path to the shore where I put my camera tripod this morning is still covered in snow. Funny feeling walking in deep snow wearing rubber boots, shorts and a T-shirt, and feeling hot. The water erodes the snow from below, the sun from above; sometimes the crust breaks and I fall deep into the snow, although I have created a small path of footsteps to follow.

This morning at ten o’clock, rather late, I started a test series with images of Malla, to be taken every second hour, which will continue until ten at night. This means I have been going back and forth to the shore, taking short walks, reading something, wandering around, unable to concentrate on anything fully. Right now I am looking at my watch, it is soon time to go down again.

These two images show the changes taking place in the landscape within two hours. They are snapshots with my phone, and their framing differs from the video image, of course, not even the horizon is stable, but perhaps you can get the idea.

I wonder what would happen if music was added to these images? Would it turn them into mere illustration or background to the music, or perhaps the opposite, would the music turn into some sort of accompaniment only? The idea of nature images and music sounds like kitsch, or some travel advertisement. Why am I even thinking of it? Because the prompt I received this afternoon was a piece of amazing experimental string music, with lots of strong contrasts, thundering echoes and small twinkling sounds and plenty of silence. A music that makes you see images of ice floes breaking or branches suddenly cracking and falling, all kinds of dynamic events in the landscape, large and small. The problem is, when you listen you can imagine them, or perhaps something else, whatever fills your mind, and the images are stronger because you create them in your mind by yourself while listening.

To combine real images and music is really complicated, almost impossible but seductive. Sound can transform any image, by adding an extra layer; it functions as a voice-over even without words, or like a lens or window through which the images are seen, providing a mood or character, a guideline for interpretation. For a person attuned to listening, the images probably become some form of tapestry, like the ever-shifting ornaments shown by media players. Our senses work in a synesthetic fashion; seeing, hearing, touching all work in combination. Reality is a multisensory affair, but work which combines sound and images immediately has to meet the challenges of all cinematic conventions, where sound emotionally explains the images. Maybe I am simply afraid, since the world of music is unfamiliar to me, like a foreign language I do not understand or speak, that I can only listen to in awe.

Rewriting an academic text on interaction as a pre-requisite for our contemporary understanding of “liveness”(and what that means for our relationship to animate beings in the environment that cannot provide an immediate experience of interaction, like trees, for example) has occupied me for most of the day. And in the evening I received a message from my colleague, who cursed some fallen trees that blocked the road and destroyed the electricity lines at the cottage. Trees can have agency, too, no doubt about that. I realized how protected and easy my life here at the station is, with three meals a day if needed, warm water, internet connection and all the electricity for the appliances that I depend on, from camera and computer to telephone and toothbrush. Without electricity most of our society would probably collapse within days.

I did a little bit of video this afternoon, well, this evening, although it looks like afternoon, I guess. Sitting on a rock at the shore for fifteen minutes, almost as a still image, to be combined in a long crossfade with the “empty” view, to let the human figure slowly dissolve into the landscape. (The editing I cannot do here, but that is the plan). The sun was burning hot, despite the chilly presence of the ice on the lake. I took two snapshots with my phone, one picture of the view, which the camera saw (albeit vertical, while the video image is horizontal) though without me sitting in the image, and another from where I sat on the rock, of the view that I saw. For once they were not that dissimilar. Sometimes the difference between what I see while performing and what the camera sees while watching or recording me is hilarious. Here the landscape is  continuous; there is very little that you would want to crop out of sight. The sounds of the cars passing on the road I would gladly do without, though. I hoped the glimmer of the empty beer can floating by the shore next to the rock would be visible in the latter image, but maybe not. The illusion of a pristine beauty is preserved, for now.

The heat wave is over; a cold wind blows from northeast bringing a chilly mist from the Arctic Sea, perhaps even rain later tonight. It is hard to remember what it felt like to sit on the rock on the shore last night with the sun burning hot in my neck. Now, sitting on the same rock, I am shivering in the wind. The changes in the landscape during these few days have been swift. The birches are now green, since yesterday, and the ice on the lake has turned dark and damp today. The sky has been mainly grey today, no spectacular midnight sun tonight. Of course not, since I decided this Saturday-Sunday would be the right time to record a full day and a night from noon to noon. After the initial disappointment and dread of possible rain around midnight I realised the good sides to this boring greyness; the clouds cover the sun during those hours when it would be facing the camera, possibly blinding it. And there is the satisfaction of knowing that I did not bring my winter coat with me in vain. The temperature is estimated to sink down to + 4 degrees Celsius tomorrow morning. That is fine with me, as long as there is no heavy rain, which the camera would not like. While writing this, I am almost half-way through with one hour left until midnight. The light outside at the moment is like a winter afternoon. The clouds probably spread out the light in more evenly, and one cannot see the sun slowly sliding behind Saana.

Spring-cleaning was the prompt I received for today, which is a suitably exhausting activity comparable with staying up for 24 hours, despite short naps between the night sessions. While waiting for the next session – I go down to the shore every two hours – I have been cleaning my website, removing typos and minor errors, a spring-cleaning of sorts, too. The images here below are from earlier today, before the mist started pouring in from Norway, between Malla and Saana Fell. The wind makes my scarf flap while sitting on the rock, which is an unnecessary distraction in the image, but then again, documentation means documenting what happens, not what you would prefer taking place.

Why is it that the images I take as snapshots, without planning, always seem so much more interesting than the ones I deliberately prepare with a proper camera? Like these, taken in amazement when the ice suddenly began disappearing with an astonishing speed.

Two days of mist and rain. Yesterday I walked on the slope of Saana toward Saanajärvi, but turned around half way, scared of the fog, or perhaps tired and cold, too. Today the weather was a bit clearer, so I walked up towards Jehkas on the nature path and marveled at the open landscape on the “paljakka”, above tree level. I begin to realize why people want to wander up on the fells.  I saw all the German remains, too, of the airplane that crashed and the camp for prisoners, weird rusty evidence of a war that seems so  far away in time. The rivulets had turned into rivers in some places, and the snow was treacherous, hiding the water underneath. I managed to circumvent a few problematic places but in the end I came to a river that was too much to wade across. I did not want to come back the same way, so I took a deep breath, abandoned the path (which was cut off by the river) and started walking towards Saana, since I calculated that the circular path would come back somewhere there. It felt scary, although there was of course no way of getting lost in an open area between such mighty fells. Nevertheless I was very, very happy, when I finally saw a stick with an orange colored top, the sign of the path.

After the majestic views and timeless emptiness on the “paljakka” it felt somehow sad, like when the party is over, to return to the slopes with vegetation, well trodden paths and murmuring brooks. I continued with some small experiments I tentatively started yesterday, for lack of any better ideas, that is, recording the small brooks of melting water that are cascading or trickling down everywhere on the slopes. The very first work I did by myself with a video camera in 1999 was following two mountain brooks  in Farrera de Pallars in the Pyrenées to the point of their confluence, during my residency at Centre D’Art i Natura there. So like a reflex, I tried to look at the brooks again, prompted by their omnipresent sound. I expected to get som picturesque but probably uninteresting imagery and used video mainly for the sound.

The still images I took on the same spots that I videoed looked really strange, when I transferred them to my computer. The grey sky is reflected in the water, and turns the images with water running over last years’ grass into flat surfaces, rather fascinating in their blandness. So what to do with these? Luckily I need not decide that now…

Finally, during my last day here, I managed to get all the way to the summit of Saana. And it was worth it, although the wind was freezing cold. On the way up it was helping from the back, but on the way down it was blowing right in your face. No mist, luckily. The walk up on top of the mountain is rather pleasant, after the steep steps, although it is longer than you would imagine. There is always one more peak ahead. Coming down was almost harder because of the cold wind, but I did not feel tired before I was safely down on the main road. Only then did my legs tell me they wanted some rest. So now I have done my duty as a good tourist and feel I can leave the place content of fulfilling what was expected of me. And sure, I would be poorer without the views from Saana in my mind. The pictures on my phone are only a pale shadow of them, of course.

The ten days I have spent here have coincided with the arrival of spring. When I came I was astonished at the warm weather and the fact that the birches did not show any signs of green. And now when I am about to leave, I am surprised by the cold weather although the landscape is now all green around me. Although today was spent freezing in the dry, rocky moon landscape on Saana, some images of the beautiful foaming waterfall near the village I passed on my way to Lake Saana yesterday, can serve as a counterpoint.

The video works with Malla that I tried to complete here still remain to be edited, but for now this is enough. I am fairly sure to be back one day, perhaps already in the autumn, who knows. For now, thank you to the Finnish Bioart Society for the possibility to return here – and good luck to those who come after me.