Paper short abstract:

The gap between knowledge and action is one of the most acute dangers for the life on Earth. In my paper the topic is discussed on the base of the movie “Don’t look up!” (2021), an example of visionary literature, apocalyptic story about the end of the world.

Paper long abstract:

The movie “Don’t look up!” (2021) tells a media critical story about two scientists, whose message about an approaching gigantic comet (a “killer asteroid” of the size of one killing the dinosaurs 66 billion years ago) does not reach wider audience before it is too late. Though a bit naïve as a scenario the movie has been interpreted as a metaphor for a less quick but as dramatic climate change and loss of species. With plenty of scientific knowledge we still do too little to stop the change.

As an example of an apocalyptic topic the film gives us nothing new. The genres of apocalyptic literature and movie range from the visions of H.G. Wells to The 100. What is new is the “epistemological” approach to the catastrophe: due to our narrow preferences we are not able to turn the knowledge into action.

Visionary literature shows the two-fold relationship between story and action: action before telling and telling before action (stories warning about or spurring for action). In “Don’t look up!” I will be looking at the different variables behind not acting when knowing about the future catastrophe. As examples of these variables are the facts (denied or contested), the news value of the stories (interesting stories about celebs and not so interesting ones about facts), the positions of the messengers (young/old, female/male) and the political conjectures. Especially interesting is the three-fold relationship between facts, stories, and action. In which ways narrativity mediates the connection between knowledge and action?

Paper short abstract:

I examine the communication between forest and human in Finnish-Karelian-Ingrian folk poetry. The mythical world of oral poetry includes a remarkable number of instances of communication with the non-human, most of it constituting dialogue with natural entities in day-to-day life.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I introduce the communication between forest and human in Finnish-Karelian-Ingrian folk poetry. The poems are published in the volumes of The Ancient Poems of the Finnish People (Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot in Finnish: SKVR), a representative compilation of runic songs collected mostly from Finland, Karelia and Ingria during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the oldest dating back to the 16th century). The mythical world of oral poetry includes a remarkable number of instances of communication with the non-human, most of it constituting dialogue with natural entities in day-to-day life. Some of this dialogue also directly engages with the forest revealing itself to be an independent actor, one whose morality or intentions remain largely unfathomable to its human interlocutor. On the other hand, SKVR includes many poems that feature a human communicating with natural entities such as birds, for lack of any reliable human relationships. In some of these poems, the ability to partake in this anomalous interaction is regarded as a special talent: interspecies understanding is seen as a gift.

The forest is often a place for erotic encounters in men’s hunting poetry, and a potentially dangerous place for women in epic poems. Although the forest generally appears in women’s lyric poems of sorrow and worry as a place of refuge, it can also be a place where women’s sexuality is expressed. While the interpretative focus in the article is folkloristic the intention is posthumanistic, proposing that the forest – with its other-than-human entities – gazes upon its human visitors. This leads us to ask a pertinent question: What does the forest think of us?

Paper short abstract:

My study will discuss about relationship between humans and birds in a special musical genre: Karelian joik-singing. I am looking at the imitative sound expression as a possibility for challenging, changing, and dissolving the borders between human beings and other species. The human-animal relationship is here under scrutiny.

Paper long abstract:

My study will concentrate on the relationship between humans and birds in Karelian joik-singing. Onomatopoetic phrases included in joik-music have been described as imitations of animal sounds (Nikolajeva 2011). Especially the sound of swan has related to the onomatopoetic expression typical for joiks. In general the image of bird is important in Karelian mythology and oral tradition. Bird has seen as a mediators between live and the death. Bird-imitations are part of singer´s repertoire in a special musical genre. The human-animal relationship is here under scrutiny. The main research question is: How does the singer morph into animal while changing the style of using voice, or does she/he? The focus of this study is in a concept of resonance: through the resonance of the voice, human can imitate the animal body and feel the resonance between species through her/his own body. Though one can be like a shapeshifter: change the position in her/ his expression from human to animal. Methods used in this research are bodily approach sound analysis, cultural analysis and participant observation in terms of bi-musicality.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses visual and textual representations of co-living of human and wild animals in urban environments, published in web media. The main questions are: How are urban nature and its habitants conceptualized? What kinds of animals are welcomed in the urban areas and what are not?

Paper long abstract:

Typically, cities and other urban areas are understood as human environments, although more and more wild animal species have accustomed themselves to human presence and started to live in urban environments. Thus, cities may be seen as multispecies settings, in which the boundaries of nature and culture often disappear. Even though the encounters with urban wild animals are usually short, their significance is shown in the fact that they are often reported in the social media, and the antics of non-human animals rather regularly also make to headlines, especially if their actions are somehow exceptional from the human point of view. In this paper, I will discuss visual and textual representations of co-living of human and wild animals in urban environments. My main questions are: How are urban nature and its habitants conceptualized? What kinds of animals are welcomed in the urban areas and what are not? As research materials, I use Twitter posts and their comments, published in Finnish Twitter, that describe encounters with urban animals. In addition, I discuss news and comments related to urban animals published in two news websites: the most widely circulated newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, and the Finnish National Broadcasting Company YLE. The materials are analysed through theoretically informed content analysis. I interpret the visual and textual representations of urban animals as interspecies articulation, a concept suggested by Pauliina Rautio, as trying to seek ways of co-existing with our nonhuman environment. This discussion is urgently needed in the current situation of changing environments.