Paper short abstract:

Landscape-oriented heritage studies on mire art deepens our understanding of the agency of artists, especially their willingness to stand for nature and encourage people to safeguard mires. The mires are changing culturally and used to highlight more-than human aspects in the eco-crisis.

Paper long abstract:

The mires form a cultural resource for people as well as an environment of flora and fauna. They represent not only extended periods of past culture, but also future and present-day values. There is a growing number of artists in Finland inspired by the mires. Especially the threat of mining has had a strong impact on many artists. The mires are changing culturally and used by individuals and communities to highlight new aspects in the eco-crisis.

Landscape-oriented heritage studies on mire art deepens our understanding of the agency of artists, especially their willingness to stand for nature and encourage people to safeguard mires. Landscape is seen as both mental and physical, subjective as well as objective, including temporally parallel (tangible and intangible) heritages. As part of cultural values, the personal (re-)attachment to mires is rooted in the recognizable intangible cultural heritage of communities and individuals, for example, through representations, expressions, cultural spaces as well as knowledge and practices concerning nature.

My research material consists of open theme interviews conducted in 2020-2021 as part of the Mire Trend research project. For example an opera singer, lament performer and photographers shared their experiences and understanding of mires. I focus on the expressions of mire landscapes by answering the following questions: In what way was the landscape considered controversial? How was mire landscape used as site-specific stage for artwork? What is the role of non-human agencies in artworks? Affective expressions are found by close reading/listening to the narrators.