Frozen water and the politics of “cold”

In this fourth episode of the Art, Science, Ecolgoy Podcast,season 2, Paula Toppila, Executive Director and Curator at IHME Helsinki, discusses Professor Felicity Fenner’s book Curating in a time of ecological crisis. Biennials as agents of change with the author. Felicity is Professor in the Master of Curating & Cultural Leadership programme, at UNSW Arts,Design & Architecture, Sydney. She is also Chair of the City of Sydney’s Public Art Advisory Panel and has a long career as a curator of international exhibitions.In this podcast Felicity shares her experiences of and insights on curating art in public spaces, the evolution of environmental art exhibitions, and the impact of various art projects, including biennials. The conversation also covers the challenges of and approaches to reducing the environmental impact of art events.Tell us, how did you like the podcast: feedbackThe contemporary-art-commissioning agency IHME Helsinki is continuing its collaboration with Helsinki Open Waves on new episodes of the Art, Science, Ecology podcast. The members of the IHME Helsinki Advisory Board are hosting its second season, carrying on discussions started in 2021. The new episodes update ideas about ecocide, sustainable energy, and energy identity, and about the role of the arts in all this, topics that are even more urgent today than in 2021.IHME Helsinki unites the worlds of art, science, and climatework. We promote the cultural change needed in the environmental crisis and motivate citizens to adapt to a life within planetary boundaries. Each year we produce a public artwork and a series of events with international artists andlocal partners to bring hope amid the environmental crises. Our work is made possible by support from the Saastamoinen Foundation, Kone Foundation, and Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation.Reading recommended in the podcast:Prudence Gibson: The Plant Contract (2018), Brill: https://brill.com/display/title/35267Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris: The Hydrocene. Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water (2024): https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003397304/hydrocene-bronwyn-bailey-charterisCreditsProducer: Paula Toppila, Saara MoisioHost and guests: Paula Toppila and Felicity FennerSound technician: Bailey PolkinghorneIHME jingle: Viljami Valdén

In this third episode of the Art, Science Ecology podcast recorded in March 2025 IHME Helsinki’s Advisory Board member Maria Lind, Museum Director of the Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna, will discuss art and agriculture with the Kultivator collective. Kultivator is an independent art practice on the island of Öland, Sweden, founded and run by Mathieu Vrijman and Malin Lindmark Vrijman. Kultivator is also an experimental project platform that initiates and runs projects, exhibitions and workshops that investigate our relationship with the landscapes that feed us. In this podcast Maria, Malin and Mathieu discuss points of intersection between art andfarming, emphasizing the importance of long-term perspectives, environmental concerns, and food security.Tell us, how did you like the podcast: feedbackThe contemporary-art-commissioning agency IHME Helsinki is continuing its collaboration with Helsinki Open Waves on new episodes of the Art, Science, Ecology podcast. The members of the IHME Helsinki Advisory Board are hosting its second season, carrying on discussions started in 2021. The new episodes update ideas about ecocide, sustainable energy, and energy identity, and about the role of the arts in all this, topics that are even more urgent today than in 2021.IHME Helsinki unites the worlds of art, science, and climate work. We promote the cultural change needed in the environmental crisis and motivate citizens to adapt to a life within planetary boundaries. Each year we produce a public artwork and a series of events with international artists and local partners to bring hope amid the environmental crises. Our work is made possible by support from the Saastamoinen Foundation, Kone Foundation, and Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation.Reading recommended in the podcast:Alexander Etkind: Nature’s Evil (2023), Polity Books: Julia Watson: Lo–TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism (2019), TaschenAnything published by Donna Haraway.MakersProducer: Paula Toppila, Saara MoisioHost and guests: Maria Lind, Malin LindmarkVrijman and Mathieu VrijmanSound technician: Bailey PolkinghorneIHME jingle: Viljami Valdén

In this second episode of the second season, recorded in February 2025, IHME Helsinki Advisory Board member,Professor at Nanyang Technological University and Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore Ute Meta Bauer continues her conversation about ecocide as an international crime with artist and researcher Nabil Ahmed. Together with Olga Lucko, Ahmed runs Studio INTERPRT, which uses design and spatial analysis to promote environmental justice and to make Ecocide an international crime. In this conversation Ute and Nabil address INTERPRT’S research on Ecocide and its concerns about cultural loss andaccountability.Tell us, how did you like the podcast: feedbackThe contemporary-art-commissioning agency ⁠IHME Helsinki⁠ is continuing its collaboration with ⁠Helsinki Open Waves⁠ on new episodes of the Art, Science, Ecology podcast series. The members of the IHME Helsinki Advisory Board are hosting the second season of the podcast, carrying on discussions started in 2021. The new episodes update ideas about ecocide, sustainable energy, and energy identity, and about the role of the arts in all this, topics that are even more urgent today than in 2021.⁠IHME Helsinki ⁠unites the worlds of art, science, and climate work. We promote the cultural change needed in theenvironmental crisis and motivate citizens to adapt to a life within planetary boundaries. Each year we produce a public artwork and a series of events with international artists and local partners to bring hope amid the environmentalcrises. Our work is made possible by support from the Saastamoinen Foundation, Kone Foundation, and Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation.Credits:Producer: Paula Toppila, Saara MoisioHost and guest: Ute Meta Bauer and NabilAhmedSound mixing: Bailey PolkinghorneIHME jingle: Viljami Valdén

In the first episode of this second season of the Art, Science, Ecology podcast, recorded in February 2025, IHME Helsinki Advisory Board member, artist and researcher Antti Majava continues the discussion about sustainable energy and identity with Emma Hakala, Leading Researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, Professor at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. They discuss the green energy transition, the importance of protecting democracy, and the role of art in energy identities. Tynkkynen specialises in the ecological energy transition in Finland and Russia, and Hakala studies environmental and climate security, Finland’s security supply during climate change, and sustainable energy.Tell us, how did you like the episode: feedbackReading recommended in the podcast:Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, How Europe Got Russia Wrong: Energy, Violence, and theEnvironment, 2024. https://www.elgaronline.com/monobook-oa/book/9781035319503/9781035319503.xml Stephen Markley, The Deluge, Simon & Schuster 2023Latour, Bruno (2022). Le sol européen est-il en train de changer sous nos pieds? (Is Europe’s soil changingbeneath our feet?). GREEN, 2, 1: 92-97.: https://geopolitique.eu/en/2022/07/04/is-europes-soil-changing-beneath-our-feet/ Articles and research by Emma Hakala: https://fiia.fi/henkilo/emma-hakalaCredits:Producer: Paula Toppila, Saara MoisioHost and guests: Antti Majava, Emma Hakala and Veli-Pekka TynkkynenSound technician: Bailey PolkinghorneIHME jingle: Viljami ValdénThe contemporary-art-commissioning agency IHME Helsinki is continuing its collaboration with Helsinki Open Waves on new episodes of the Art, Science, Ecology podcast series. The members of the IHME Helsinki Advisory Board are hosting the second season of the podcast, carrying on discussions started in 2021. The new episodes update ideas about ecocide, sustainable energy, and energy identity, and about the role of the arts in all this, topics that are even more urgent today than in 2021.IHME Helsinki unites the worlds of art, science, and climate work. We promote the cultural change needed in theenvironmental crisis and motivate citizens to adapt to a life within planetary boundaries. Each year we produce a public artwork and a series of events with international artists and local partners to bring hope amid the environmentalcrises. Our work is made possible by support from the Saastamoinen Foundation, Kone Foundation, and Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation.

The collaboration between IHME Helsinki and Helsinki Open Waves continues with a podcast, in which Executive Director and Curator Paula Toppila and the Kurdish artist and musician Hiwa K discuss the connections between neoliberalism and the environmental crisis. Chicago Boys – While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming, initiated by Hiwa K in London in 2010, was IHME Helsinki Commission 2023. In the podcast, Paula and Hiwa discuss the factors that influenced the creation of the work and its simultaneous enactment in Helsinki and Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. Hiwa unpacks the impact of neoliberalism on the environmental crisis and how the 2003 Iraq war can be seen as a neoliberal project comparable to the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. Hiwa K lives in Berlin and Sulaymaniyah, where he returned three years ago having lived in Germany for twenty years. Hiwa K’s artistic work reflects an ongoing critique of the art-education system, art practices defined as being professional, and the myth of the artist. As a result, many of his works are powerfully communal and participatory. They re-evaluate the processes underlying teaching and learning systems, and rely on ordinary life and people as the most important site for learning. IHME Helsinki is a contemporary art commissioning agency that annually commissions a work by an international artist in public space and produces a series of events intended to give rise to vision and hope amid the environmental crisis. IHME Helsinki Commissions combine art, science and climate work. Through them and other events IHME Helsinki promotes the cultural change needed to tackle the environmental crisis.

In this sixth episode one of the IHME’s Advisory Board members, artist, researcher Antti Majava will discuss energy humanities, the role of art in energy identities and energy regimes with researcher at Finnish Institute of International Affairs Emma Hakala and Professor at the Aleksanteri Institute – Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen. Tynkkynen specialises in ecological energy transition in Finland and Russia, and Hakala has studied securitisation of the environment, climate security and sustainable energy.

In this fifth episode IHME’s Advisory Board member Professor Jussi Parikka discusses with artist, researcher Samir Bhowmik. In his work Bhowmik unpacks the concept of material and cultural extraction in the context of media culture and art, in order to open up, on the one hand, understanding of the exploitation of natural resources and, on the other hand, of the changes occurring in the environment as consequence of it. In this podcast Parikka and Bhowmik continue their on-going conversation around different topics such as artistic practice, architecture, cultural institutions, energy as well as material and cultural extraction.

In this fourth episode IHME Helsinki’s Advisory Board member, Professor Jussi Parikka discusses with artist, researcher Susan Schuppli. In her work the Britain-resident Susan Schuppli studies the material evidence of conflicts, environmental destruction and climate change. In this podcast she will talk about her latest research and her works, which deal with research on the subject of frozen water and the politics of “cold”.

“Working with the future doesn’t have to be escapist. It should be something that helps to pull us there.” - Tracey Warr In the third episode of Art, Science, Ecology podcast IHME’s Advisory Board member, Hanna Johansson the Dean of Fine Arts Academy of University of Arts in Helsinki will have a conversation with Tracey Warr Head of Research for Dartington Arts School about what does ecological transition mean in the context of an art school.

“A word that comes to stand for this injustice has been ecocide … How do we contribute to this by doing what we do as artists, activists, researchers, spatial practitioners, architects? What could be the new ways of telling these stories?” – Nabil Ahmed In the second podcast member of IHME’s Advisory Board, Professor at Nanyang Technological University and Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore Ute Meta Bauer will discuss with artist and researcher Nabil Ahmed, who together with Olga Lucko runs Interprt studio, which uses design and spatial analysis to work for environmental justice and to make Ecocide an international crime.