The video documents the artistic research project Traces from The Anthropocene: Working with Soil, which explores the relationship between humans and soil, focusing on the anthropogenic impact on soil in the Venice Lagoon area (Latva-Somppi et al., 2020). In this research, ceramic artists, in collaboration with soil contamination experts, examine the current state of the local soils and sediments through ceramic art and methods of soil contamination research. First, the artist-researchers familiarized themselves with the environmental research of the area. Then, they collected soil and sediment samples from the canals of historic Venice, close to the petrochemical industrial area of Porto Marghera and Murano (Latva-Somppi et al., 2021), which has a long history of glass production. After that the samples were analyzed at Aalto CHEM. Finally, the samples were milled to fine clay slips and applied as a painting medium for ceramic art.
The video follows the artists on their sediment sampling fieldwork (Latva-Somppi & Mäkelä, 2020) . The video also documents the sampling sites and the artists’ work at the Research Pavilion #3 where they coiled large clay pots from local brick clay, and painted them with the contaminated soil.
Working with Soil-group: Maarit Mäkelä (PI), Riikka Latva-Somppi, Özgu Gündeşlioğlu and Catharina Kajander and MA students Tzuyu Chen, Pauliina Purhonen and Hanna Kutvonen.
The project was led by the Empirica research group of Aalto University, Design Department, and done in collaboration with the Finnish Environment Institute Syke.
Terreal SanMarco provided local brick clay for the artworks.
The video was recorded by Tzuyu Chen, Özgu Gündeşlioğlu, Riikka Latva-Somppi and Pauliina Purhonen in Venice, Italy in May-August 2019 and edited by Riikka Latva-Somppi in 2021.
Versions of the video have been presented in the online exhibition of the Art of Research conference 2020, 03 December 2020–03 January 2021 and in the exhibition Solid Ground, in Aalto University, Espoo, Finland 8.–20. October 2021.
Latva-Somppi, Riikka; Mäkelä, Maarit; Gündeşlioğlu, Özgu. 2020. Traces from the Anthropocene: Working with soil. RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research, 14. ISSN: 2341-9687. https://doi.org/10.22501/ruu.697190
Latva-Somppi, Riikka; Mäkelä, Maarit. 2020. Exploring ecological and material sensitivity through craft practice in the context of the Venice Lagoon. Aisthesis. Pratiche, Linguaggi E Saperi dell’estetico, 13(1), 31–46. https://doi.org/10.13128/Aisthesis-1091
Ongoing research in 2019 as documented in the research catalogue: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/474888/519616
Research Pavilion: https://www.uniarts.fi/en/projects/research-pavilion-project/
Parts of the video was filmed concurrently with Territories:: Dialects research cell's rhytmic explorations (unedited sound): https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/668652/668653