All through our stay in Örö the weather was lovely and the water was quite clear still, there was not yet any blue-green algea vegetation taking over. Bladder wrack was thriving.
We went treasure hunting with artist Anna Pekkala around the beaches of Örö. We picked up a lot of trash and while searching for seal bones, Anna shared with me interesting thoughts about how us humans are the worst predators of all and the rest of them are just misunderstood in their attempts to survive. Her artworks often portray the predators of the seas. We saw a seagull eat a baby bird. This makes me think of how nature often seems to find an equilibrium between the different surviving methods of species, yet humans somehow can’t find that balance and end up endangering species after species. Like the critically endangered eider population of the Archipelago Sea. We visited the lighthouse island Bengtskär in the Outer Archipelago, where the eiders are still nesting and numerous, and even saw some of their nests made out of the plumes the birds pluck out of themselves.
During the week we noticed that swans seemed to have a bad year of nesting, as most of the pairs around the area didn’t have any babies with them.
We went sailing around the islets Digskär and Dansangrundet with the Institute for Coping with Destruction, birdwatching and following the public discussion about their art piece on Dansangrundet. The collective had had this intriguing idea that by hopping from islet to islet they would get ever closer to the dead areas of the Baltic Sea, to finally get to the middle of the actual destruction and possibly gather some of the dead sea bed. Last year during the journey they made the installation art piece that is a working borehole spring on Dansangrundet, where anyone can stop and have a drink of fresh water on their way to the dead sea areas, or somewhere else.
While the final journey to the dead sea areas is still in the future, the Institute had a soft and curious way of investigating the surrounding nature from aboard the Godzilla. It’s not all about facts and what we see, but also just taking in the surroundings and letting it be. They went round and round Dansangrundet with the intention of going ashore, but realized that there’s no point in setting foot on the islet inhabited by so many birds and their nests. The borehole spring -artwork has become part of the birds’ territory.
The public discussion around the borehole spring got intense during our week in Örö. To me the disapproval the art piece has created seems like a cry for help, but aimed at the wrong thing. Shouldn’t the feelings this tiny pump on the barren island is causing, be caused by the actual, huge, life-threatening environmental problems and crimes happening all the time around us? New mines are being built spoiling the waters and the city of Helsinki keeps building new ground straight into the sea to build more apartments with a sea view. And these are just a tiny drop of examples in the sea on crisis. But these constructions (as well as building new cottages in the islands around Dansangrundet) can be justified by the capitalist agenda of growing the economy and bettering the lives of humans, so people don’t get so offended that a resistance would rise. The conversation around the borehole spring brings to light this twisted relationship us humans have with the rest of nature, and it’s a good opportunity to investigate that relationship.
Iida-Liina Linnea, 6.7.2024
