Ars Bioarctica

Laura Lowe spent a few weeks in May – June 2025, at the Ars Bioarctica residency conducting artistic research for her ongoing body of work "The Strcutural Colour Paintings". Lowe was gathering visual material of melting ice and embedded 'black carbon' pollution through the iridescent colours these materials reveal under polarised microscopy, as well as, by capturing the ice's surface with gelatin prints. She travelled across a thawing landscape of glaciers, tundra lakes, cascading waterfalls, and the Arctic Sea collecting her samples of ice.  

Dancers Gesa Piper and Paula Kramer were in Ars Bioarctica residency in February 2025. They focused on outdoor movement practice in relationship to temperature, cllimate, light and the rotation of panet Earth, partly accompanied by photographer Venla Helenius.

12 transdisciplinary artists and artist groups have been selected fo Ars Bioarctica residency for 2025–2026.

We are happy to announce our yearly open call for Ars Bioarctica residency program at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. Deadline for applications is 19th January 2025.

In November 2024 Ellen Bjerborn spent time at Kilpisjärvi Biological station, observing the changing nature of field studies in a new era. Much of the field work at the station is no longer done by human hands but rather by machines, and the staff at the station function to service the machines that monitor and collect samples.

In the fall of 2024 Lauri Linna studied the wind and its life, observing the arctic atmosphere at the Rewilding Cultures residency at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station.

Donna Franklin, Tracy Hill and Sarah Robinson were in Ars Bioarctica residency at Kilpisjärvi in September working on their long-term Carbon Synthesis project.

16 transdisciplinary artists and artist groups have been selected fo Ars Bioarctica residency for 2024–2025.

In March 2024, Jean Danton carried out a field study on permafrost in an area of peat mounts (palsas) around Kilpisjärvi. He extracted soil and ice samplers while explored the ecological network in interaction with the permafrost thawing process. Permafrost is, in some way, a bioindicator of both atmospheric temperatures and social dynamics of the globalization; a trace of impermanence from a distant latitude. A geo-somatization that reveals a dispossession, an epochal swerve.

We are happy to announce our yearly open call for Ars Bioarctica residency program at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. Deadline for applications is 15th February 2024.

Dale Rio spent two weeks in Ars Bioarctica residency at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in June 2023. She spent her time in residency documenting and working in collaboration with the landscape to create images unique to the region.

Till Bovermann had his Science Trails residency at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in August-September 2023. This is the last of three blog entries about his time in Kilpisjärvi.