Our interactive installation Weaving the Feral: Cabinet of Feral Data Curiosities sprouted at the Living-with Feral Ecologies festival organised within the Helsinki Design Week 2023 public program.
The festival presented a series of performative events, workshops, and exhibition interventions exploring feral ways of knowing, caring and relating that shape the flow of life and death in more-than-human ecosystems. An international group of art and design researchers presented 20 experimental works ranging from interactive light installations inviting participants to walks with the heartbeats of various animals, to co-creative explorations of human-AI relationships through the medium of sourdough.
The festival was situated in the green and creatures-rich environment of the Lapinlanhti park in Helsinki (Finland) and offered a 12-hour long program of co-creative outdoor activities happening both during the day and at night.
The Cabinet of Feral Data Curiosities was presented as an interactive installation presenting our ongoing investigation of feral ways of knowing, being, and living-with diverse more-than-human ecologies. On display were feral data artifacts such as woven sashes from Tabanoc, multispecies tattoos from Křivoklátsko, feral fragments gathered in the Lonjsko Polje wetlands, and an eel trap by Aunty Bronwyn Razem capturing environmental knowledge and cosmologies of various more-than-human habitats including Colombian chagras, Bohemian forests, Croatian wetlands, and the Gunditjmara Country. The cabinet exhibition was followed by a participatory dérive, inviting participants to drift with & as the Lapinlahti’s more-than-human ecologies.
