Anna Niia Varfolomeeva

Tag: art

  • Hydropower and its silences

    Our research-art project “Tar, Power, Data” began in March, and yesterday Kati and I made our first joint visit to Leppiniemi, a former hydropower settlement close to the new Google data centre construction site. We walked around the settlement, took photos, and spoke with several residents about their sense of community and their perceptions of future changes. One of the houses in Leppiniemi even has its own Instagram account!

    We also toured the Pyhäkoski power plant museum, which recently reopened after renovation. The exhibition spans several floors and covers a variety of subjects, from the use of concrete in the plant’s construction to fish farming as an effort to compensate for the environmental impacts of hydropower.

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  • Why citizen science?

    I am quite late in reflecting on the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) conference I attended at the beginning of March. But I still have to write this post because:

    • the conference’s welcome ceremony began with ice fishing;
    • it included a pitch by a mermaid;
    • in your free time, you could do some crocheting and think about Deleuze and Guattari at the Rhizome Salon;
    • finally, its closing featured a keynote speech by the former First Lady of Iceland, Eliza Reid, and a children’s address during which I could not hold back tears.
    • anyway, this most probably was…
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  • A New Collaboration for the New Year

    2026 began with good funding news: our research-art initiative “Tar, Power, Cloud: Strengthening Resilience through Art & Citizen Science” has recently received support from the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) profiling research programme at the University of Oulu.

    In this project, we aim to bridge ethnographic research, artistic practice, and citizen science to explore how industrial and technological development shapes human–landscape relations in the town of Muhos, just outside Oulu. I have long been interested in exploring the potential of research-art collaboration around questions of resource extraction in the Arctic. So, this feels like such an important opportunity – and hopefully (not too late for the New Year resolutions, right?), this is just the beginning.

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