AV-arkki will present a selection of media artworks as part of the Swab Barcelona Art Fair, taking place from October 2–5, 2025 in Barcelona.

Swab Barcelona is an independent platform dedicated to gathering and giving visibility to emerging practices that shape the current contemporary art scene. Focused on new languages and collaborative forms, Swab promotes relationships and exchanges that contribute to a diverse and sustainable cultural ecosystem, seeking a balance between the role of the market and the public purpose of artistic creation.

AV-arkki is part of the public program Polar and Tropic, curated by Tenthaus (Oslo) together with Bunga Siagian (Jakarta) and Jatiwangi art Factory (Majalengka).

The Polar and Tropic is an encounter of 12 independent spaces from the Nordic countries and Southeast Asia, accompanied by the public program, which features Lumbung press ( Barcelona), Station of Commons / Lumbung Radio (Helsinki), Mes 54 (Yogyakarta) and AV-arkki (Helsinki).

AV-arkki will present a curated selection of Finnish media artworks that explore the interconnections between nature, mythology, perception, and cultural memory.

The program features the following works:

Niina Vatanen: Danse de la terre (2024)

In Danse de la terre, Niina Vatanen combines different sources from self-shot Super8 material to archival material and phytograms made with plants. Spring and plants take center stage in the work. The ending of winter and the return of spring, the rejuvenation of nature, have traditionally been celebrated with different kinds of spring rituals that also strengthen the close bond that humans have with the Earth and its cycles.

Plants have always been of tremendous importance for humans, as sustenance and raw materials, but also as symbols and the foundation of spiritual culture. For this work Vatanen has gathered plants from the local nature and her own garden. She captured the plants on cine film using the phytogram technique. Vatanen also used plant-based developer emulsion to develop some of the black-and-white film featured in the work. Vatanen’s work is an homage to the earth we walk on and the plants that our life is completely dependent on.

Axel Straschnoy: The Devils of Paasselkä (2021)

The Devils of Paasselkä is a short film about our relationship with the unknown. Finland’s identity, myths, and its national epic originate from the Karelia region, nowadays divided between Finland and Russia. Close to this region lies Paasselkä, a lake resulting from a meteorite impact, in the middle of which compasses do not work. For more than three hundred years, mysterious lights have been sighted floating over the lake. The film collects the stories of eight witnesses and records the film crew’s attempts to find and capture them on camera.

Leena Pukki: The Time of A Slime Mold (2021)

In The Time of A Slime Mold the movement of slime mold is combined with pattern subjects selected from Karelian thread blankets. Slime molds are primitive Amoebozoa organisms that can move even if they do not have a brain or nervous system. The poem heard in the background expresses themes of time, circulation, and decomposing.

Azar Saiyar: Tell Me (2019)

In Tell Me a narrator asks: “Do you know this bird?”. The video quotes both public and private archival images in which birds are in the centre – birds as individual living beings but also as creatures habiting the world and stories created by humans.

Vesa-Pekka Rannikko: Rat and Border Dog (2024)

Rat and Border Dog is a poetic animation fable about the insignificance of the human-built border zone for nature. The work is a hand-drawn sketch-like animation, where animals, plants and poems are drawn into the picture and build a collage of parallel events. The animation is a network where human logic takes a back seat. The soundscape of the piece is based on the human voice, and was composed and created by Sarah Albu, a vocalist based in Tio’tia:ke, Canada.

Marja Viitahuhta with Ánnámáret, Ilkka Heinonen and Turkka Inkilä: Eanan (Earth) (2025)

In Eanan, a luohti (Northern Sami yoik) about earth and land, the lifegiver and cultural starting point of the Sámi people, is performed by indigenous musician Ánnámáret.

The video is created from ethnographic photographs and drawings from the book Die Lappische Zaubertrommel, an encyclopedia about old Sámi drums. The work both reveals and hides the original drums in the noise of its digital imagery. These images are combined with those of plant leaves and flower petals printed on film as well as film clips affected by clay and salt.

The work illustrates the relationship of Sámi people to their land, their environment and their cultural heritage. It reflects on the issues in recording indigenous spiritual tradition and how it has been otherized, lost or destroyed in the process of colonisation.

Eanan (Earth) is a continuation in a series of works created in collaboration between Marja Viitahuhta (moving image), Ánnámáret (yoiking/vocals), Ilkka Heinonen (jouhikko/carelian bowed lyre) and Turkka Inkilä (electronics).

Swab Barcelona Art Fair – International Contemporary Art Fair
October 2–5, 2025
Barcelona

More information: SWAB

AV-arkki has promoted and distributed Finnish media art since 1989. AV-arkki’s promotional efforts have made the artists’ participation in this event possible. If you want to hear the latest news from our distribution, subscribe to our newsletter!