Project Report
Convergence of diverse sources of knowledge is becoming the major requirement for understanding global and local changes and finding the pathways for possible future collaboration between different rights-, knowledge- and stakeholders. Vera Kuklina and Olga Zaslavskaya organized the two-part session on Converging Science, Art, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems for Understanding Change and Sustainability in the Arctic during the Arctic Science Summit Week, on March 26-April 1, 2022 in Tromso, Norway. The session gathered social and biophysical scholars, artists, and representatives of Indigenous communities.
Andrey Petrov, Vera Kuklina, and Olga Zaslavskaya presented the ArtSLInK platform with its theoretical implications and some practical outcomes. ArtSLInK further develops ArtScience initiatives as a new form of research that has multi- and transdisciplinary multiscale, multitemporal and multi-modal character. It engages with diverse ways of knowing, including subjective, sensory, and emotional dimensions as well as local and Indigenous perspectives on the frozen matter. Implementation of such an approach requires an iterative process of collaborative knowledge production at all stages, starting from question formulation, through gathering, analyzing, curating, interpreting and presenting data and ideas situated in a specific context of study areas and partnering communities. One of the preliminary results of such collaborations was a digital multimedia presentation “Remote Roadscapes and Beyond” supplemented by the artistic exposition Martian Taiga by Stanislav Podusenko.
During the session, all participants had an opportunity to share experiences and learn about projects where different sources of knowledge are combined. Presenters reflected on their projects where science, arts and local and Indigenous collaboration were accomplished in different formats. In particular, Olga Povoroznyuk (University of Vienna) shared the results of the efforts on disseminating research on Arctic Infrastructure in the projects CoRe and InfraNorth. Nikolay Shiklomanov (George Washington University) discussed the physical science perspective on collaboration with artists and local and Indigenous communities. The presentation by Anna Gossman-Stammler (University of Lapland) was dedicated to anthropological and Indigenous perspectives on human and more-than-human relationships based on her case study from Sakha Yakutia. James Temte joined us online with a video on using art for positive change.
Finally, Olga Kisseleva (University of Sorbonne) gave a master class followed by heated debates on the ethical and practical issues of engagement with Indigenous knowledge.
This session demonstrated the need to develop ArtSLInK collaborations that enhance understanding of interacting processes in the social, cultural, technological, environmental, and governance domains for framing sustainable Arctic futures. In particular, an exhibition of the results of several projects implementing ArtSLInK will be presented at the ASSW-2023
Date and Location:
28 March 2022 | ASSW 2022, Tromsø (Norway)
IASC Working Groups / Committees funding the Project:
Project Lead
Vera Kuklina, Andrey Petrov, Olga Zaslavskaya
Year funded by IASC
2020
Project Status
Completed