La Contre Histoire is a featurelenght documentary film in development. The film is set on the island of Själö and follows a group of scientists investigating an infectious tick, Ixodes Ricinus, that causes Lyme disease. The aim is to make a lyrical film that investigates the invisible and how we archive and re-tell history.
The future and past are simultaneously present. The unconscious, dreams and scientific knowledge are woven into the social memory and counter-narratives of the island. How do we tell stories? And to whom? What is written as part of history and what is erased from it?
Through small gestures, rituals, routines and observations an image of a strangely beautiful island emerges. The nature: trees, animals, earth remember and witness the story and history of this place. The tick is seen as a ghost, a sign of something else, much bigger. A mystery that we still know very little about - perhaps a key to something we are not able to see.
Själö could be looked at as a laboratory that has been investigating the body, illness and natural sciences for the last 350 years. How can we become more awake to read and detect the other narratives that have not been written down or archived as offical history. The Change of Climate and State of Mind panel will examine and discuss knowledge and how knowing is more than that that can be seen or recorded. It is a journey between different realities that combines sound, image and performance.
Lotta Petronella has worked with and on islands for the last 15 years as a filmmaker and curator. Her films are journeys and encounters with places, people and worlds that are at the same time ancient and modern. At the centre lies the eternal questions of how we relate to nature and to each other.
Petronella was trained as an artist at Chelsea College of Art in London where she lived and worked for 15 years. She is currently finishing her MA in Creative Documentary at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
http://www.lottapetronella.com/
Ilppo Vuorinen, professor emeritus, is the former director of the Archipelago Research Institute on the island of Seili. Vuorinen came to Seili, for the first time, in the seventies as a student of marine biology. He has been interested and outspoken about the effects of climate change since mid eighties. Vuorinen is one of the instigators of the tick project that was started at the Turku University in 2012.
Laura Hollsten is a historian and teacher at Åbo Akademi in Turku. Her research topics include environmental history, human and animal studies and history of consumption. Her latest paper was published at the Journal of Global Slavery on Night Time and Entangled Spaces on Caribbean Sugar Plantations.
Laura Naukkarinen is a composer and performer whose work focuses on sound, both acoustic and electric. Her compositions comprise a range from solo albums under the moniker Lau Nau to film music, scores for performing arts and sound installations. She works in Finland and performs worldwide.