📸 Juha Niemelä
2023
Artistic team
Concept and artistic direction: Kristina Junttila and Maria Oiva
Performers: Seija-Leena Salo and Heta Haapsamo
Site-specific design and realisation: Kristina Junttila, Maria Oiva and Seija-Leena Salo
Sound design: Paavo Impiö
Text, site-specific dramaturgy and spoken sections: Seija-Leena Salo
Dramaturgical support: Kristin Bjørn
Producer: Anna Haaraoja
Mobile application: Zoneatlas
Production: Reality Research Center, Ferske Scener and Cultural Cooperative ILME
The work formed part of Cultural Cooperative ILME’s Täältä taiteeseen travel agency and the Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture programme.
The work was supported by the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute, Valve District Culture, Cultural Cooperative ILME, Arts Council Norway, BarentsKult and the Niilo Helander Foundation.
In collaboration with: Metsähallitus, Friends of Loppula Association and Loppula Nature House
2026
Swamp – Walking Within the Frame was a four-hour site-specific performance in the Sanginjoki Nature Reserve in Oulu, Finland. The performance began on a bus that took the spectators to Sanginjoki. From there, they continued on foot through forest and mire, walking part of the route alone under the guidance of a performance phone. The phone gave instructions, acted as a guide and performer, and led each walker deeper into the historical, political and ecological layers of the landscape.
The work brought two utopias into the same landscape: the dream associated with draining mires and the ecological utopia of the Iriadamant community. In 1991, the Iriadamant community, consisting mainly of French and Belgian members, established a camp at Sanginjoki. The group’s members were not Indigenous themselves, but imitated the cultures of Indigenous peoples of North America. The community pursued a nature-oriented way of life detached from consumer society. It later developed into a cult that was governed through deception and violence.
The work placed the Iriadamant utopia alongside the promise of economic prosperity associated with draining the mire. The cult disintegrated, and the drained mire is now being restored. The traces left by Iriadamant are barely visible in the landscape, but they continue to live on in people. Restoration does not return the mire to what it was. It begins something new.
Swamp – Walking Within the Frame formed part of the Walking Within the Frame performance series by Kristina Junttila and Maria Oiva. Each work in the series is created in relation to the historical, political and ecological layers of its location. Previous parts were presented at Viikki Arboretum in Helsinki in 2023, in Bodø in 2024 and in Rávdnjevággi, Tromsø, in 2025. The pilot work for the series was Talking in the Rain.