correspondence with
Teemu Lehmusruusu

Your artistic research focuses on deepening the understanding of soil and sparking curiosity about this often overlooked ecosystem. While soil is frequently discussed in the context of agriculture, it’s rarely mentioned in relation to forest ecosystems. Given the widespread clear cutting of forests in Finland, it seems clear that there’s a gap in our collective understanding of soil. What is your personal relationship with forest soils, and how has it evolved through your research or artistic practice?

Teemu: I’d like to unfurl this bundle of relations by acknowledging the situated position of a person born in Finland in the 1980s, who has lived in the Helsinki capital area all his life and spent his summers at cabins around which nature has been more or less protected, and many other holidays at his grandparents’ (born in the 1910s) rural homestead, where subsistence farming, gardening and the utilisation of a small own forest were everyday things. This forms a constellation of soil relations, could I call them: urban soil, productivist soil, and conserved soil. Forest soils are entangled with all three areas, so it's not one relation but a bit messier than that. In all cases, in my personal experience, soil expands into a metaphor and a symbol for all that is not directly perceived by the physical senses in the forest environment. What is overlooked. What is perceived as dynamic, what as static. So, for me, the concept of soil relation does not simply mean separating the soil as a focal point of inquiry and learning about it scientifically (although, that, too), but in addition critically approaching the questions of attentiveness, attunement, and perception in holistic environmental sensing – soil being a very good portal to dive into these depths, as we have a rich cultural and metabolic relation with it to start with.

You’ve initiated the long-term project Trophic Verses, which explores the life and phenomena within and around the Earth’s soil, fostering a dialogue between art and science. You’ve brought together artists, curators, researchers, and farmers in this project. What kind of conversations did you hope to foster through the diverse perspectives brought together in Trophic Verses? 

T: Conversations of not-knowing. For me, transdisciplinarity in artistic research represents a research ethos where you don’t have to know the intended outcome of the process in advance. That’s its strength. It is about encountering and emerging, inviting a gathering, and setting it in motion. I think one of the first observations in that process was the ease of meeting in the unknown. All these disciplines have their languages, and that creates separation, but the unknown has its language that touches them all the same. And in the phase of current polycrises the disciplinary boundaries are more easily crossed.

Could you share the process that led you to pursue artistic research? What do you believe artistic research can contribute to deepening our relationship with soil, and what specifically draws you to explore this connection?

T: The terminology is partly institutional, of course, I mean it is contextual and fluid when moving between research, art, or artistic research. But I think it was simply a new curiosity for articulation that drew me towards more in-depth textual research. Especially in the human and social sciences, human-soil-society relations have been emerging over the past 20 years, and I was curious about how research on this topic would impact my practice and how, through my practice, I might contribute to the research. In my case, it seems to be swinging, with a lot of hands-on, material art production, I start to miss the philosophical, contemplative practice of letters, and vice versa. Perhaps it is a similar dynamic as moving between the rural and urban spheres; an artist's role might be of such an intermediate cross-mover.

You’ve mentioned that your perspective on soil changed after a conversation with the farmer Tuomas Mattila, who encouraged you to think of soil as volume rather than just surface area. This shift in perception seems to create space for imagining and understanding the life within it. What kinds of reflections or thoughts did this spark for you, particularly when working on your piece Sleepwalkers of the Latent Land?

T: Yes, indeed. Since then, part of my daily environmental aesthetic practice has been to imagine what I don’t see or hear or even smell in the landscape. I think there is value in just acknowledging that, as we are habitually so vision-driven and count on that experience as reality. However, it's not just about adding an augmented layer of scientifically produced knowledge (although that might be part of it), but also about acknowledging the not-knowing; the need for continuous imagination, that is supported by both rational and irrationalist arguments. The animation emerged from this multimodality, the microscopic way of seeing, the science of exploring soil fauna, and the imaginative aesthetics of becoming and transforming, being in the speculative middle. Instead of being a mechanistic attempt to list or guess all the animals inhabiting soils, it is a contemplative dream of ever-evolving life forms cleared from our vision’s harmful way.

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​Teemu Lehmusruusu is a transdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki and Kemiönsaari, Finland. Working in-between the urban and rural domains is a key starting point for the work. His practice is based on long-term dialogue and field engagement with soil and climate researchers and regenerative practitioners, through which he seeks to foster a more multimodal and sensorial relations with soil as a habitat and a mediator of existence, especially in the ecologically critical contexts of agriculture and forestry. By rattling the concepts of landscape and the framings of our perception, his artistic practice and research critically explore ways of belonging in the multispecies environments. Teemu Lehmusruusu is currently a doctoral researcher at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, and a member of the Puistokatu 4 research community.

https://teemulehmusruusu.com/