Project Team – Human Clay CIC
Primary Artists:
Anna Kushnerova – Choreographer, somatic artist, filmmaker
Keiko Yamamoto – Experimental musician, vocalist, performer
Raúl Bartolomé – Filmmaker, cinematographer, documentary artist
The project may also involve additional Human Clay CIC collaborators: artists, ecologists, or researchers, depending on the specific requirements of the residency and its community partnerships.
Project Summary
Songs for a Thawing North is a collaborative sonic–ecological research project listening into the changing sound worlds of the Arctic and northern species — including the arctic fox, polar bear, reindeer, Atlantic puffin, ringed seal, and snowy owl.
Through field recording, listening practices, and the creation of sculptural, body-responsive instruments, the project asks how sound-making, breath, and resonance might become forms of interspecies relation and ecological attention.
Developed by Anna Kushnerova and Keiko Yamamoto, with cinematography and film research by Raúl Bartolomé, the project interlaces field ecology, experimental sound art, embodied performance, and poetic documentary. It builds upon the artists’ prior work in sound baths, ritual acoustics, body-instrument research, and sensory ethnography.
The project is conceived as both a stand-alone sonic installation/performance and an early chapter of a wider mythic–ecological body of work, The Wolf Mother and the Seven Moons, which traces kinship, extinction, and metamorphosis across northern landscapes.
Project Vision
Listening becomes a form of mourning, ceremony, and ecological attunement.
Across the North, many soundscapes, once carried by ice resonance, underwater trills, wingbeats, and animal calls are falling silent. Climate disruption alters how sound travels, how animals navigate, and how ecosystems breathe.
Songs for a Thawing North reimagines how humans might enter respectful, reciprocal sonic relationships with other beings.
The project draws inspiration from Sámi philosophies of yoik — not to imitate or sample, but to honour their understanding that song is an invocation, a way of participating in the life of another presence.
We approach all Indigenous knowledge through consent-based processes with Sámi cultural advisors, ensuring cultural safety, reciprocity, and non-extractive methods.
Intended Outcomes
1. Research and document the sonic ecologies of selected Arctic and northern species.
2. Create sculptural instruments that resonate with the sounds, gestures, and environmental conditions of these beings.
3. Explore yoik as an ethical, relational way of listening and invocation.
4. Develop a participatory sound installation and performance that cultivates collective ecological listening.
5. Produce a poetic documentary film (directed by Raúl Bartolomé) capturing the research, fieldwork, and sonic transformations.
Research Questions
• How do Arctic species communicate, navigate, and dream through sound?
• Can human-made instruments embody aspects of animal rhythm, breath, or movement?
• How might Sámi sonic philosophies inform new ethical relationships to listening, fieldwork, and land-based research?
• What artistic forms can respond to the loss of acoustic diversity in northern ecosystems?
• How can film become a sensory and relational mode of listening?
Methodology
1. Fieldwork & Deep Listening
• Recording animal and environmental sounds using parabolic, hydrophone, contact, and low-frequency microphones.
• Mapping tundra, coast, forest, and sea-ice soundscapes through daily listening sessions.
• Observing atmospheric shifts — fog, snow, thaw, wind, temperature — that shape sound transmission.
• Filmic documentation by Raúl Bartolomé, capturing encounters, listening rituals, and acoustic environments.
2. Collaboration with Sámi Cultural Advisors
• Working with a Sámi yoiker or knowledge-holder to shape an ethical framework around listening and relationship.
• Consent-based knowledge sharing and co-authored protocols for sound, story, and place.
• Reflection sessions that focus on listening as relational participation.
3. Sculptural Instrument Creation
• Designing body-responsive, site-specific instruments inspired by animal acoustics and planetary resonance:
• Metal and bone resonators activated by breath or touch
• Hair/tendon string instruments referencing reindeer gait
• Ice or clay vessels that melt, erode, or dissolve
• Wood, stone, and brackish-water vessels tuned to Arctic frequencies
• Instruments used in performance, recording, and film as portals for interspecies embodiment.
4. Composition, Installation & Performance
• Integrating field recordings, vocal improvisation, instrument tones, and environmental resonance.
• Structuring a seven-part sonic suite, one movement per species/planetary archetype.
• Creating participatory performances and guided listening rituals for audiences.
• Film development and editing by Raúl, shaping a poetic, ecological documentary.
Outcomes
• Immersive sound installation and participatory performance
• Audio publication combining field recordings and newly created instruments
• Short poetic research film by Raúl Bartolomé
• A publication documenting methods, interviews, field notes, and ecological reflections
• Public workshops on ecological and ethical listening practices
Ethics & Collaboration
• Free, Prior, and Informed Consent with Sámi partners
• Yoik practices never recorded or replicated without explicit permission
• Shared authorship agreements
• Ecological responsibility: low-impact travel, local materials, biodegradable instrument components
Team Example
•Anna Kushnerova — Artistic direction, somatic and visual design, body-instrument research
•Keiko Yamamoto — Experimental sound composition, voice, performance
•Raúl Bartolomé — Cinematography, film direction, ecological documentary
•Sámi collaborator (TBC) — Cultural guidance, yoik philosophy, listening protocols
•Sound technician / field recordist — Audio capture, hydrophone work
Budget Overview (indicative)
• Artist fees
• Travel + fieldwork
• Sámi collaborator fees
• Materials for instrument building
• Hydrophones and recording equipment
• Installation costs, film documentation
• Administration & contingency
Relation to Broader Body of Work
Songs for a Thawing North forms the sonic threshold of The Wolf Mother and the Seven Moons
The work emerges from a series of dream-calls — the felt presence of wolves, reindeer, foxes, owls, seals, and other northern species whose voices arrived long before their landscapes were reached. Their calls, half-song and half-memory, opened the doorway into the film: a summons to travel north, to meet these beings not as symbols but as kin, and to let their breath, rhythm, and silence reshape the story’s cosmology.
In the larger film, each animal world becomes totemic — a guardian of ecological balance and ancestral intelligence. The beings encountered on the journey are chimeric presences, blending animal totem, night-sky constellation, and resonant instrument. They are thresholds rather than characters, teaching through sound, movement, and elemental transformation. Through these encounters, the human body begins to merge with the substances of other species — fur, wind, ice, wingbeat, antler — forming chimeric unions that gesture toward rewilding, reciprocity, and the restoration of kinship across worlds.
Songs for a Thawing North is thus the initiation: the stage where animals dream themselves toward the human, asking to be heard, and where the first materials, instruments, and mythic relations begin to form the living grammar of the film.
Selkie: Sonic Ecologies of the Baltic
Collaborative Project by Anna Kushnerova, Keiko Yamamoto & Raúl Bartolomé
Human Clay CIC – TIDAL ArtS Residency Application Version
Selkie: Sonic Ecologies of the Baltic is a collaborative sound, performance, and film project created by Anna Kushnerova, Keiko Yamamoto, and Raúl Bartolomé, working together as the Human Clay collective. Developed specifically for the Turku Archipelago, the project explores the acoustic life of the Baltic Sea at a time when its waters are rapidly transforming. The Baltic ringed seal stands at the centre of this inquiry—its underwater calls, migrating through warming and increasingly stressed waters, reveal both the fragility and resilience of the archipelago’s ecological rhythms. From this local focus, the project extends into the wider constellation of seven northern animal archetypes—wolf, Arctic fox, polar bear, reindeer, ringed seal, snowy owl, and Atlantic puffin—whose voices, rhythms, and dream-imaginations have been arriving into the work long before its geographic journey begins. Their presence acts as a call to listen, to attune to the shifting acoustics of northern life, and to acknowledge how species speak through water, air, and seasonal change.
The residency forms an essential phase in a long-term artistic exploration of northern ecologies, mythic cosmologies, and interspecies listening. While Selkie is part of a broader mythoecological narrative, its Baltic chapter is deeply anchored in the specific conditions, communities, and environmental urgencies of the Turku Archipelago. Warming waters, shrinking sea ice, eutrophication, declining oxygen levels, and the accumulation of microplastics all alter how sound moves through these waters. The project listens to these changes not only as scientific indicators but as shifting sound worlds—new acoustic realities that shape how seals vocalise, how migration patterns shift, how underwater environments resonate, and how human activity masks or alters communication between species.
A core element of the project is the creation of new sculptural, body-responsive instruments, shaped collectively by the three artists from locally sourced materials such as wood, reeds, bone, clay, shoreline metals, and ice. These instrument-objects are informed by both scientific research and mythic imagination: salinity, temperature curves, and oxygen measurements influence tuning and structure, while ancestral animal archetypes inspire form, gesture, and sonic intention. Activated through breath, touch, and movement, the instruments turn the performers’ bodies into resonant conduits for interspecies vibration. They also shape the emerging filmic language of the project, with Raúl’s cinematography and sound-led visual research interwoven with Anna and Keiko’s somatic, vocal, and material practices.
Collaboration with marine scientists and environmental organisations is integral to Selkie. Through shared field sessions, the artists will use hydrophones, directional microphones, surface and underwater sensors to record seal trills beneath thinning ice, the resonance of shifting salinity layers, the quiet turbulence of algal blooms, and the coastal atmospheres of the archipelago. These recordings, combined with ecological interpretation offered by scientific partners, will guide the sonic, performative, and sculptural directions of the work. By translating environmental data into felt, embodied experiences, the project aligns directly with the TIDAL ArtS mission of connecting communities to the future of their waters through artistic and scientific collaboration.
Cultural context is equally important. Finnish and Baltic mythologies—where sound is a generative force and water a sentient presence—provide a cosmological framework for understanding the Baltic Sea not merely as an ecosystem but as a living companion. Stories of Väinämöinen singing land into being, Ilmatar shaping the first waters, wolf spirits travelling between realms, and seal-beings guarding thresholds help shape the project’s approach. Sámi relational sound philosophies, approached respectfully through cultural advisors, further inform the work’s ethical orientation: listening as kinship, sound as relationship, and song as a bridge between beings.
Community participation is woven throughout the project. The artists will offer mythoecological listening workshops where residents of the archipelago can experiment with simple natural materials, breath-based sound-making, and shared stories of seasonal waters. These gatherings contribute to a growing, community-shaped sonic map of the archipelago while encouraging collective reflection on ecological change. Such engagement aligns with the TIDAL ArtS emphasis on citizen participation, local relevance, and co-creation.
At the end of the residency, Selkie will take shape as an immersive sound installation created from the collaboratively built instruments and underwater recordings; a participatory performance rooted in interspecies listening; a short research-based film; an audio release weaving field recordings with newly created sonic textures; and open-source educational materials to support schools, cultural centres, and environmental organisations. Together, these outcomes aim to deepen public connection to the Baltic Sea’s changing ecologies, strengthen art–science collaborations, and offer imaginative, relational ways of sensing the waters that sustain life across the region.
Collective + Artist Biographies
Human Clay CIC
A non-profit, practice-based collective working at the crossings of performance, ecology, ritual, and cultural heritage.
Portfolio: https://humanclaycic.com
Anna Kushnerova
Choreographer, performer, filmmaker, sculptor.
Portfolio: https://annakushnerova.com
Keiko Yamamoto
Experimental musician, vocalist, multimodal performer.
Artist links as above.
Raúl Bartolomé
Filmmaker, cinematographer, documentary artist.
Portfolio: https://humanclaycic.com/social-documentories
RESIDENCY AND PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLAN
ANIMALS
NOTES Exploring the sonic ecology of Arctic and northern species, next steps to create acucustic imagery
Arctic Fox (Vulpes lagopus)
Status: Critically Endangered in Fennoscandia (EU Habitats Directive, Annex II & IV)
Habitat: Tundra plateaus and mountain “fjell” zones
Threats: Prey collapse, red fox competition, warming climate
Sound ecology:
The Arctic fox produces a wide range of calls and barks, from short “ack-ack” alarms to high-pitched yips and trills used in pair communication. In the still tundra air, these sounds can travel far over snow. During mating season, the foxes emit eerie, drawn-out howls. Their acute hearing allows them to detect lemmings moving under thick snow layers — they “listen through the ice” before pouncing.
Ecological role: Scavenger and prey-regulator of Arctic ecosystems.
Status: Protected in Norway and Svalbard (since 1973)
Habitat: Sea-ice edges, coastal islands, Barents Sea
Threats: Sea-ice loss, pollution, human disturbance
Sound ecology:
Polar bears are typically quiet, but they produce a repertoire of low growls, roars, and chuffing exhalations — low-frequency vocalizations that carry through fog and ice. Mothers communicate with cubs through soft grunts and puffs, often chest-resonant. Their hearing is well-adapted to low-frequency sound and vibration — useful on the ice where distant cracks and seal movements can be sensed through the substrate.
Ecological role: Apex predator and symbol of Arctic environmental equilibrium.
Status: Least Concern globally; vital Arctic subsistence species
Habitat: Pack ice, coastal leads, pressure ridges, and stable snow lairs
Threats: Loss of sea ice and snow cover, underwater noise, shipping, pollution
Sound ecology:
Ringed seals produce a wide spectrum of underwater vocalisations—pure-tone whistles, descending chirps, harmonic trills, knocks, and long, low-frequency moans. Males vocalise most intensely during breeding, releasing shimmering, flute-like sequences that carry through ice-covered waters. Some calls resemble electronic tones or ethereal singing, travelling hundreds of metres beneath the ice where light barely penetrates. Pups communicate with soft bleats and contact calls within snow lairs, relying heavily on low-noise conditions for mother–pup bonding and predator avoidance.
Ecological role:
Under-ice sentinel and indicator species; their reliance on quiet, snow-covered nursery chambers ties them directly to the acoustic integrity of the sea-ice environment.
Arctic Wolf (Canis lupus arctos)
Status: Least Concern (stable but locally vulnerable)
Habitat: High Arctic tundra, polar deserts, coastal plains, sparse boreal edges
Threats: Climate-driven shifts in prey distribution, increasing human presence, industrial noise
Sound ecology:
Arctic wolves vocalise across vast, open landscapes where sound travels cleanly over snow and frozen ground. Their calls include long-distance howls, short-range barks, growls, and intimate whines. The classic Arctic wolf howl is lower, purer, and more sustained than southern subspecies — adapted for carrying over wind-scoured tundra and across ice fields up to several kilometres. Packs coordinate movement and hunting through antiphonal calling, weaving howls into layered choruses that echo off cliffs and frozen bays. Pups develop early vocal learning in sheltered dens, imprinting on the tonal signatures of their family group.
Ecological role:
Top predator and ecological shaper; their long-distance vocal communication structures pack cohesion, territory, and seasonal movement across some of the world’s quietest acoustic environments.
Status: Vulnerable (IUCN); protected under EU Birds Directive, Annex I
Habitat: Open Arctic tundra and coastal plains (Svalbard, Finnmark, Lapland)
Threats: Lemming population crashes, disturbance, loss of snow cover
Sound ecology:
Snowy owls have a hauntingly powerful hoot — a deep, resonant whoo-hoo carrying over long distances, used mainly by males during territorial display. Females give harsher barking calls when defending nests. Chicks produce soft whistles and squeaks, audible from within snow burrows. Their hearing is exquisitely sensitive; the asymmetrical placement of ears enables three-dimensional sound mapping, allowing precise location of prey moving under snow.
Ecological role: Apex tundra bird and acoustic sentinel of lemming cycles.
Status: Protected and culturally managed; wild herds Vulnerable
Habitat: Arctic tundra and mountain plateaus
Threats: Habitat fragmentation, infrastructure, climate warming
Sound ecology:
Reindeer are remarkably sonic beings. Their most distinctive sound is the “clicking” or “knocking” produced by tendons snapping over foot bones as they walk — an audible signature that allows herds to stay together in blizzards and darkness. They also emit grunts and low calls during rutting and mother–calf contact. Their hearing is sensitive to ultrasound, helping them perceive predators and subtle snow movements.
Cultural role: Sacred in Sámi cosmology, associated with rhythmic endurance and migration.