Sweden's second marine national park and the first in the Baltic Sea will be inaugurated in september: Nämdö Archipelago! The new national park is located straight east of Stockholm (map below). The Embassy of the Baltic Sea will contribute with an exhibition about representation of more-than-human beings. We are calling on artists to contribute with a mask that represents a being in the Baltic Sea - or maybe a river, or the whole sea?

Humanity has an amazing ability to empathise with the way other beings perceive the world. Throughout history, shape-shifting with the help of masks has been a common way to shift perspective and thereby achieve wisdom. The concept of ‘person’ has interesting affinities with representation through masking:

c. 1200, persoun, "an individual, a human being," from Old French persone "human being, anyone, person" (12c., Modern French personne) and directly from Latin persona "human being, person, personage; a part in a drama, assumed character," originally "a mask, a false face," such as those of wood or clay, covering the whole head, worn by the actors in later Roman theater. (etymonline.com)

Context/mission:

The inauguration of the new national park takes place August 30th - September 14th. The exhibition will be partly in Bruno Liljefors' old hunting lodge on Bullerö and partly in Kulturhuset in Gustavsberg. The masks are intended to illustrate masking of a human to a new identity as another species/creature/phenomenon from the Baltic Sea. However, they do not need to be used in practice, but will hang on a wall. They need to have a hanging device. They will be indoors and can be made in any material that is reasonably portable. They need to be in place by 20 August.

We who work for the Embassy are doing so out of care and on a voluntary basis; there is no funding for this project. We hope that it will be valuable and meaningful anyway. We also hope and believe that there will be interest in the exhibition elsewhere, that it will have a long life and inspire more contexts where the creatures of the Baltic Sea are represented. It would be valuable if you document your work with 2-3 photos and a film clip where you speak briefly (1-2 minutes) about the creature you choose to let your mask represent and why you have chosen it. We can then extend the reach of the exhibition and all the co-creators.

Thank you for joining us and giving the Baltic Sea a voice!


Contact person:

Pella Thiel, info@balticembassy.com, +4673-6589884

Background:

The Embassy of the Baltic Sea is a space for the representation of the more-than-human creatures of the Baltic Sea catchment area. The Embassy is part of the global movement for the rights of nature, which argues that it is time for the voices of ecosystems to be heard in human society. They should be recognised as subjects and represented in law as legal persons. This represents a major shift in a culture that perceives nature as consisting of objects and treats it as mere resources for humans, a worldview which has led to an institutionalised deafness to the living whole of which humans are always part. The Embassy aims to be a laboratory of care, a platform to explore how a human society can be organised with respect for the interests of nature. How can we give voice to people who have a very different way of being in the world?