WESEN – Practices for Interspecies Mourning is an exhibition of Sympoietic Society at HIAP Gallery Augusta, Suomenlinna.

 14 – 29 August 2025

Wesen (German): (a) being; essence, central character, nature of.

What remains when an ecological being vanishes? What lingers, transforms, or returns in unexpected forms? WESEN – Practices for Interspecies Mourning is the first solo exhibition of the collective Sympoietic Society (SyS) and functions as a reflection on the group’s long term artistic research into ecological grief and more-than-human kinship. Evoking both nature and the spectral presences, the word wesen guides us into an exceptional shared space of mourning: not as an endpoint, but as a generative site of collective imagination and ecological attunement.

The exhibition originates from the project ICE * In Case of Emergency (2023), which explored the disappearance of European glaciers and associated folklore. In it, Sympoietic Society travelled to Sideby (FI) to research glacial land uplifting processes, Val Camonica (IT) to connect with ancestral stories by the Adamello glacier, and finally to the Austrian Alps to commemorate the late Rote Wand glacier. The project concluded with a farewell ceremony not for a dead landscape, but for one melting into transformation. Since then, the collective has grieved for these fellow bodies of water and cultivated practices of collective mourning in the form of site-sensitive workshops, performances, storytelling sessions, and walking practices.

This exhibition focuses on the tools and traces of these practices. Glacier shrouds, ghostly costumes, ceramic vessels, embroidered tapestries, and children’s drawings function as a material link between the lost and the nearby. Ready to be embraced once again, these objects will be activated in a series of events, performances and workshops throughout the time of the exhibition. Through these tools and traces, we ask: How do we embrace grief in the face of extinction and climate crisis as an ethical and relational act? How can mourning be interspecies, intergenerational, and situated—an active process of sensing the world otherwise?

Participating Artists: Christoph Matt, Cilia Herrmann, Daniel Dolci, Deborah Maggiolo, Eline Gaudé, Isadora Alves, Kevin Bellò, Lucrezia Costa, Nur Horsanalı, Paul Staring, Sanna Hirvonen.

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Events and Activations

Exhibition Opening — Glacier Ghosts (Reprise)
13 August, 17:30–20:30

The exhibition opens with the premiere of a new iteration of Glacier Ghosts, a collective performance by Sympoietic Society. First enacted in the Austrian Alps in 2023, this evolving work weaves together bedtime stories, dream fragments, and spectral presences inspired by melting glaciers. In this new version, two years after the farewell ceremony at Rote Wand, the performance explores the temporal distance and emotional transformation since that moment— what has shifted, dissolved, or remained. Costumes, whispers, and gestures summon the ghosts of alpine waters and offer space for interspecies mourning and imaginative transformation.

Artist Talk with Sympoietic Society — On Grief, Ghosts, and Gathering
14 August, 16:00-17:30

Held during Helsinki’s Night of the Arts, this conversation invites visitors into the evolving story of Sympoietic Society. We will reflect on the journey from ICE: In Case of Emergency to WESEN, tracing the threads of ecological grief, collaborative ritual, and more-than-human kinship that connect our past and present work. The talk will weave together memories, materia
traces, and speculative questions: How do we mourn disappearing ecologies? What can be reimagined in the aftermath? And what kinds of gatherings—of beings, stories, and affects— emerge from shared loss?

SOLU Dialogues — More than Person River (with Mari Keski-Korsu)
16 August, 14:00-16:00

Booking required: Book Here.

Bioart Society and Sympoietic Society co-host a dialogue between Mari Keski-Korsu and the Baltic Sea that draws on her work with intuitive more-than-human communication, hydrobodily care, healing practices, agency, empathy and grief. In her practice, Keski-Korsu attends to hyper questions of ecological crises through micro-level manifestations. Her current project More than Person River, in collaboration with artist Eija Mäkivuoti, explores the possibilities of more-than-human decision making and agency of Torne River. As an extension of this body of work, on this occasion responding to the seas surrounding the island of Suomenlinna, Keski-Korsu guides a workshop that uses hydrophones as well as sensory, sonic and vocal exercises to collectively listen to these living and dying marine ecologies.

Activation Workshops with Sympoietic Society — Practices for Staying With
17 August, 14:00

Join members of Sympoietic Society for an afternoon of activation workshops—hands-on and embodied practices that have evolved through our long-term research trajectory. These sessions invite visitors to engage with the emotional, sensory, and speculative dimensions of ecological grief and interspecies connection. Including an embroidery circle, a guided meditation, an activation exercise working with the exhibition’s artefacts and a Water Talk, an informal closing circle inspired by Sympoietic Society’s communal rituals, these sessions offer ways to sense, stay with, and transform shared experiences of environmental loss.

Performance with Rhizome Dance Collective— we are (with) many
24 August, 18:00

Designed and performed by the Rhizome Dance Collective, we are (with) many is a choreographic exploration into collective movement and ecological interdependence. Rooted in shared imaginaries of mountains, forests, roots, lakes, and rivers, this dance performance engages in embodied practices to navigate support and interdependence between humans and more-than-humans. Through negotiation, chant, and touch, the performance opens space to question how we move and touch in times of crisis and transformation.

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Gallery opening hours

12.00 – 18.00, Wednesday – Sunday, closed on Monday & Tuesday

Opening Event

Wednesday 13 August, 17:30