UTO-PIA Model as archive and viewing device at the Connected by Art exhibition (curated by Kornelia Röder, Antonia Napp), Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Germany, 2012.
Concept and realization: Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
Architectural assistance: Giacomo Castagnola
Photo: Johannes-Maria Schlorke
Photo: Johannes-Maria Schlorke
Documents at the archive:
1. PIA’s sheep. Video, DVD, 2:31 min. 2011
PIA is an artist from Stockholm, who moved to archipelago, where she lives with her husband, two children and four sheep. When spring comes her sheep have to be taken on boat and travel to UTO -the most remote island in archipelago. Sheep search for the most remote, blind spots in the island, they graze meadows in disconnected places and give milk for the production of wireless-less cheese to create a taste of UTO-PIA.
2. Maarit. Audio, 8:17 min. 2011
Maarit is a historian coming to archipelago from Ostrobotnia to start new life as ecological farmer. She explores relationships with her animals while undergoing the process of becoming aboriginal.
3. Archive. Found footage, video, DVD, 3:18 min. 2011
Chemical weapons buried on the bottom of the Baltic sea after the World War II did as much harm to the fragile ecosystem of the Baltic sea as the postwar massive collectivization of agriculture and industrial scale of farming turning the fragile ecosystem of larger spots of the sea into a dead spots.
4. Cecilia. Video, DVD, 7:36 min. 2011
Cecilia has a sheep farm on Aland islands – a neighbouring archipelago, that is the territory of Finland, but claims its autonomy and even has a parliament. Cecilia is the only sheep cheese maker in the whole Finland. She also is a role model of the woman who herself got all the knowledge in diary sheep farming traveling all over Europe and learning secrets of different kinds of cheese: mozzarella, feta, camembert, ricotta, fine names of European culture that she remixed into her own inventions. Cecilia was invited to lead the first Baltic Sheep Cheese Workshop that took place in summer of 2011 in Turku archipelago.
5. Cheese cellar. Video, DVD, 5:02 min. 2011
Through the history archipelago was the place that had mutual relationship with the army. Its landscape with its natural reinforcements was exploited as shelter for military of several countries. Whereas local inhabitants developed relationships to the army often securing daily life supplies and concerns. Now army is leaving archipelago and as soldiers have to find their way home, the bunkers have to find their new function in the changing landscape.
6. Katja. Audio, 2:34 min. 2011
Katja is a biologist coming from Turku to live on the islands and to dedicate her life and research to the secrets of biosphere and biodiversity.
7. Milking. Video, DVD, 6:17 min. 2011
Cheese making as a therapy. Touching the animal and care taking could bring soldiers back home – back to the civil life.
8. Workshop. Video, DVD, 10:42 min. 2011
The first Baltic Sheep Cheese Workshop took place in Korpo, Turku archipelago on June 14, 2011. The season was just starting in archipelago, sheep were just getting their baby-lambs, too early for milking. Sheep milk for the workshop was collected from small organic farms in Lithuania and Estonia, frozen and smuggled to Finland in a portable freezer by car. Cecilia – leader of the workshop was the only woman in Finland who knew how to make a sheep cheese. She brought her knowledge and method to archipelago to share with the local farmers.
9. Kaj. Audio, 25:41 min. 2011
Kaj is a pioneer of telecommunication in archipelago, who was involved in engineering the commutation center for the Red Line – a direct phone line to connect Washington and Moscow during the peak of the Cold War. Until recently this commutation center secretly operated from the Bunker in the Telegraph Hill in archipelago.
