Bioart Society, PanimoKatu 1, 3 krs, Helsinki (2026)

22/10/2026

🦠🩷 Microbial Lovesongs 🩷🦠
,🫧 public opening tonight 18.30-20.00 🫧

Then running 23.–30. 10.2026 Friday–Friday: 12:00–17:00; closed on Monday
SOLU Space, Panimokatu 1 (3rd floor), 00580 Helsinki

Featuring the fizzy, fermenting, multi-sensory, sensual, provocative, playful, weird and wonderful works of Vanessa Grasse, Riina Hannula, Alma Heikkilä, Kirsty Hendry, Oona Leinovirtanen, Kaajal Modi and Aliisa Talja

Bioart Society are thrilled to have worked with so many of these artists during their CSSM residencies and to have the pleasure of hosting this exhibition (with all it's bubbly activations) curated by Riina Cannula for the CSSM conference.

Microbial Lovesongs asks visitors to consider care, responsibility, and intimacy across species boundaries. The discomfort and tenderness of feeling, sensing, and digesting with our microbial companions is a position for knowledge production, a space opened by social scientific and artistic entanglements.

Testing what art can know that text cannot, and what happens when social-scientific inquiry lets itself be shaped by processes as slow and unruly as fermentation, decay, and growth. Inspired by the leaky, transforming character of the holobiont (a human-microbial consortium), the exhibition itself performs the permeability it describes.

The exhibition is in collaboration with Centre for the Social Study of Microbes (CSSM) Conference 2026 at the University of Helsinki. Microbial Lovesongs brings together artists who have collaborated with CSSM over the past five years in experimental artistic residencies. More about the exhibition and artists via the link in our bio!

Vanessa Grasse Riina Hannula .heikkila
Oona Leino University of Helsinki

19/10/2026

Continuing from our previous post, we’re highlighting the rest of the artists and works in ’Microbial Lovesongs’ exhibition by Centre for the Social Study of Microbes (CSSM).

In ‘Microbimpro’, Oona Leinovirtanen Oona Leino explores improvisation as a way of knowing with the microbes in our bodies. ‘Weed Weavings’ questions what makes a plant unwanted and explores our relationships with gardening and soil.

Aliisa Talja’s zine ‘Social Worker’ reflects on women, work and qualities of intimacy, while ‘Bread With Me’ video work is a karaoke remake and a tribute to Rihanna. Both works are part of a series of solo works, exploring dimensions of intimacy in human-microbial relations.

Kirsty Hendry’s ‘Human Nature’ and ‘She’s natural!’ explore our relationship with microbial life and challenges how we understand the gut. The work questions the boundaries between human and non-human, body and mind, featuring drag performer Wet Mess as “Bacteria.”

In Kajaal Modi’s ’Microbes Library: Revisited’, living fermentation cultures from the CSSM network continue to grow, inviting visitors to observe microbial life and exchange fermentation starters.

Riina Hannula’s Riina Hannula and Kajaal Modi’s ‘Thermophilia’ brings together their works ‘Hatha Yoghurt’ and ‘Sauna Song(s) I: The Host as Microbial Medium, Messenger, Metaphor’ exploring heat as a practice of care for our microbial companions, accompanied by a multispecies soundscape by Panu Räisänen.

Riina Hannula’s ‘Sensory Methods Bed’ invites visitors to attune to microbial life and to explore how knowledge emerges through bodily sensations.

Visit ’Microbial Lovesongs’ at SOLU Space / Bioart Society (Panimokatu 1, 3rd floor, 00580 Helsinki):

19–22 Oct 2026 – as part of the CSSM Conference, only via registration
23–30 Oct 2026 – exhibition open from Fri–Fri between 12:00–17:00; closed on Mon.

Link in bio for more information about the exhibition and the conference.

14/10/2026

“Today, as material chains are becoming increasingly difficult to trace, turning into complex chains of human and nonhuman actors that form assemblages and hyperobjects and entangle the globe, most users of the final product have no idea what environment it comes from.”

As part of their Learning Materials residency and an ongoing material research, Aistė Gaidilionytė and Kamilė Vasiliauskaitė Kamilė Vasiliauskaitė travelled to the Äänekoski bioproduct mill in central Finland where they explored the industrial processes through which wood is transformed into a wide range of products. In their text they reflect on material flows, industrial extraction, and the often-invisible infrastructures behind everyday materials.

You can read the full blog entry, titled ‘We Utilize 100 % of the Tree’ on our website (link in bio).

Learning Materials pilot residency in 2026 was realised in collaboration between Bioart Society, HIAP, Koyne Program, SWAMP: Art Material Swap and Waste Management Point and TUO TUO, and funded by Nordic Culture Point.

12/10/2026

Join us for Microbial Lovesongs at SOLU Space / Bioart Society (Panimokatu 1, 3rd floor, 00580 Helsinki):

19–22 Oct 2026 – as part of the CSSM Conference, only via registration
23–30 Oct 2026 – exhibition open from Fri–Fri between 12:00–17:00; closed on Mon.

Microbial Lovesongs brings together artists Vanessa Grasse, Riina Hannula, Alma Heikkilä, Kirsty Hendry, Oona Leinovirtanen, Kaajal Modi and Aliisa Talja who have collaborated with the Centre for the Social Study of Microbes (CSSM) through experimental artistic residencies.

Exploring the entanglements of humans and microbes, the exhibition approaches knowledge-making as a sensory, embodied process, inviting us to reconsider care, intimacy and responsibility across species boundaries. In this post, we highlight three of the participating artists and their works — stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll introduce the rest of the artists in the exhibition.

‘Elysia’ by Vanessa Grasse Vanessa Grasse is a multidisciplinary performance installation exploring inner and outer soil microbiomes and our hybrid, shapeshifting identities. Through large wearable soft sculptures Grasse creates hybrid creatures that embody the entanglements of humans, plants and microbes.

‘Microbial Medi(t)ation’ by Riina Hannula Riina Hannula is a speculative artistic research practice and an immersive audio exercise exploring how embodied experiences of human–microbial relations intersect with scientific knowledge.

Alma Heikkilä’s .heikkila painting installation ‘located in the communal’ focuses on shared spaces, surfaces and everyday routines. The work explores how microbial communities travel between bodies and environments, revealing the intimate and often invisible relationships that emerge through living together.

Images: 1: Vanessa Grasse: Elysia. Photo: James Mulkeen  2: Riina Hannula: Microbial Medi(t)ation
3: Alma Heikkilä: *°｡⋆˚⁺flashing*⋆༶⋆˙intestinal⋆ ୭ .⋆｡neural net˖⁺ ☁️⋆༶⋆˙⊹

Link in bio for more information about the exhibition and the conference.

26/09/2026

Armollinen kirjoittamiskerho - The Gentle Writing Club
Every Tuesday, 10.00– 13:00 (until Dec)
SOLU Space

Hosted by BAS members for members, and anyone who wishes to join, The Gentle Writing Club continues for half-day sessions on Tuesday mornings this autumn-winter.

The group uses a simple format of focused silent writing with conversational breaks. The club is for anyone working with any form of writing including, research, application development, fiction writing etc.

You can also use the time for reading and browsing the BAS library, which has a pretty juicy selection of books!

Following the sessions you are welcome to stay at SOLU Space for a BYO lunch.

Hope to see you there!

25/09/2026

Come along to Bioart Society's SOLU Space or listen along via OOO Radio as we launch this little gem 💎 commissioned by BAS from as a reflective research project and finding form through correspondence with as a score for "fielding the field"

Part of our Rewilding Cultures trio publication launch 1 October 6-7.30pm

Fieding Climate Change: A Cranky Score For (One’s Politics Of) Curiosity
Anastasia (A) Alevtin & Elina Waage Mikalsen
Designed and printed by Roby Redgrave / F𝔞𝔫t𝔞𝔰𝔶 P𝔯𝔦nt𝔥𝔬𝔲𝔰e
Available as an open access PDF and limited edition risograph pamphlet (print run of 100 copies)

In Fielding Climate Change: A Cranky Score For (One’s Politics Of) Curiosity Anastasia (A) Alevtina and Elina Waage Mikalsen explore curiosity as a political and affective force that shapes how we encounter places, people, materials, and knowledge.

Developed in the context of the Ars Bioarctica residency in Gilbbesjávri, Sápmi, the publication takes the form of a pocket companion – a portable score that can accompany (not only residency participants but) anyone engaging with fieldwork, artistic research, or situated practices and reflecting practices and ethical relations of fieldworking. Drawing from their intersecting Sámi and crip perspectives, the authors question extractive and colonial ways of approaching fields and knowledge, and invite readers to slow down, notice, and tend to the relationships, needs, infrastructures, and material conditions that shape their practices. Rather than offering instructions, the cranky score opens up space for curiosity, reflection, and thinking otherwise about how we enter, inhabit, and work with(in) a field.

19/09/2026

Rewilding Cultures trio publication launch
1 Oct 2026 18:00 — 19:30
Location: SOLU Space and OOO Radio

Join us to celebrate three new publications emerging from Rewilding Cultures as the project comes to an end.

Part of Rewilding Cultures, Bioart Society’s eighth feral lab, Field_Notes: Living Methodologies, took place at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Gilbbesjávri, Sápmi, in September 2025, exploring through collective interdisciplinary research how our methods matter in field work and beyond.

A year on, we are launching two reflective texts commissioned from contributors:

Fielding Climate Change: A Cranky Score For (One’s Politics Of) Curiosity by Anastasia (A) Alevtin & Elina Waage Mikalsen

Living Methodologies – what enters the field with us? by Marjolijn Dijkman & Sam Nightingale

Alongside these, we will host a Helsinki launch for Feral Labs Node Book #3: Fa Fa Futures, the newest publication in the Feral Labs series developed within the Rewilding Cultures project, co-edited by Dalila Honorato, Iakovos Panagopoulos, Tina Dolinšek and Uros Veber.

Together, these three publications open up different perspectives on how we enter the field, how we build relationships with places and more-than-human worlds, and how artistic research can create spaces for reflection, learning, and co-creation.

The evening will include readings from the authors and will be broadcast on OOO Radio

We look forward to gathering with you in SOLU space and via the airwaves to celebrate these which will continue to influence our work (and hopefully yours) beyond the project.

Read more about each publication via the link in our bio

17/09/2026

We warmly invite you to join the event where Genietta Varsi genietta varsi presents her previous work and the research in Tokyo as part of this years Tokyo Art & Science Research Residency in hosted by BioClub Tokyo in collaboration with フィンランドセンター Finnish Institute in Japan

22 Sep 2026
13:00 — 14:30 Helsinki time (Zoom)
19:00 – 20:30 Tokyo Time
Location: BioClub Tokyo & Zoom

During her residency at at BioClub Tokyo, Genietta will research the connection between the body and the territory through salt. By harvesting salt from both human sweat and the Pacific Ocean, she explores the transition of fluid into crystal as a material history of the land. Mapping Tokyo’s buried rivers, Varsi will organize sweating encounters to bring the city’s hidden waters to the surface. She will research traditional Japanese salt-making processes, and will be working on laboratory techniques to grow salt crystals from sweat and seawater. Her work during this period will explore the boundaries between the microscopic world, the hidden flows and the city landscape.

Please note this event takes place at BioClub Tokyo in Japan and on Zoom. Find the link in our bio!

Images:
1: Image: Sweat recollection with a glass tool in a Finnish sauna. Photo: Genietta Varsi
2: Sweat recollection at Porosibilidades (Sao Paolo, 2023). Photo: Marina Rebouças
3: Lisa recollecting her sweat at Porosibilidades (Sao Paolo, 2023). Photo: Genietta Varsi

24/08/2026

Join us for a late summer afternoon reading and listening session 28 Aug 2026 16:00 — 18:00
~ Helsinki's Kaisaniemi Botanic outdoor gardens and on the OOO Radio airwaves

With live readings from Follow the Plants book contributors Joana Quiroga, Joss Allen and Sirkku Rosi, and recordings shared from those further afield including Alana Hunt, Annalee Davis, Christian Thompson, Mariana Martínez Balvanera and Zayaan Khan.

Bring your own planty readings, recipes and stories to share, a blanket and some snacks for the table, and a set of headphones if you have them!

Plant infused syrups cordials will be served alongside some light snacks.

To listen in remotely, join via the OOO Radio live broadcast.

This event is a collaboration between Bioart Society, Food Art Research Network (FAR), OOO Radio and Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden.

Venue / Location:
Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden (Kaisaniemenranta 2, Helsinki) outdoor garden on the side of Kaisaniemenranta, in the surroundings of a small glass pavilion opposite Café Viola. Please note that there are not many benches nearby but the seating will take place on the grass.
Booking is not required for this event, and you can turn up anytime between 16:00-18:00
For more info on the contributors and access visit the link in BAS’s bio.

Images:
1,2: Slides by mariana martínez balvanera
3: Jorge Menna-Barreto and Marcelo Wasem, Restauro: Environmental Sculpture, 2016-17
4, 10, 12: Location of event: small glass pavilion opposite Café Viola
5. Zayaan Khan invitation in Follow the Plants
6. Mariana Martínez Balvanera and Keg de Souza contribution in Follow the Plants
7. Joss Allen poem in Follow the Plants
8. Jorge Menna-Barreto invitation in Follow the Plants
9. Sirkku Rosi contribution in Follow the Plants
11. Christian Thompson contribution in Follow the Plants.
12. Alana Hunt contribution in Follow the Plants
13. Joana Quiroga contribution in Follow the Plants
14. Annalee Davis / contribution in Follow the Plants

20/08/2026

Our books have arrived! Sharing a little sneak peak before our Research Assembly launch events in Helsinki next week.

Hope to see you there where you can meet these beauties in the flesh!

We could not be more grateful to all of the artists, thinkers and plants that have contributed to bringing this book into being

Edited by Madeleine Collie and Yvonne Billimore with contributions from AK Wane, Åsa Sonjasdotter, Alana Hunt, Annalee Davis, Banu Subramaniam, Beatriz Paz Jiménez, Christian Thompson, Clare Qualmann, Diana Vieira, Elia Nurvista, Franswa Tibere, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Grace Gloria Denis, Joana Quiroga, Johanes Jamil, Jorge Menna Barreto, Joshua Gebert, Joss Allen, Keg de Souza, Kristina Jones, Kyriaki Goni, Leone Contini, Lucy Davis, Madeleine Collie, Marta Fernández Calvo, Margherita Pevere, Matti Aikio, Mariana Martínez Balvanera, Nathalie Muchamad, Nida Sinnokrot (Sakiya), Nick Anderson, Rain Wu, Rubiane Maia, Shalini Krishan, Sirkku Rosi, Yvonne Billimore, Zayaan Khan and Zheng Bo.
Design Zenobia Ahmed

For those who can not be there next week Follow the Plants is now available to preorder via our wonderful co-publishers. To order you can visit Onomatopee Projects for Africa, Asia, Americas, Europe and Discipline for Australia and NZ.

Madeleine Collie

AyKay

Alana Hunt
Annalee Davis
Beatriz Paz
Christian Thompson
Clare
𝕖𝕝𝕚𝕒 𝕟𝕦𝕣𝕧𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕒

Grace Gloria Denis
Joana Quiroga
Jorge Menna Barreto
Vince Gebert
NTU CCA Singapore
Joss Allen
Keg de Souza
Kyriaki Gonicontini
Lucy Davis
Marta Fernandez Calvo
Matti Aikio
Sakiya-ساقية
Rain Wu
Rubiane Maia
questioncurl
Edible Archives
sirkku rosi
Z A Y A A N

Creative Australia
Saastamoinen Foundation
Frame Contemporary Art Finland
The University of East London
Stanley Picker Gallery
Kingston School of Art

Bioart Society

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20/08/2026

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