Artist and doctoral researcher Rahaa Sepideh

Songs to Earth, Songs to Seeds – An attempt to understand and portray the old cultivation processes, rituals and traditions

Taiteellinen työ / siihen pohjautuva työ | Kaksivuotinen

I will continue and complete my research with the staple food grains of rice and rye, and create and exhibit second part of the project Songs to Earth, Songs to Seeds with the focus on current cultivation processes, traditions and rituals, and mythologies related to them. The project highlights issues of food security, access to clean water and nourishment as well as the importance of the traditions of sustainable cultivation in the current climate emergency. It brings to the fore the often invisible and inaccessible process of staple food cultivation such as rice and rye, two of important staple food grains in our world. The work invites the audience to experience a process in which ecologies, stories, water, land, grains, and farmer’s labour – and their songs to the Earth and to the seeds – are intertwined with consumer life in our contemporary world. I will produce series of work including drawings, multi-channel video installation as well as camera-based performances embedded in the video works. What does it mean to coexist living far away or nearby? What visible and invisible linkages, connections and disconnections makes this possible or real? Something which is cultivated elsewhere and is being consumed in Finland, what meaning does it bring or create in our life? What about locally cultivated food? Simple matter elsewhere can make a difference here where we live. In the world, we live relationally despite continental, political, societal and geographical differences. A conversation that I have with myself can be expanded to thinking and living together in the world. The title of the work ‘Songs to the Earth, Songs to the Seeds’ refers to the long and ritual processes of staple food grains’ cultivation. My aim is to juxtapose the rice cultivation in Iran (from the first part of the project), together with the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil and local Finnish farming traditions and methods cultivating rye grain.