The Bittersweet Acceptance That One Can Never Really Go Back Home

Application summary

"The Bittersweet Acceptance That One Can Never Really Go Back Home" is a long-term artistic research project focused on the relationship between indigenous knowledge, oral histories, and the representation of cultural and ritual objects in museums and digital systems. The project investigates how objects, particularly those tied to ritual and cultural practices, are categorized, archived, and transformed by institutional and technological frameworks, often losing their deeper cultural meanings in the process. The title reflects a key theme in this exploration: the tension between the desire to preserve cultural heritage and the realization that the act of preservation, particularly in institutional settings, can sometimes result in a fundamental loss of context and meaning. This project continues Ruck's work in exploring these tensions by blending physical research with digital technologies, while drawing from indigenous knowledge systems and oral traditions to recontextualize and reanimate ritual objects. This project is aimed at developing sculptures based on two sources: AI-generated imagery informed by museum categorizations and AI-generated imagery based on oral histories. These sculptures will be exhibited alongside cultural objects from Finland's museum collections.