“A river is not a person because it does not have offspring. It’s always moving. It is more than a person; it’s life.“
Annika, Tornio, October 2023,
Mari Keski-Korsu’s personal communications on With the River Collective‘s field trip.
More than Person River, in collaboration with Eija Mäkivuoti, explored more-than-human decision-making possibilities with Torne river in Torne valley, the river flowing from Torneträsk Lake to the Baltic Sea. The project involved public walks in the twin towns of Tornio (Finland) and Haparanda (Sweden), just before the river meets the Baltic Sea, to become-with the river with sensory, empathic ritualisations. Findings – messages from the local people – on these walks are donated to the Finnish-Swedish Transboundary River Commission which is an intergovernmental body established in between the two countries on decision making with river related issues. The findings consist of underwater soundscape listened on the walk and letters of matter from the participants.
The river valley, Torne valley, is multi-culturally and historically significant nature-ecoculture. Currently, the geopolitical turbulence affects whole Arctic as the superpowers of the world race for natural resources, transportation routes and military dominance; the world is outwardly being geopolitically re-arranged into spheres of interest. The natural resources are interlinked with green transition; mining of metals and minerals as well as, transportation and green wind energy, meanwhile the climate crisis accelerates, and the Arctic areas are warming four times faster than elsewhere. In this backdrop, what does the seemingly silent river that flows across this area for over 500 km from Torneträsk lake to the Baltic Sea has got to say, if we would listen? What are the traces and matters of mining, cryosphere melt, geopolitics and many other polycrisis complexities in the river – interlinked with the shared histories and heritage of the river as sustenance in Torne valley? How they can be sensorially and transcorporeally embodied, not as a resource but as more-than-human relation? And finally, could this ad care ethics in the decision-making systems and to ecocultural resilience of the (more-than-) human communities in change?
To explore these questions, part of the More than Person River -project included following objectives:
- Research walks by the river to develope public walks.
- Interviews of the members of the in Finnish-Swedish Transboundary River Commission. Also, cultural heritage coordinator Julia Autio was interviewed.
- The research walks and interviews functioned as a base for developing more-than-human decision making through ritualisation technologies that were further sensed, embodied, created and dialoged & discussed on public walks arranged in the Tornio-Haparanda with locals. The walks were gathering scientific and local knowledges and heritages related to the river. They contained sensory excersises, intuitive more-than-human communication and creative measurements to learn and become-with the river.
More Than Person River was supported by EU Horizon project VOICE in 2025. Through artist-led interventions (ATSIs), VOICE encourages citizen engagement to tackle local and regional environmental challenges effectively. More than Person River partner is the Museum of Torne Valley, in collaboration with museum’s cultural heritage coordinator Julia Autio.
More than Person River project was inspired by Mari Keski-Korsu’s doctoral research located in Abisko village by the Torne Lake ( field research in 2022-2024) which is the starting point of Torne river, and With the River Collective’s two-week field research in Tornio-Haparanda in autumn 2023. Please see Mari’s reflexive positionality statement in her doctoral thesis.
