Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child, 2022
installation with 26 HD videos, sculptures, paintings and a book
S is for snakes and stars and spells. Serpents and skinning situations, soft soil and sex and shelter and silence. Softness of all things, or slings. S is for sleep and snow, stones, souls, seeds and storms.
S for things of beauty, snow melting on your skin, little spells for everyday and some stars on night skies and nightsides. Stones so warm from southern suns, softness of sleep on your face and stone souls and sinking islands and self-seasons.
When I walk on this surface of stones and lava sand and little rocks and little creatures not from my planet, I think of survival: how to live a good life, not just to survive. To survive is to eat and sleep and breathe, to be painless, to be at ease, belly full. When I walk on this surface or that, my black boots touch the lava sand and I remember my naked toes that touched my home sand on my own surface.
I remember, and a lonely tear amongst my face tattoos.
Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child is a topical and poetic survival guide for the future. It consists of 26 HD-videos, sculptures, text and workshops.
The project imagines the future of our planet amid impending crises and climate anxiety, proposing how we might go about surviving it. Based on 26 texts, the guide reflects and dreams up ways to live the physical, psychological and emotional changes we are going through.
Each video starts with a set of words beginning with a particular letter of the alphabet. The texts vary from concrete survival information, such as advice on nutrition or medicine, to how to survive a heartbreak or a zombie apocalypse.
Commissioned and produced by: Lönnström Art Museum and HAM Helsinki
Co-Produced by: The Finnish Cultural Institute in Madrid
Photo: HAM / Maija Toivanen
Performers: Sall Lam Toro, Elsi Sloan, Camila Oliveira, Leandro González, Elisa Cano, Elida Dorta, Javier García Arozena, Paloma Hurtado, Daniel Morales, Teresa Lorenzo, Neea Kuusenmäki, Anni Ahlfors, Malla Tuominen, Daura Hernández García, Raúl Luis Domínguez, Rosaliina Paavilainen, Sarah Gerats, Sybren Renema, Alexa Salmela, Nastja Säde Rönkkö
Text: Nastja Säde Rönkkö
Cinematography: Aake Kivalo
Additional cinematography: Nastja Säde Rönkkö, Iiris kärkkäinen
Edit: Heli Kota
Color: Hannu Käki
Music: Timo Kaukolampi
Costume Design and Styling: Juha Vehmaanperä
Production and camera assistant: Rosaliina Paavilainen
Assistants: Edna Huotari, AJ Fusco
Supported by: The Finnish Cultural Foundation