[Beekeeper Hannes Norr demonstrates a top bar hive in Hjulsta.]

Top-bar hives are an alternative to regular beehives. They are fun and easy to build and use, and potentially better for the bees. They are not so common in Sweden, but they are gaining in popularity and it will be interesting to see how they will compare to regular hives.

It’s possible to build a top-bar bee hive in a day or two. The photos below are from a do-it-together top-bar hive workshop facilitated by Aron Adobati at Solåkrabyn in Järna in Sweden. With great planning, instructions and pre-made jigs the participants built nine hives in one day. The hives even include extras like sloped roofs, inspection windows, and removable bottom trays.

[Top-bar Hive Workshop at Solåkrabyn 2015.]

In the spring the hives will be used by the cultivation cooperative Under tallarna in Järna and first-time beekeepers in the area.

[Our Friends the Pollinators, at Eggeby gård 2015.]

The photos above show top-bar hives for honeybees built by summer job youths. The hives were built using wood recycled from an installation built by artist Celine Condorelli at Tensta konsthall. These hives show that with some basic tools even inexperienced builders can build a functional top-bar hive at a very low cost. These hives didn’t have any inspection windows. While inspection windows are fun and potentially useful for the beekeeper it’s likely better for the bees to not have one, since cold can seep in through it in the winter.

The top-bar hives at Solåkra were built using drawings by Philip Chandler, “The Barefoot Beekeeper” and the hives at Eggeby gård and Hjulsta were built following instructions by the Swedish beekeeper Patrick Sellman.

The Palate, The Palette and The Planet. Fanny Singer, Tate Etc #35 (2015).

This summer I have introduced the water fern to Under tallarna (Under the pines), a progressive culture and cultivation community in Järna outside of Stockholm.

[Azolla Cultivation at Under tallarna 2015.]

Azolla grows year around in tropical and temperate regions. It’s one of the world’s fastest growing plants and it can be very invasive, in many places it’s considered a weed. In Sweden it can’t survive the winters when the water freezes [Update: It turns out that Azolla actually can survive quite harsh winters with prolonged freezing of the pond water], which is good because it prevents it from spreading uncontrollably. However, in the summer it can grow really well. At Under tallarna we planted a couple of handfulls in July and it covered the whole pond in the photos above, as well as two smaller ponds, in about a month. From then on it has kept growing. In September Under tallarna harvested most of it to try it out as mulch and compost. It’s difficult to know how much nitrogen Azolla fixates from the air, since it also can take up nitrogen from the water, but it should provide both a positive nitrogen and carbon input to the site.

The ducks at Under tallarna eat Azolla, but they also have access to other food and we have not made any effort to measure how much Azolla they eat. We also haven’t tried to determine if the Azolla influences their health or egg production. It might have a positive effect, since it has shown to increase cow’s milk production. On the other hand there are some health concerns with Azolla that I have written about in a previous post. My impression is that the ducks are slightly bothered about the Azolla when it covers the whole surface of their pond, since it makes it more difficult for them to swim and dive, but that they enjoy having it around otherwise.

[This is a Q&A with artist and researcher Erik Sjödin about the study circle Humans and Bees, the exhibition The Political Beekeeper’s Library, the pedagogical project Our Friends The Pollinators, and the never realised multispecies community project The Beekeeping Society. It’s an expanded English translation of a text originally published in the magazine Fält by Art Lab Gnesta 2015.]

[The Political Beekeepers Library at Under tallarna 2015.]

Tell us about the background of The Political Beekeeper’s Library?

The Political Beekeeper’s Library is the result of a nearly five year long process that includes several more or less completed projects that revolve around relationships between humans and bees.

I started to take interest in beekeeping when colony collapse disorder gained media attention in the late 2000s, although my grandfather was a beekeeper and I guess I have always been positive to beekeeping because of that. I was amazed at what large scale and how intensively beekeeping is conducted in many parts of the world. For example in California where at times huge loads of beehives have been shipped in with jet planes from Australia to pollinate almond groves.

In 2010 I received an invitation to do a project together with DKTUS, a platform for contemporary art and artistic research, located in the Old Town in Stockholm on the site that used to be the kitchen garden for the Royal Palace. In response to this I started to sketch on a project called The Beekeeping Society. The idea was to spend a summer building hives for honeybees, creating a garden with flowering fruit trees, vegetables and herbs, a social environment with benches and tables, and a café that would serve locally produced and organic food and drinks. In this environment, we would also have a programme with talks, film screenings, and workshops.

The idea was that The Beekeeping Society would act as focal point for beekeepers, scientist, architects, designers and artists etc. And that when people from different disciplines would meet and activate the place together they would perhaps come up with things that they wouldn’t come up with on their own.

In addition to discussing beekeeping and the wider context that beekeeping is part of today The Beekeeping Society was meant to illustrate how cultural activities may include nonhumans such as animals and plants. To explain this I related to the concepts relational aesthetics and philosophical posthumanism.

Relational aesthetics emerged in the late 90s as a term for art projects that revolve around social activities and in various ways include people as actors and co-creators. Nicolas Bourriaud, the curator who coined the term, defined it as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”

Very briefly put philosophical posthumanism emphasises the roles of nonhumans such as animals, plants and other beings, but also things and concepts. In doing so posthumanist theory challenges dichotomies and hierarchies that tend to be present in the generally human centered contemporary thought. For example posthumanism challenges rigid distinctions between nature and culture, human and animal, man and woman, and man and machine.

When relational aesthetics was topical in contemporary art, there was a lot of debate about which cultural and social groups were included in this type of projects and on what premises. For example, art historian and critic Claire Bishop wrote: “If relational art produces human relations, then the next logical question to ask is what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and why?”. From a posthumanist perspective it’s worth nothing that neither Bourriaud or Bishop mentioned relationships between others than humans and things. Animals, plants and other organisms did not occur in their writings at all. [2]

The idea for The Beekeeping Society was well received and we received some financial support to write a project proposal and got The Swedish Beekeepers Association and Stockholm Resilience Center, as well as several beekeepers, entrepreneurs, architect, designers and artist to backup the project and support a grant application. Unfortunately in the end we didn’t receive funding to carry out the actual project and thus the project was never realised. Instead, I moved to Bergen in Norway to purse an MFA. Partly because it was a possibility for me to continue to work on my own projects with a study grant, but also out of curiosity on being a student at an art school and in a different cultural and geographical environment.

When I moved to Bergen, in autumn 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement started in New York. I followed the developments with great interest, although I did it remotely, and for me it meant a political awakening.

In Bergen I continued to immerse myself in the humanities, such as philosophy, sociology and anthropology – a direction that I hade taken since I started to pursue my own projects after I stopped working full-time as an employed engineer and researcher. The humanities were also dominant among teachers and guest lecturers at the art school.

[The Political Beekeepers Library at Art Lab Gnesta 2015.]

Eventually I began to sketch on a new project about beekeeping in which these perspectives would be more present. In the new project idea I related to Thomas D. Seeley’s book Honey Bee Democracy which was published in 2010. In the book Seeley describes how honeybees take common decisions when they swarm and choose a new location to settle at. Seeley also mentions that in the research team he leads at Cornell University he uses a decision model built on the same principles as the honeybees.

Inspired by this my idea was to study how beekeeping associations are organized in different parts of
world. Beekeeping associations are often organizations that have been around for many years and have developed effective system for sharing beekeeping equipment and exchanging knowledge between members. I thought this would be interesting to study, and that it might be possible to find parallels or differences between how beekeeping associations and bee societies are organised.

My idea was to build a project around beekeeping societies in Iceland, England and Spain. Three sites in Europe that are culturally and geographically interesting, with both great similarities and differences. England and Spain were also natural choices because I saw opportunities to cooperate with the art organisations Campo Adentro and Grizedale Arts that I had been in contact with before.

In many ways I saw the end result of this project in front of me as an anthropological study, largely built on visual documentation using photography, but also audio and video. To give something back to the beekeeping associations I intended to study I figured that I could introduce them to various books and texts that I have found through my research on beekeeping.

However, after a year in Bergen, I ended up in economic and existential predicaments. Because of this the new project ended up as nothing more than a project description. However, when a project has got a certain substance I find it difficult to just let it go and eventually the idea of ​​The Political Beekeeper’s Library as an independent project formed.

[Our Friends The Pollinators at Eggeby gård 2015.]

Other parts of the original idea of ​​the project The Beekeeping Society have subsequently been implemented in the pedagogical project Our Friends The Pollinators, together with Eggeby gård and Tensta konsthall, as well as with with Hästa gård and Färgfabriken. This past summer (2015) I have for example built beehives, nest sites for solitary bees and nests for bumblebees together with youths at Eggeby gård.

With support from Konstfrämjandet I have conducted the study circle at Under tallarna in Järna. In the study circle, Humans and Bees, we have had a conversation that has departed from books in The Political Beekeeper’s Library as well as academic texts that in various ways discuss relationships between humans and bees. I have also worked with documenting the context in which the study circle has taken place at Under tallarna – in line with the project I sketched on in Bergen.

Because The Political Beekeeper’s Library is presented as an exhibition at Art Lab Gnesta I have been able to acquire more books for the library, which now includes around thirty titles. I have also had the opportunity to spend more time on reading, cataloging, and presenting the books. In other words much has fallen into place this summer.

What questions were raised in the study circle?

In the Humans and Bees study circle we discussed how beekeeping is conducted in the world today and for what purposes. We have for example discussed large-scale beekeeping in the US, where bees are used to maximise economic profit from honey production and for pollination of large monocultures, and beekeeping in a village in England where bees are managed for their own sake and not primarily with the aim of making economic profit. We have also discussed how bees are used for military purposes, and how ideas about race, class, nationality and gender affect how bees are described in various contexts.

In the study circle we have also looked at how bees live and how they can be said to be politically organized. Honeybees are categorized as eusocial animals, which means that they are animals that live in societies where only one or a few individuals handle reproduction, and that there is a division of labor in the society.

When bees swarm and have to take a joint decision on where to settle and form a new society, they use something called “quorum sensing”. Briefly, this means that when a enough individuals, in this case scouting bees, believe that a nest site is good enough according to certain predetermined criteria, such the size of the nest site and the entrance hole, the whole swarm moves there. There is not just one individual, for example the queen, who decides where the swarm will move. But it is not a decision which all bees are involved in or agree on either.

[Humans and Bees, study circle at Under tallarna 2015.]

In the first study circle meeting I presented books in The Political Beekeeper’s Library. These span from History of Animals by Aristotle, from the fourth century BC, to Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley from 2010, through, among others, The Feminine Monarchy by Charles Butler from 1609. In the books in the library you can see a clear evolution of how the bee society has been described as having been ruled by a powerful male ruler, to a monarchy with a queen, to something that can be likened to a democracy without a clear leader.

Presenting The Political Beekeeper’s Library in the study circle at Under tallarna has been a great preparation for the exhibition at Art Lab Gnesta. There is quite a lot that is obviously nutty in the literature on bees, that we have talked about in study circle. For example the probably first literary reference to beehives are found in Hesiodos’ Theogonia from the eight century B.C. Archaeologist Eva Crane describes Hesiodos as thoroughly misogynist and mentions that he compared women to drones. Hints of xenophobia and ideas of race can also be found among the books. On the other hand, others have actively resisted against drawing such parallels. For example the Austrian Karl von Frisch who was forced away from the University of Munich because he refused to let Nazi ideology influence his research. Karl von Frisch later received the Nobel Prize for his descriptions of bees individual and social behaviours.

In the study circle we considered how attitudes and ideas change over time, and what perspectives could be found elsewhere, such as in Asian literature, or in oral traditions. We have also discussed many philosophical concepts that we were introduced to in the texts we read; for example Judith Butler’s concept of ​​shared vulnerability and Marcel Mauss’s ideas about gift exchange. In both cases, we considered how these concepts could be extended to include relationship between humans and nonhumans. There is also a lot that we have been introduced to in the texts we read that we haven’t had time to go deeper into, for example Jane Bennet’s “vibrant matter” concept.

How has the discussion been influenced by the location?

The original idea with ​​The Beekeeping Society was to create a space for conversations about relationship between humans and nonhumans, and for encounters between humans and nonhumans. Under tallarna is an existing site that is already better for this than the place I envisioned to build up for The Beekeeping Society.

[Beehive at Under Tallarna 2015.]

The setting is important for a productive conversation. However really bad ideas can slip down uncritically if they are served in a friendly and cosy environment, but with that said, I feel that it has contributed positively to the discussion that we were able to sit outside under a tree when the sun shined, or in a warm greenhouse when it was raining, and that we have had bees, ducks, chickens, dogs, children, and adults moving around us.

Under tallarna is permeated with intuitive, practical knowledge and doing. Academic discussions have a place there as well, but it feels like words are of less importance. It’s a lot better to be able to demonstrate and study things in practice and not just in theory. It would had been a completely different situation if the study circle had occurred in the city in a place where the participants only could try to imagine a place like Under tallarna.

[1] In 2010 there was still a lot of speculation about what causes colony collapse disorder. Today it’s generally acknowledged that colony collapse disorder is a combination of several environmental factors that stresses bees, and that the most negative factor is a type of pesticides called neonicotinoids. In 2013 the European Union restricted restricted the use of these pesticides in Europe but they are still used in the US and elsewhere. Colony Collapse Disorder is not phenomena in Sweden in the same way as in the US. However there are other problem with beekeeping in Sweden, for example that there are not as many beekeepers as there used to be, and that there’s a decline of flowering plants that the bees can feed on.

[2] Bourriad returned to the relational aesthetics concept as a curator of the Taipei Biennial 2014 through which he sought to “expand on his theory of relational aesthetics, examining how contemporary art expresses this new contract among human beings, animals, plants, machines, products and objects.”

This summer I have introduced the water fern to Luis Berros Negron who is now growing it in his house / installation / performance “Earthscore Specularium” at Färgfabriken in Stockholm which includes an aquaponic system with ducks, hens, fishes and plants.

[Azolla and Ducks in the Earthscore Specularium at Färgfabriken 2015.]

The ducks at Färgfabriken immediately started to eat the Azolla when we put some in their pond. It seems like the Azolla is fun and tasty for the ducks and Luis will also be evaluating it as fodder for tilapia and hens. The space they live in at Färgfabriken is quite small, but they do have the possibility to exit the cage and roam around in a larger green house and backyard area, and they will only stay there for two-three months. In any case they have it much better than factory farmed poultry.

[The Political Beekeeper’s Library at Art Lab Gnesta 2015. Foto: Erik Sjödin]

Berätta om bakgrunden till Den politiska biodlarens bibliotek?

Den politiska biodlarens bibliotek är ett resultat av en snart fem år lång process som inkluderar flera mer eller mindre genomförda projekt som alla kretsar kring relationer mellan människor och bin.

Jag började intressera mig för biodling i och med att fenomenet “Colony Collapse Disorder” uppmärksammades i media i slutet av 2000-talet. I samband med det blev jag förbluffad över hur intensivt och storskaligt biodling bedrivs på många håll i världen. Till exempel i Kalifornien där det hänt att det fraktats in stora lass med bisamhällen med jetplan från Australien för att pollinera mandelodlingar.

Idén med “Biodlarsamhället” var att under en sommar bygga bikupor för honungsbin, anlägga en liten trädgård med blommande fruktträd, grönsaker och örter, konstruera en social miljö med bänkar och bord samt ordna med en enklare servering av lokalproducerad och ekologisk mat och dryck. I denna miljö skulle vi sedan ha en programverksamhet med samtal, filmvisningar och workshops.

Biodlarsamhället var även tänkt att illustrera hur ett kulturprojekt aktivt kan inkludera ickemänniskor, det vill säga djur och växter med flera. För att förklara så förhöll jag mig till begreppet “relationell estetik”. Relationell estetik växte fram i slutet av 90-talet som ett samlingsnamn för konstprojekt som kretsar kring sociala aktiviteter, och på olika vis inkluderar människor som aktörer och medskapare. När relationell estetik var som mest aktuellt som ett begrepp i samtidskonsten var det en hel del debatt om vilka kulturella och sociala grupper som inkluderades i denna typ av projekt och på vilka premisser. Men det var, vad jag har kunnat se, överhuvudtaget ingen debatt om och hur ickemänniskor var inkluderade.

Efter att projektmedelsansökan för Biodlarsamhället fått avslag flyttade jag till Bergen i Norge för att studera på konstskola. Dels för att det var en möjlighet att med studiestöd arbeta vidare med egna idéer och projekt, men även av nyfikenhet på att vistas som student på en konstskola och i en annorlunda kulturell och geografisk miljö.

Samtidigt som jag flyttade till Bergen drog Occupy Wall Street igång i New York. Jag följde denna utveckling med stort intresse och engagemang, även om jag gjorde det på distans, och för mig innebar det ett politiskt uppvaknande.

Från att tidigare till övervägande del arbetat med naturvetenskaplig och teknisk forskning och utveckling, fortsatte jag i Bergen att fördjupa mig i humaniora som filosofi, sociologi och antropologi – en riktning som jag rört mig i sedan jag började driva egna projekt efter att jag slutat arbeta som anställd ingenjör och forskare – men också som ett resultat av mitt nya politiska engagemang och att de perspektiven dominerade bland lärare och gästlärare på konstskolan.

I Bergen började jag därför skissa på ett nytt projekt kring biodling där dessa perspektiv skulle vara mer närvarande. I den nya projektidén utgick jag mycket från Thomas D. Seeleys bok “Honey Bee Democracy” som publicerades 2010. I boken beskriver Seeley hur honungsbin tar gemensamma beslut när de svärmar och ska välja en ny boplats. Seeley nämner även att de tillämpar en beslutsmodell bygd på samma principer som honungsbina i den forskargrupp han själv leder.

Inspirerad av detta var min idé att studera hur biodlingsföreningar är organiserade på olika håll i världen. Biodlarföreningar är ofta föreningar som har funnits i många år och utvecklat välfungerande system för att dela på utrustning för biodling och utbyta kunskap mellan medlemmar. Jag tänkte att detta vore intressant att studera, och att det kanske skulle vara möjligt att hitta paralleller eller olikheter mellan biodlarföreningarnas organisation och hur bisamhällen är organiserade.

Min tanke var att bygga upp ett projekt kring biodlingsföreningar på Island, England och i Spanien. Tre platser i Europa som är kulturellt och geografiskt intressanta, med både stora likheter och skillnader. England och Spanien var också naturliga val för att jag såg möjligheter att samarbeta med konstorganisationer på landsbygden där som jag varit i kontakt med tidigare.

På många sätt såg jag slutresultatet av detta projekt framför mig som en antropologisk studie, till stora delar bygd på visuell dokumentation i foto och video. För att ge något tillbaka till biodlarföreningarna tänkte jag att jag kunde introducera dem till diverse böcker och texter som jag samlat på mig genom min research om biodling.

Efter ett år i Bergen hamnade jag i en privatekonomisk och existensiell kris. I och med detta så stannade det nya projektet vid en projektbeskrivning. Men när ett arbete har fått en viss substans finner jag det svårt att bara lägga allt i malpåse. Därav tog idén om “Den politiska biodlarens bibliotek” som ett fristående projekt form.

Andra delar av den ursprungliga idén med projektet “Biodlarsamhället” har jag efter att jag flyttad tillbaka till Stockholm från Bergen genomfört tillsammans med bland andra Eggeby gård och Tensta konsthall. Nu i sommar har jag bland annat byggt bikupor och boplatser för humlor och andra vilda pollinatörer tillsammans med sommarjobbande ungdomar på Eggeby gård.

Med stöd från Konstfrämjandet har jag under sommaren också genomfört studiecirkeln “Människor och bin” hos Under tallarna i Järna. I studiecirkeln har vi fört ett samtal med utgångspunkt i böcker i “Den politiska biodlarens bibliotek” samt akademiska texter som på olika vis belyser relationer mellan människor och bin. Jag har också arbetat med att i foto och video dokumentera sammanhanget som studiecirkeln har skett i hos Under tallarna – i linje med det jag hade i åtanke med det projekt som jag skissade på i Bergen.

Den politiska biodlarens bibliotek presenteras i utställningsform hos Art Lab Gnesta i september. I och med detta har jag kunnat införskaffa fler böcker till bibliotek, som nu inkluderar över tjugo titlar, och fått möjlighet att arbeta mer med att läsa, katalogisera och presentera böckerna. Det är med andra ord mycket som har fallit på plats denna sommar.

[Människor och bin, studiecirkel hos Under tallarna 2015. Foto: Erik Sjödin]

– Vilka frågeställningar har cirkeln tagit upp?

I studiecirkeln har vi diskuterat hur biodling bedrivs i världen idag och för vilka syften. Till exempel har vi diskuterat den storskaliga biodlingen i USA där bin används för att maximera ekonomisk vinst från honungsproduktion och pollinering av stora monokulturer, samt biodling i ett samhälle i England där bin sköts om för deras egen skull och inte i första hand med syfte att göra ekonomisk vinst. Vi har också diskuterat hur bin används militärt och forskas på för militära syften. I USA satsas det till exempel mer pengar på forskning om honungsbin för militära ändamål än på annan forskning om bin.

I studiecirkeln har vi även tittat närmare på vilket levnadsätt bin har och hur de kan sägas vara politiskt organiserade. Honungsbin kategoriseras som eusociala djur, vilket bland annat innebär att de är djur som lever i samhällen där fortplantningen sköts av bara en eller några få individer samt att det finns en arbetsuppdelning i samhället.

När honungsbin svärmar och måste ta ett gemensamt beslut om vart svärmen ska starta ett nytt bisamhälle använder de något som kallas för “Quorum sensing”. Kortfattat innebär det att när ett tillräckligt stort antal individer, i det här fallet spanarbin, anser att en boplats är en tillräckligt bra enligt vissa givna kriterier, som storleken på boplatsen och ingångshålet, så flyttar hela svärmen dit. Det är alltså inte en enskild individ, t.ex. drottningen i samhället, som beslutar om vart svärmen ska flytta. Men det är heller inte ett beslut där alla inblandade deltar eller är överens.

I den första studiecirkelträffen presenterade jag böcker som ingår i “Den politiska biodlarens bibliotek”. Dessa sträcker sig från Historia animalium av Aristotles, från 300-talet före Kristus, till Honey bee democracy av Thomas D. Seeley från 2010, via bland andra The Feminine Monarchy av Charles Butler från 1609. I böckerna i biblioteket går det att se en tydlig utveckling av hur bisamhället har beskrivits som att ha styrts av en stark manlig härskare, till en monarki med en drottning, till något som kan liknas vid en demokrati utan tydliga ledare.

Att presentera “Den politiska biodlarens bibliotek” i studiecirkeln hos Under tallarna har varit en bra förberedelse inför den presentationen hos Art Lab Gnesta. Biblioteket kan, liksom stora delar av vår historieskrivning i övrigt, med rätta kritiseras för att domineras av ett manlig västerländskt perspektiv. I studiecirkeln funderade vi på vilka perspektiv som kunde ha hittats på andra håll, till exempel i asiatisk litteratur, eller i muntliga traditioner, t.ex. från Afrika.

I studiecirkeln har vi också bollat många filosofiska begrepp som vi introducerats till i de texter vi läst; till exempel Judit Butlers idé om “delad sårbarhet” och Marcel Mauss idéer om “gåvan”. I båda dessa fallen har vi funderat på hur dessa begrepp, som ursprungligen syftar på relationer mellan människor, kan inkludera relationer mellan människor och ickemänniskor. Det är även mycket som vi har introducerats till i de texter vi läst men som vi inte har hunnit gå djupare in på, t.ex. Jane Bennets begrepp “vibrant matter”.

Intervju med Erik Sjödin om den politiska biodlarens bibliotek. Art Lab Gnesta 2017.

Hot Beverages was a one day event in collaboration with artists Ami Kohara and Matti Sumari. Together we turned Cigarrvägen 13 into a tea room and served Shiso, Azolla and Chaga tea. I contributed with Azolla tea, furniture I’d made from material recycled from The Azolla Cooking and Cultivation Project. My living room rag rug and a photograph. Ami Kohara brough shiso plants, tea cups, pots and other utensils. Matti Sumari brought Chaga tea, a Chaga mushroom and a video.

The Chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) is found on birch trees wherever they grow. The fungus is a parasitic species on birch trees and this lethal infection causes black, swelling outgrowths. These tumors have traditionally been used as tea, foremost in Russia. The tea is believed to have healing capacities, first introduced to a wide audience in the West through the Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book Cancer Ward. During the last few years, tea made from the chaga mushroom has also been launched as an expensive food supplement and can now be found in health food stores. Scientific research has shown the tea to have anti-inflammatory and anti-­tumor effects on humans. Through various projects Matti Sumari has been exploring what this wretched tumor can tell us. In the kitchen next to the tea room Matti showed a video from his work with Chaga in Umeå, the “birch city” in northern Sweden.

Azolla (Azolla filiculoides) is a water fern that grows on water surfaces in temperate and tropical regions. It is one of the world’s fastest growing plants and a rich source of nutrients. Azolla is not commonly eaten today, but it has been suggested by Japanese Space Agriculture researchers as a potential food stuff for future Mars settlers. Departing from this research Erik Sjödin has since 2010 explored how Azolla can be cultivated and cooked. Among other things he has concluded that dried Azolla quite successfully can be used for tea. The healthiness of eating or drinking Azolla is not well investigated. However, Azolla is used as a traditional cough medicine in Tanzania and it has been shown that cows that eat Azolla increase their milk production. There are some concerns that Azolla may contain BMAA, a neurotoxin that has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases. However, BMAA can also found in many common sea foods, for example Swedish clams, and is only toxic in large quantities. The furniture in the tea room was made from wood recycled from structures made for Azolla cultivation for previous exhibitions.

Shiso (Perilla frutescens) is an Asian culinary herb which is a common food stuff in Japan. Shiso has been purported to have various beneficial qualities. It is used for a variety of conditions related to the respiratory system including asthma, nasal inflammation, and congestion from allergies and colds. It is also used to treat gastrointestinal conditions such as vomiting and morning sickness. Additionally, Shiso is said to promote a healthy immune system. In Asia Shiso is an ingredient in summer teas which are used to replenish energy and fluid drained by the summer heat. The Shiso tea was brewed by Ami Kohara who also had cultivated Shiso seedlings that the visitors could bring with them home.

[Wood stove. Tomma rum, Ljusne 2015.]

Tomma rum (Empty Spaces) is a Swedish platform for cultural and artistic exchange. Almost every summer they arrange an art residency in a smaller town or village in Sweden. Summer 2015 Tomma rum was in Ljusne, situated next to the river Ljusnans outlet in the Baltic sea.

Ljusne has a long tradition of wood and iron industry, but since the 1970’s the industries have gradually shut down. Because of the loss of jobs many people have left the town. Today the population is slightly less than two thousand, about half of when it peaked in the 1960’s.

During my stay at Tomma rum in Ljusne I made a first prototype for a multifunctional furniture that resembles a small wood stove. The furniture was made using the towns school wood workshop out of wood found at a disused factory in Ljusne.

The factory once produced prefab houses and windows. After the manufacturing moved out, in the 2000’s, the building was used as a carpentry shop by Ljusnestiftelsen who arranged activities for unemployed in Ljusne. It is abandoned now and will eventually be demolished.

The wood stove furniture prototype was exhibited in the exhibition venue for Tomma rum, a former power station that has been remade into an art space by the organisation Konstkraft (Art Power).

[Three Stone Fire at Losæter 2015.]

During the Full Moon Celebration arranged by Flatbread Society in Losæter / Slow Space Bjørvika in Oslo artist and researcher Erik Sjödin built and tended three so called “three-stone fires”. One for cooking soup, one for baking bread, and one for cooking potatoes.

A three-stone fire is one of the most simple arrangements for cooking food over fire. Unfortunately three-stone fires are very inefficient. As little as 10 percent of the heat a three-stone fire produces is transferred to the cooking pot. In this case the three-stone fires worked well for warming soup and baking flatbread but it took a very long time to cook a large pot of potatoes.

It is estimated that three billion people worldwide still cook over open fire, such as three-stone fires, or using rudimentary cookstoves. Inefficient biomass burning stoves used for cooking are major contributors to global warming, pollution, and deforestation. Every year millions of people die prematurely and fall sick from having breathed in smoke while cooking. Inefficient cookstoves are also a source of inequality since it is mainly women who gather fuel and cook, at the expense of studying or pursuing income generating work.

Because of the wind conditions at the site where we had originally planned to have the fires we decided to move everything to a more sheltered location. However, what we didn’t notice was that the ground on the new spot that we settled for was very peat rich soil. Peat, which is traditionally used by Norwegians as fuel for heating and cooking, is flammable and was and temperatures under a camp fire can get as high as 700C. After some time the fire spread under the earth and smoke started to come up through the soil everywhere around the fires. Fortunately, we could counter the earth fire by creating a row of watering cans to extinguish the fires and keep the soil soaked throughout the evening.

[Full Moon Celebration with Flatbread Society at Losæter 2015.]

Another surprise was the discovery that the potatoes we cooked came from Israel. The potatoes were bought in a supermarket known for having one of the better selections of ecological food in Oslo. It was labelled as ecological early potatoes and packaged in brown paper bags with the stores own brand for environmentally sound products. However, as we later discovered, printed on a tiny sticker underneath the bag it said that the potatoes origin was Israel. This came as great surprise since this was a good potato year and close by, in Sweden, early potatoes were already in stores everywhere and almost given away for free. One wonders how potatoes can be imported from Israel to Norway, when there is an abundance of potatoes close by and people are suffering from food insecurity in the region where the potatoes come from. The potatoes tasted good but were large and not comparable to the small early potatoes that Swedish people traditionally enjoy cooked with dill. Because of their large size and the poor performance of the three-stone fire the potatoes cooked slowly, but they were ready to eat by the time the full moon had risen.