Publication on ASAD-project Observation of Change in the book "Artistic Dialogues with the Arctic North"
The book “Artistic Dialogues with the Arctic North: Environmental Change and Identity in Transition” is edited by Antonia Sohns and published by Routledge in December 2025.
This book brings together Arctic scholars to explore how environmental changes in the Arctic are being experienced, understood, and represented. Across thirteen chapters, contributors from diverse regions and disciplines explore these transformations in the warming North through artistic and scholarly responses. By attending to sensory, emotional, and cultural knowledge rather than metrics alone, the volume highlights the lived experiences of ecological disruption and the uneven burdens of climate change.
One chapter presents a collaboration conducted within the Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) network of UArctic. Focusing on the “Observation of Change” (2023–2026) project in Norway’s Junkerdal National Park, the chapter examines how artists and scientists collaborate to address ecological restoration, particularly the spread of non-native spruce that threatens native mountain birch forests. Through art–science collaboration and the framework of New Genre Arctic Art, the project foregrounds political, pedagogical, and ecocultural practices that support biodiversity, decolonize human–nature relations, and communicate environmental change. The chapter highlights how artistic practices contribute to ecological understanding, cultural revitalization, and future educational approaches to sustainability.
The book also presents many other chapters from authors active in the ASAD network. They have been conceptualising the framework of the New Genre Arctic Art and its educational dimension. The chapters include:
• Timo Jokela: Knowing with the Sea Trout: Place-Specific Artwork for Addressing Environmental Conflict
• Mirja Hiltunen and Korinna Korsström-Magga: Nomadic Antlers: New Genre Arctic Art Education and Activism
• Antti Stöckell and Nina Luostarinen: To Heal the Woods of the Earth (and the Mind) through Play and Art
• Timo Jokela: At the River—Stepping in the Flow
This book offers an essential resource for scholars, students, and practitioners seeking new, collaborative ways to engage with environmental change through art and lived experience.
More information
Presentation of the book in the Taylor & Francis Group page.
Research Output.
Observation of Chage project.
