Arttu Nieminen: Lift Up Your Voices

Environmental issues and the conflicting relationship humans have with nature are recurring themes in the worlds created by Nieminen. The works reflect on the level of humanity’s consciousness and the choice we face each moment, as we reach for higher consciousness as a species. Nieminen views nature, as well as man-made colossi, as its own conscious being or as a mystical interface between the visible and the invisible. The spiritual detachment of our time compels him, through art, to open the gates to what we might experience as a collective ritual and a return to our roots, grounding us in nature and its holiness.

Lift Up Your Voices (2023/11 min) is a surreal requiem, gliding through the ages, ideologies and worlds, reaching towards a better tomorrow. In the guise of artificial intelligence, the collective consciousness speaks to mankind, lying moribund. The hypnotic and powerful form of the work forces us to confront the deadly consequences of our human desires. The work is the second part in a trilogy, which started with Awareness (2019). Nieminen collaborated on the trilogy with American sound artist, playwright and media critic Gregory Whitehead. Whitehead’s audio and text-based works, which explore the tension between a constant pulse and sudden interruptions, as well as the entropy and decay of language, have inspired Nieminen, and through collaboration, the series has formed a cornucopia of audio-visual spells. Nieminen is currently working on the final part of the trilogy, Beyond, which is due to be completed this year.

The production has been funded by AVEK, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Nordic Culture Point. The exhibition is supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency.

Arttu Nieminen (b. 1981) is a multidisciplinary media artist and director living in Rovaniemi. His works have been seen in museums, galleries, film festivals, as facade projections and various installations, and they are included in the collections of the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. Nieminen’s multimedia works often combine music, performance and poetry in various live collaborations, the material of which he also uses in his video works.