Calling for the Others

Calling for the Others is a participatory and interdisciplinary project that seeks ways to establish a communication with kinds of others. It’s inspired by the traditional cattle calling, joik, jodling and throat singing. The others who are called, could of course be cattle but the idea is to call any members of flora & fauna, other entities and everything in between (i.e technology). The aim is to seek balanced connections on the ecosystem we live within and activate the collective consciousness trough synchronized, together planned actions that can be sound, movement or meditation based. Calling for the Others emphasises the understanding of the human species: we are humans and that is our perspective – but trough empathy, it is possible to understand and identify with the others; to seek contemporary animism.

The project consists of workshop sessions that are open for everybody – no previous experience of sound or meditation practices is required. In these sessions experiencing environment and attentive listening creates the base to work with, the participants on different ways of calling and encouraging them to develop their own calling methods. The sessions consists of different kinds of exercises from telephatic inter-species communication to swarm sounding. In Malmö, the workshop sessions have a part for learning kulning – traditional Scandic cattle calling. This part of the workshop is lead by a singer and kulning expert Helle Thun. When listening to the surroundings, the participants can eg. focus on certain sounds and make their own interpretations of the sounds, this way calling the sound source and its’ true name with its’ own vibration.

Some of the sounds based on calls are recorded, edited and left on the site to be heard from speakers as a call & hackings of the sound-scape of the area Agrikultura Tiennal area in July-August 2017.

Mari Keski-Korsu & Grit Ruhland
Kulning guide: Helle Thun
Sound documentation: Konrad Behr
Photography: Antti Ahonen
Finland / Germany