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2017
We are all Animals
Community Art Project
1st
and 2nd
forms of Pyhä Primary School
Mietoinen, Finland 2016–2018
We are all Animals is
project about empathy and empathizing. We are
all Animals is also a continuation of my
former work Remembrance of Landscapes Past.
Here too the objective is for the subjects to
observe and become conscious of their own
environment. I was working with 7-8 year-old
children, but instead of noticing changes in the
landscape we examined the environment through the
animals the children identified with. I had
around 25 meetings with the children during
autumn 2016 and autumn 2018. As in my earlier
project, the children all come from the built-up
countryside.
We set out by studying and empathising with
different animals. We considered this in relation
to the children’s own environment and the
places they considered to be important. We
compared animal territories to the children’s
own home grounds. I asked them to think which
animal they would like to be. Then we began
building scale models of their own gardens and so
on. Half way through the project the children
chose which animal they wish to be. Partly with
the children’s help, I made animal costumes
and masks. I also made costumes for the teacher
and myself. I think costumes as extended or
conversational sculpture.
During the spring, we told stories together and
deepened our ideas about what their chosen
animals would make of their habitat. The project
culminated in a jointly planned two day forest
excursion with games, storytelling, self-produced
sounds and songs. The forest was taken over by a
flying squirrel, fox, buzzard, wolf, hare, bat,
beaver, squirrel, bear, dragonfly, golden eagle,
tiger, lynx, reindeer and toad.
The project involved twelve children from the 1st
and 2nd forms of the small rural
primary school of Pyhe. In the end of the project
they were at 3rd and 4th
forms. The project was carried out as part of the
new curriculum and multidisciplinary learning. I
feel that in addition this, the project also
fulfilled many of the key objectives of
environmental education.
As the We are all Animals project was
time-specific, recording it for future
presentation and authentication was of crucial
importance. The performativity of the excursion
and working with children places its own demands
on photographic recording. The work was
photographed by photographer Yehia Eweis.
The project was a continuation of other artworks
like True Romance 2006, Structures
Going by 2004 and of the Remembrance of
Landscapes Past one which I carried out as
Community Artist at the Saari Residence in
2008-2010. All of them are about looking your
life as part of your surroundings.
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