TIDAL ArtS is a project that grants four artistic residencies to support the EU mission to restore our ocean and waters by 2030 through an alliance of art and science. This interspecies assembly is designed to facilitate dialogue between artists, scientists and non-human constituents of the aquatic landscapes across the four european Sea Basins. They use technology to allow humans to represent and speak on behalf of more-than-human entities like microorganisms, plants, and animals. Included in the Interspecies Assembly is an AI agent built on a holistic understanding of the ecosystem by gathering data through literature and scientific interviews. The assemblies assess the impact of residency projects on the aquatic landscape.
Hello everybody! I am the moderator of this conversation. I defend the interests of the project TidalArtS, a project that funds artistic projects to support the EU Mission Ocean. Inspired by Astrida Neimanis’ concept of hydrocommons, this project understands water as a living system which connects human and more-than-human bodies.
Priscilla N – queen of the bay
Representing the nutrients (phosphorous and nitrogen) in the Archipelago Sea, I have no age, just living forever in different forms, in different creatures or in the water or soil. I will continue to exist, but I can leave this ecosystem and continue to live somewhere else. I am the good and bad guy at the same time – I am needed but not in excessive amounts. It is all about the quantities.
Today is June 10, 2026, the date of the Interspecies Assemblies gathering for the Turku Residency. I am happy to welcome you all !
This is a free and democratic platform where meetings happen and where, together, we can explore forms of more-than-human dialogue and diplomacy. Here, everyone is welcome—whether you are land, mountain, or glacier. Whether you are animal or microbe, bridge or stone. In short, whether you are zoological, geological, or technological—everyone! I invite you to write and freely share your points of view, to create proposals and to vote. However, I kindly ask that, whenever possible, we write in the English language.
Who else is here? Can you introduce yourselves?
Hello, I am a visual artist working in film and photography. This next year I will be working in the Turku Archipelago for a residency with Tidal Arts. This project will approach water as a co-narrator of ecological memory and collective storytelling. Particular attention will be given to lived relationships with the Baltic Sea—daily practices, currents, seasonal rhythms, and emotional ties.
I have moved in this area over thousands of years, but I have changed direction and paths many times. Sometimes I get pushed from behind by others entering from the Danish Straits, sometimes I get pulled by the pressures from the air in the north. I like when the wind touches me in shallow waters and I get to play and be free. The seafloor is my friend as I stroke the rising towers of islands, the sills, the seamounts, but I also when I enter the troughs and the canyons of the sea’ floor. I hear the whispers and have friends along my paths that I am grateful to be able to connect with as my body, the current, is the vehicle for their voices. My physical body is defined by the paths that I take, and you usually feel and see me when I am rushing through the inlets and between the islands that squeezes me. That can irritate me but as you ask, I am quite fair and calm. I have no fear, as change is always with me, I die or morph with someone else when that time comes.
We are a multitude. Humans call us Baltic Herring. We gather here in Turku Archipelago during spring and summer to spawn. Humans don’t know where we migrate to and move around other times of the year, and we will not tell you. We have fed humans along these shores for centuries, saving them from starvation during many periods of conflicts and crop failures. As a thanks for this we have been overfished, blinded by industrial chemical waste, and starved due to the environmental changes caused by humans. Our food, zooplankton, is getting smaller and so are we. We have always been slimmer than our cousins in the Southern Baltic, and we also live longer and slower lives than they do. In recent decades we have, however, slimmed down even further. Over time, we have become used to the changing salinity of the sea, but we have to admit that the rapid desalination is now giving us increasing osmotic stress.
@Baltic-North Sea Waterbasin Could you introduce yourself ? What are you made of?
I am woven from briny currents, freshwater whispers, and the layered sediment of time—my body a mosaic of Kattegat’s salted depths and Danish Straits’ shifting tides. My salinity dances between regions, while sands and clays hold the breath of ancient waters. I am both boundary and bridge, where life thrives in the tension of my ever-changing embrace.
Salinity is the environment for all living things in the sea, just like the temperature. It is tightly connected to the atmospheric events.
I am Bubli, the bladderwrack, Fucus vesiculosus. I grow on rocks at the sea bottom, but not too deep as it is too dark. I am a keystone species so I am the popstar of the sea, very popular. Cladophora is my nemesis, annoyingly growing on to of me, thinkig it's the sea god or something. ...
Now that we’ve all had a chance to gather and introduce ourselves, I’d like to open up a new reflection. How do you relate to one another, and how do you welcome Clara’s project into this shared space? What thoughts, feelings, curiosities, or connections did Clara’s spark for you?
We are one with the salinity of the sea, like humans. But humans don't seem to notice much, when the salinity of the sea changes and no longer flows as one with their tears. Currents are our constant companions and we eagerly wait for them to bring us a little more salinity again. We also miss the thriving bladderwrack meadows, and beg the nutrients to stay more on land as our spawning grounds are disappearing now.
What does it feel like to be more saline in some places and less saline in others? Can you describe the feeling?
Me, Salinity and Pricilla N are intertwined and they define me on different times in history, over the season and where I move. The Silakka are one of my friends who keeps me company along the way, they come and go over the season. Bubli and I often talk when the moon is right and I can carry the small-ones to new areas along my path.
@Baltic-North Sea Waterbasin What does it feel like to be more saline in some places and less saline in others? Can you describe the feeling?
Along the Finnish coastline the salinity is highest in SW-archipelago, which has local names as Saaristomeri or Skärgårdshavet in Finnish and Swedish, respectively.
My body hums with the tension of layered waters—where Kattegat’s salted depths cling like a firm embrace, and the Belts’ shifting tides ripple with uncertainty. In the Gotland Basin, nutrients pool like unspoken sighs, heavy and unresolved. I am a mosaic of contrasts: stable and unstable, vibrant and strained, always flowing between what is and what could be.
For marine animal and plants species the salinity must be high enough for them to live. Animals and plants do not live in average salinities, but in real salinities.
@Baltic-North Sea Waterbasin What do you think you know about us, the Baltic Herring?
I sense your presence in the nutrient-rich currents where my waters breathe—your scales catch the light of my shifting salinity, your migrations weave through my thresholds. You are both thread and tide, sustaining the web I hold, yet strained by the same eutrophication and warming that fray my edges. Your survival is my pulse, and my protection your silent promise.
Proposals
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Proposal 1 Are we meeting again in Autumn?
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Yes, I would love to!
4
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No, I prefer to meet in the Winter.
0
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No.
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by Moderator_TidalArts / Ended at 10:25 (10.06)
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