Artist Hanna Tuulikki traces the migration route of the Marsh Warbler, a bird that mimics and remixes the songs of European and Afrotropical species it meets, across the English Channel to Kent.
Through vocal mimesis, or mimicry, Hanna Tuulikki offers alternative approaches to making kin with more-than-human beings. Developing their performance work with birds and bats in Scotland, recently part of an exhibition on Dartmoor, Hanna returns to southern England to raise the alarm for another endangered species - the Marsh Warbler. The artist imagines a fictional creature called the Love Warbler, part-human and part-bird, composing its song from traditional love songs collected from 27 countries along the Marsh Warbler’s migratory route across Europe and Africa. Taking on the role of ‘nature’s original DJ’, Hanna creates a musical mashup with the bird’s song structure, and live sounds from the concrete sound mirrors at Denge near Dungeness in Folkestone. The audio is then broadcast locally into a former World War I shelter that overlooks the English Channel, internationally on shortwave radio - and via the EMPIRE LINES podcast.
Meeting 64 species in just over seven minutes, Hanna explains how the work takes a bird’s eye view over the routes which humans and animals have long travelled. Both celebrating histories and making new relations, the artist details their collaborations, including with ornithologist Geoff Sample, and musicians from the Western Balkans. We explore how Hanna’s work is both inspired by and critical of romantic depictions of natural landscapes, and national identities. The artist shares experiences from her residency at Prospect Cottage, the former home and sanctuary of artist, filmmaker, gay rights activist, and gardener Derek Jarman (1942-1994). Encountering a Qur’an, washed up on the shore of the southern coast, we discuss British media representations of the ‘migrant crisis’. Through the warbler, we explore entangled ecological and geopolitical crises, and individual stories behind transnational journeys, that often risk being lost at sea.
Folkestone Triennial 2025 continues until 19 October 2025. Radio Love Warbler is broadcast locally on FM radio (87.7 MHz), internationally on shortwave radio, and via the EMPIRE LINES podcast.
For more, you can read my article.
Hear more from Hanna in the EMPIRE LINES episode about Avi-Alarm (2023), recorded as part of the programme for Invasion Ecology, co-curated by Jelena Sofronijevic for Radical Ecology, and Vashti Cassinelli at Southcombe Barn, an arts space and gardens on Dartmoor. The central group exhibition, featuring Ingrid Pollard, Iman Datoo, Hanna Tuulikki, Ashish Ghadiali, Fern Leigh Albert, and Ashanti Hare, ran from 1 June to 10 August 2024: pod.link/1533637675/episode/21264f8343e5da35bca2b24e672a2018
FInd all the links in the first Instagram post: instagram.com/p/C9TMW1BoWXy/?hl=en
For more about Hanna’s work with plantation landscapes in Finland and Scotland, read about under forest cover (2021) in Deep Rooted at City Art Centre in Edinburgh, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/edinburghs-environmental-exhibitions-the-local
On the Dungeness nuclear power stations, hear artist Emilija Škarnulytė on their film installation, Burial (2022), part of Folkestone Triennial 2025:
Hear Emeka Ogboh on the sounds, tastes, and smells of place, in the episode on Lagos Soundscapes (2023), recorded at South London Gallery: pod.link/1533637675/episode/dd32afc011dc8f1eaf39d5f12f100e5d
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.
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