Visual arts | Nastja Säde Rönkkö imagined 26 different end of the world – this is how they can be

Something something catastrophic has happened, but what?

Artist Nastja Säde Rönkön title of the work Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child gives a hint: the apocalypse has happened, the end of the world, and now you have to be able to survive its consequences. The extent of the end of the world is evident from the 26 video works that Rönkö’s exhibition at the Helsinki Art Museum in Hami consists of.

However, these 26 video works do not tell a continuous or completely coherent story, but rather offer glimpses of different situations.

“There are many apocalypses,” says Nastja Säde Rönkkö, sitting in the exhibition space among video screens and sculptures depicting human body parts.

The light of the videos playing on the screens is accompanied by the ambient sound playing in the exhibition space, which makes out the static crackle of the radio and distant sounds, like tanks or clocks humming empty.

“If someone close to you dies, it’s the end of the world. If a child is born, then the old world ends and a new one begins. Or it could be climate anxiety or the end of humanity, or the completely fictional zombie apocalypse of popular culture.”

Apart no matter what kind of apocalypse it is, this survival guide considers what happens after that—or at least what should happen to avoid a dystopia.

“How to build a society or your own life, or a utopia? What is relevant and what is not, and what would you like to bring with you?” A lot of money.

“I’m not interested in declaring anything, because everything is really complicated and complicated. As an artist, it’s more interesting to ask questions or think about things.”

Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child or A survival guide for the apocalypse child was originally made as a project financed by the Lönnström Art Museum in Rauma and was exhibited in 2022 in Rauma’s Kaivopuisto industrial area.

Funding of 100,000 euros made it possible to realize the work on such a large scale and with a large working group, which included several actors in addition to Rönkö, a film director Aake Kivalocomposer Timo Kaukolampi and other live image professionals.

The videos were largely filmed in Spain, whose hot dryness has an apocalyptic atmosphere and the color scheme that Rönkö envisioned for the videos.

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“After all, this was a massive, crazy project.”

to Helsinki the work will be even more extensive than in Rauma. Timo Kaukolampi has implemented a unified spatial tone for the exhibition space located in Hami’s Tennis Palace, and Rönkkö has prepared more sculptures for the exhibition space. There were significantly fewer of them in Rauma.

In addition, the poems read in Rönkö’s video works have been compiled in text form as a book, which resembles a travel guide book, as part of the Helsinki exhibition. In it, the English texts written by Rönkö proceed alphabetically and compile the entire survival guide in a compact format. The end of the world starts with the first Hebrew letter aleph and ends with zombies.

In exhibition space the alphabetization of the videos is more subtle than the book, and it is not necessary to watch the individual videos in any particular order. Individual videos lasting a few minutes add up to a total work of more than two hours.

“After all, this was a massive, crazy project with 26 entities. And everyone had to think about how the beginning, middle and end work,” says Rönkkö.

“If this were a two-hour work, it would have one beginning and one end. Now they all have to work independently and together. I did wonder a few times, what the hell I’ve set out to do!”

Nastja Säde Rönkkö: Survival guide for the apocalypse child May 17–September 8. In Ham (Eteläinen Rautatiekatu 8, Helsinki).

Nastja Säde Rönkö’s Survival Guide for the End of the World Child exhibition is on display at the Helsinki Art Museum in Hami Tennispalatsi. Picture: Rio Gandara / HS