In the spring of 2022, the Squirrel’s Nest was reactivated by UWAS, the University-Wide Art Studies program. We created a special course to bring together masters and bachelor students across Aalto and offer an opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration and blended learning through the essentials of relational art and podcast production.
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s02_e01 how to befriend a finn
Ystävä or kaveri? It may not sound familiar, but those two words have the same meaning —a friend. As two foreigners (Diana, from Slovakia, and Vilis, from Latvia) who met two months ago at Aalto Uni, we are talking about the basic idea behind the friendship focusing on the connections we made during our stay […]
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s02_e02 sounds from soil
Sounds from Soil is a project about music and earth. In this episode, we meet the composer and percussionist Adriano Adewale and reflect on the Afro-Brazilian musical tradition as identity and how it relates to the element of earth and groundedness. We also visit the dance workshop held by dancer and choreographer Carolina Paulino in […]
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s02_e04 notes on love
What is love? Three guests from the Aalto community with diverse backgrounds carefully narrate their own individual experiences and feelings about love in the form of fragmented dialogue and stream of consciousness. The podcast provides different values of love, on how to redefine our cultural norms concerning it, and how to become more open to […]
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s02_e03 finding diaries
The not-so-lost art of the modern journal In this episode we re-explore the diary. Diaries have represented traditionally as a means for people to express their innermost feelings, thoughts, and desires through personal reflection on the pages of a book. While even today, some people still pursue journaling either as a habit born in their […]
The course put at the centre of the learning process the question of the sound sculpture: Why do we do the things we do? It invited students to work as curators and journalists through this question, and propose themes and sound explorations in the context of Aalto and surrounding communities as we were slowly emerging out of a two-year pandemic. Students did collaborative research projects to find and tell stories behind topics of their choice and the people connected to them. They brought their guests to the Conversation Room, facilitated dialogues around them, discussed the media possibilities, technical aspects, and history of the podcast media, and engaged the production of episodes for the series.
Four podcast episodes were developed as the result of these collaborations across disciplines. Their point of departure are the dialogues students held in the sound sculpture, excerpts of which will continue to be heard in campus when walking by it. However, by developing podcasts to circulate online, the course allowed the conversations to reach a wider audience in the public space of the web.
As a whole, the project hopes to make visible challenging, and unique stories and perspectives on contemporary life that students deem worth discussing and that might otherwise pass unnoticed.
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Squirrel Nest’s Second Season, in 2022, is possible thanks to UWAS, the University-Wide Art Studies, and Aalto Studios technical support.
All our gratitude goes to Ariel Bustamante for welcoming this project into the Conversation Room and all the support he provided us along the way.
Original concept and curatorial project : María Villa
Audio design, edition, and technical support : Camilo Sánchez, Lassi Savola (A-Pod)
Research, sound design, and original work from : Aino Kostiainen, Diana Dzurillová, Heta-Maria Pyhäjärvi, Jana Pufflerová, Jihae Kim, Marius Augustin, and Vilis Zuromskis.
Mastering and podcast publication : Pasi Pelkonen and Jon Fabritius at Aalto Studios
Special thanks to Edel O’Reilly, the Aalto curator, for supporting the course and the use of the sculpture during the spring 2022.