Field Casting is a research project and exhibition that investigates scientific ‘fieldwork’ as a site and subject of study, zooming in on the practices, tools and perspectives embroiled in the production of climate data. It explores the relationship between field practice and automated data collection and highlights knowledge as an event that is materially entangled with the lives of humans and nonhumans. During 2019–2023 Matterlurgy worked alongside marine biologists at the Archipelago Research Institute on the Island of Seili to understand how the Baltic Sea is sampled, monitored and modelled in relation to local and global climate change. Across sculpture, film and sound, the exhibition casts a unique assemblage of artefacts, actors and stories: the scientist body, tools and technologies of capture, processes of reading, recording and translating phenomena that often occlude apprehension. The exhibition and talks program at Titanik Gallery in Turku, Finland, ran from 2 Feb - 5 Mar 2023.

Field Casting was curated by Taru Elfving as part of the programme How do you know what you know? Exercises in Attentiveness which presents new artworks commissioned by CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago in collaboration with the Archipelago Research Institute (University of Turku). With support from the Kone Foundation, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and Oskar Öflund Foundation. Special thanks to Eero Nives, Eero Merimaa and sculpture students at Turku University of Applied Sciences and Natural History Museum in London, UK. You can read more about this project in a published interview on CAA’s website.