Forestry and arboriculture have always been intimately linked to boatbuilding practices.

The financialisation and valuation of forests and forest resources can be seen as one of the foundations of western political power as much as its effacement. Forests once marked the limit of sovereignty, the areas of productive economy and with it the threshold of the law. In the late middle Ages, when the forest became the foundation of political power, “the impending wood shortage became an increasingly effective instrument of politics” (Radkau 2012, 139).[4] ‘Forest laws’ designated grounds reserved to the royal houses and aristocracy for hunting. Afforestation was a cruel, despotic instrument of dispossession to forcibly evict and invalidate ancient freedoms and common rights such as communal land- and water-uses. The latter is echoed in the Great Partition (1757-1827), an umbrella for several agricultural land reforms enforced in Sweden and Finland (part of Sweden at the time) by the Swedish Empire (Storskiftet and later Enskiftet and Laga skiftet in Swedish or Isojako in Finnish).

The wider global trend towards financialisation and the switch from agricultural to monetary economies emphasises notions of ‘exchange value’. Eino Saari (1894-1971) is said to be one of the founders of forest economics in Finland. He pioneered the first national wood utilization survey in the world – the birth of forest valuation. This could be understood as the development of biological-mensurational research which enables the application of economic theory and facts to biological and technical conceptions. In 1966, Kullervo Kuusela of the Finnish Forest Research Institute stated: “the age of planned development of forest resources is about to begin” (Edwards 1968, 155). Kuusela’s statement points to the importance of early national wood utilization surveys within a genealogy of ecosystem services.

Central to planned development is forest modelling, one of the oldest forms of mathematization of risk calculation and the calculation of ‘worth’. The birth of forest valuation is, according to the economist John Maynard Keynes, the link between the present and the future, the latter being “perfidious” and threatening (Esposito 2011, 11). Industrial forestry thus conquers the perfidious future through planned harvest, determined maturity, yield calculation and other predictions. Forest modelling, in its conquest to assuage future uncertainties, systematises the forest as a set of variables within a formula, forever optimising itself, thus paving the way for its financialisation.

Text excerpt from:
Gallardo, Francisco, and Audrey Samson. Carboniferous Capitalism. HIAP. https://www.
hiap.fi/carboniferous-capitalism1/. Published 2020. Accessed November 10, 2020.

Jos ei viina, terva ja sauna auta, niin tauti on kuolemaksi.

(Finnish Proverb: If alcohol, tar and sauna do not help, then the disease is fatal)

An often overlooked ‘carbon derivative’ in the expropriation of land in the Americas is terva (pine tar), which was used as a wood preservative. Finnish pine tar (often referred to as Stockholm tar) is described in many archival exchanges between colonial powers as being the best both in quality and fabrication method (Kent 1973, 80).
Finland has historically been one of the most important providers of both timber and tar for many of its European neighbours’ pillaging ventures abroad. The fluctuation of the black gold’s resale value is linked to both the creation of a bourgeoisie (in Oulu), and to great famines (Kainuu region). The increase of timber value, also afforded by the demand of trading companies and naval fleets, afforded the switch from an agricultural to a monetary economy. These reforms are dubbed the ‘liberalization of Finland’ in the 1860s, which also coincide with the creation of the Finnish markka, and the beginning of a widening gap between forest owners and landless peasants (Toivanen 2018). These reforms also precipitated the ‘hunger lands’. One of the main factors in the great famine of 1867 killing hundreds of thousands, was the inability to finance cereal import because of the decrease in the price of pine tar (Toivanen and Kröger 2018). Pine tar thus brought the beginning of speculation, riches as well as extreme poverty to the country.
Pine tar today in Finland epitomises the complexities challenging the co-existence and development of traditional practices alongside a bureaucratic apparatus that privileges the logic of accumulation. Under EU law, terva is categorised as a chemical which requires a production permit costing 200,000EUR (Braunschweiler n.d.). The EU chemical definition was devised according to industrial production methods and scale. Small artisanal terva producers have to merge or collectivise to survive. While this traditional knowledge is under constant threat of disappearance under the EU’s legal framework, in former tar production and distribution areas (such as Oulu and Kainuu), pine tar festivals have emerged as a hipster-esque nostalgia of Finland’s past, dehistoricising its relationship to death, famine and speculation.

Text excerpt from:
Gallardo, Francisco, and Audrey Samson. Carboniferous Capitalism. HIAP. https://www.
hiap.fi/carboniferous-capitalism1/. Published 2020. Accessed November 10, 2020.

The midsummer pole, or Maypole (Juhannussalko in Finnish and Majstång in Swedish) is a pre-modern summer-solstice related tradition celebrated in many European countries.
Birch and pine garlands decorated poles (often ship masts), which were erected in offering of good harvests, celebration of the beginning of the 'light days' (Celtic calendar), or as popular tribunals where governors, barons and kings were deposed and punished if ruled guilty. These May Poles were hoisted in fields and meadows known as the 'Ey-commons' or 'Fields of May'. Thus meadows operated as the highest court in popular law - now known for example in England as ‘commons law’.

“All things are saleable at Rome, -- temples, priests, altars, prayers, heaven, -- yea God himself”
-Mantuan, Lib. 3.

The Vatican had the monopoly of three notable resources during the early modern period: salt, alum and indulgences. Indulgences approximately date back to the third century. At that time, rather than ‘indulgences,’ they were named by Latin terms such as remissio, absolutio, and relaxatio. The beginning of the abuses in indulgence sales started with practices of returning stolen goods. Architectural historian François Icher explains, “thieves and holders of stolen goods were promised absolution and forgiveness on condition that they give up all or part of the goods they held illegally not to the rightful owners, but to the Church.” Redemption was another predecessor of indulgences, given as a reward for charitable actions.
Indulgeo, "to be kind or tender" in latin, derives from Roman Law and biblical sources. Indulgences are a 'quid pro quo', which used in English to mean an exchange of goods or services, in which one transfer is contingent upon the other. It implies remitting the punishment of sin for a price. It does not buy forgiveness, in fact it only lessens the penance imposed. In other words, an indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment for sins, the guilt of which has already been forgiven. The absolution is obtained by a member of the Christian faith under certain and definite conditions with the help of the Church. As the minister of redemption, the Church dispenses redemption from the spiritual “treasury”. The process is roughly analogous to a civil court proceeding in which a person who pleads guilty receives a sentence or penalty from a judge. Judges can suspend the sentence or order community service in lieu of prison time. Granting an indulgence is comparable to commuting a sentence (a commutation is a reduction in sentence, not a pardon).
The intended disposition of an indulgence followed this rationale: the Christian Church was endowed with a spiritual “treasury” of the piteous works bankrolled by merits attributed to Holy figures such as Christ and saints. The Church acted as a bank, storing and distributing at discretion those 'merits'. An indulgence placed at the penitent's disposal from the aforementioned treasury designated retribution for their sinful act. They are often described similar to a “Utopian commonwealth where all the surplus wealth of the successful citizens should be set apart for the poor and needy, and portioned out to them according to their necessities”. In effect, a customary mode of thinking about this was that of 'governing by debt'. Believers would thus be bailed-out through retributory work such as making a pilgrimage, Crusade enrolling, almsgiving, or by performing special prayers. Since these alms provided much of the revenue needed for crusades, and later the costs to build New St. Peter’s, the exchange of indulgences for alms, later deemed “sales,” rose in the years prior to the Reformation. 'Salesmen' refers to those travelling business-priest men sermoning about the urgencies for indulgences. Again Icher explains that “while the building sites depended unquestionably on the rhythm of the seasons, they operated primarily according to the rhythm of money”.
Through the massive emission of indulgences, the Christian Caesar, a.k.a Pope, became the most formidable force in Europe – a prominent power player and art patron. Lorenzo Pucci stated that the mass runs of indulgences rolled off ecclesiastical printing presses. We could think of the Pope as the one-man Tate or MoMA, underwriting the best contemporary artists, using charm, threats, bribes, and flattery to commission the masterpieces of western civilisation. For the Saint Peter cathedral, Agostino Chigi proposed a financial plan: the granting of indulgences. He advised to set up a separate building fund for the basilica and grant an indulgence to anyone who made an annual contribution to it. This idea is similar to pledge drives today, receiving a reduced purgatory sentence. The term "pledge" originates from the promise that a contributor makes to send in funding at regular intervals for a certain amount of time. Prior to that indulgences were an accepted way to raise money for capital projects and charitable causes. The initial methods to finance Church construction was to cut costs, and thereafter to raise money through indulgences.
Both of the churches in Wittenberg were granted indulgences and a special indulgence was issued for the reliquary-museum, which the elector Frederick had collected. An indulgence of 100 days was attached to each of the 5,005 specimens and another 100 to each of the 8 passages between the cases that held them. With the 8,133 relics at Halle and the 42 entire bodies, millions and billions of days of indulgence were associated, a sort of anticipation of the geologic periods of modern demand. To be more accurate, these relics created pardons covering 39,245,120 years and 220 days, and the still further period of 6,540,000 quarantines, each of 40 days.
The main intent of Julius II’s bull 'Liquet omnibus', issued in 1510, was to generate great sums of money to build New St. Peter’s and draw the faithful to Rome. This bull set clear financial conditions to all Christians hoping to gain the indulgence. They were to “deposit in the chest the price determined by the commissioner or his delegates,” and the prices of indulgences were set according to their ability to pay. For instance, Archbishop Albert of Mainz and Magdeburg set the following standards: kings, princes and great prelates paid twenty-five Rhenish gold gulden for an indulgence; abbots, cathedral dignitaries and nobles paid ten gulden; lesser prelates, nobles, and traders with an income over five hundred gulden paid six gulden, burghers and merchants whose revenues were about two hundred gulden paid three gulden; and below these the amount paid was a half to one gulden. If one was too poor to pay anything, they were given other works, initially fasting or prayers, then indentured labour. It might be relevant to recall that labour constituted a great expense, approximately reaching forty percent of the construction budget in large architectural works.

Geologic time
In Rome, the residence of the supreme pontiffs, as we might well have expected, the offer of indulgences was the most copious. According to the Nürnberger relic-collector, Nicolas Muffel, every time the skulls of the Apostles were shown, or the handkerchief of St. Veronica, the Romans who were present received a pardon of 7,000 days, other Italians 10,000 and foreigners 14,000. In fact, the grace of the ecclesiastical authorities was practically boundless. Not only did the living seek indulgences, but even the dying stipulated in their wills that a representative should go to Assisi or Rome or other places to secure for their souls the benefit of the indulgences offered there.
Prayers also had remarkable offers of grace attached to them. According to the penitential book, The Soul’s Joy, the worshipper offering its prayers to Mary received 11,000 years indulgence and some prayers, if offered, freed 15 souls from purgatory and as many earthly sinners from their sins. It professed to give one of Alexander Vl.’s decrees, according to which prayer made three times to St. Anna secured 1,000 years indulgence for mortal sins and 20,000 for venial. The Soul’s Garden claimed that one of Julius II.’s indulgences granted 80,000 years to those who would pray the book’s prayer to the Virgin. No wonder Siebert, a Roman Catholic writer, is forced to say that "the whole atmosphere of the later Middle Ages was soaked with the indulgence-passion”.
Indulgences prevail today, they are namely included in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Also, in 2013, Pope Francis issued indulgences via his Twitter account to those who followed his Twitter-feed during the World Youth Day event in Rio de Janeiro!

Carbon Rifts is an installation and web-based work which offers a critical gaze onto carbon emissions, mensuration and valuation, and an experimental archaeology of wrecks. It is an art-led enquiry into forest and foreshores as salvage sites for carbon incorporating questions such as salvage accumulation, waste management, indentured labour and slavery.


See online Carbon Rifts interface.

Indulgentia is a cryptocurrency developed with Guido Rudolphi, based on Ethereum blockchain, which facilitates trading of carbon credits. It reduces the amount of punishment one has to undergo for carbon emissions.
Indulgentia launched its initial coin offering with ‘Carbon Derivatives’ at the Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi in Venice on October 20th, 2017.
The Indulgence Coin engages with material and cultural discourses that legitimise green trade and the affective powers that emerge from it. The current epoch undergoing northern climate change and globalised anthropogenic impact can be putatively defined by the affective power embedded in flows of carbon and carbon derivatives: hydrocarbons fueling engines or metabolic processes, and financial trading systems such as green bonds, or emissions trading systems (ETS).

Utilising trees as carbon storage has the effect of abstracting their biological function to a commodity for the service economy, framing carbon as both material and economy. This argument facilitates the replacement of boreal forest by industrial forests, with more efficient carbon yield. In turn, these efficient storage sites increase a country’s collateral for the emissions trade.
This carbon market is contentiously emerging, while simultaneously destroying ecosystems and indigenous knowledge systems.

Indulgentia harnesses the power of the blockchain to offer a decentralised and anonymous approach to carbon trading, while exploring the relationship between speculation and carbon resources.

History of indulgentiārum
Indulgences were awarded by the Catholic Church as a remission of sin through a donation of money in the Middle Ages. The copious repenting of sinners funded the crusades (such as those against the ‘Turkish invasion’ of Venice) as well as the building of such monuments as the St Peter's Basilica. Indulgences are also the earliest dated printed European document by movable type, made possible by the Gutenberg press. The later printed indulgences as a side job while working on the Bible. It has been suggested by H.D.L. Vervliet that the invention of the press itself may have been prompted by the recognition of the need for large numbers of identical Indulgentia documents. With the printing of Indulgentia also emerged the automisation of labour rendering large amounts of scribes redundant.
Thus, the notion of capitalisation on repentance and deskilling labour is nothing new. Tried, tested and true, these have repeated throughout history and once again with carbon trading. As Richard Sandor tells us, with good derivatives “You CAN Put a Price on Nature”. Carbon credits emerged as a way to include ‘nature’ in the balance sheet, to insure that it would not be overlooked as a resource. Since these humble beginnings, the carbon market is projected to become the world’s largest commodity market by 2020. To ensure that companies do not resort to ‘carbon leakage’, that is to shift production to countries with less ambitious climate measures, manufacturing industries thought to be at risk of carbon leakage get free emission allocations. Free indulgence masked as emission control. Because industrial sectors are receiving more free pollution permits than the amount of CO2 they emit, which they then sell, they incur windfall profits. In short, speculation and EU regulations have facilitated the transfer of money from taxpayers to industry to the order of billions of EUR.

Ingredients for 1l of Tar Sorbet
2 (13- to 15-ounce) cans full-fat coconut milk
1/2 cup sweetener, such as agave syrup, maple syrup, honey, turbinado sugar, or cane sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cornstarch, or 1 tablespoon arrowroot starch
1 1/2 teaspoons flavour extract
Tar flavour (0.5dl of terva)
1/4 cup activated charcoal

Midsummer Mast was commissioned by CAA as part of Spectres in Change project, funded by Kone Foundation.

Midsummer Mast grew out of a research-led practice focused in forestry and arboriculture, examining their couplings with historical commodity chains (shipbuilding, timber and mast trades, wood derivatives and emission markets among others). Invited by CAA, visited the Turku Archipelago and Fiskars in autumn 2019. The encounter with the museum ship Sigyn, which had recently sourced new masts from the Fiskars forests, initiated a collaboration with carpenters and shipwrights to think of ways to salvage the discarded parts.

Context:
The mid-summer pole is a pre-modern summer-solstice related tradition celebrated in many European countries. This custom was also celebrated in certain villages in the west of Finland, including Fiskars, a legacy of the Swedish Empire’s rule.

Birch and pine garlands decorated masts which were erected in offering of good harvests, celebration of the beginning of the ‘light days’ (Celtic calendar), or as popular tribunals where governors, barons and kings were deposed and punished if ruled guilty. These May Poles were hoisted in fields and meadows known as the ‘Ey-commons’ or’ Fields of May’. Thus meadows operated as the highest court in popular law - now known for example in England as ‘commons law’.

The Sigyn, built in 1887, needed new masts in 2018. This wooden barque that crossed the oceans and seas for trade a hundred years ago, the last remaining of its kind, is now a museum ship in Turku. Unlike last century, when Finland provided most European Empires with the timber and tar to build their fleets, when scouting for the mast material in 2018, only a handful of trees in all of Finland were found to be of suitable size. The three trees ultimately used to re-mast Sigyn were found in Fiskars forest.

To foster an exchange between traditional and contemporary practices, the mid-summer mast in Fiskars has been conceptualised and built in collaboration with shipwrights and carpenters. It is made from salvaged discarded masts, spars and other maritime wares from the Sigyn, donated by Forum Marinum.

As the unprecedented environmental crisis creates further emergencies, proposes ‘salvaging’ as a way to question the meaning of traditions. Now that there might not be a world to “hand over” to the coming generations, nor is it possible to “return to the sources”, how do we re-claim traditions?

The work was supported by ONOMA, Forum Marinum, Sigyn Foundation, Fiskarin Laatupuu Oy, Ruusupapu, Fiskars Oy, and Fiskars Historical Archives. The work was made possible through a collaboration with Entisöinti Rinne Oy.


Acknowledgements:
A great many individuals have contributed to this project, we extend our gratitude to: Heikki Aska, Taru Elving, Emilia Hänninen, Matleena Kalajoki, Elias Lähdesmäki, Tommi Lavonen, Robert Louhimies, Tapio Maijala, Ville Poikola, Atte Pylvänäinen, Tuomo Rinne, Jukka Salo, Tapio Santala, Kenneth Silver, Saskia Suominen, Rhys Thomas, and Hanna Utriainen.

Lost in a garden of clouds is a virtual group exhibition that extends the digital program of AMRO20 “Of Whirlpools and Tornadoes”, curated by Davide Bevilacqua. As part of this programme, Carbon Rifts was re-contextualised within the platform of the virtual exhibition.


Carbon Rifts offers a critical gaze onto carbon emissions, mensuration and valuation through an experimental archaeology of wrecks. It is an art-led enquiry into forests and foreshores as salvage sites for carbon incorporating questions such as salvage accumulation,
waste management, and indentured labour. It ultimately questions the abstraction of valuing ‘nature’ by its weight in carbon.
rifts.fraud.la


Carbon Rifts was commissioned with the generous support of the London Community Foundation and Cockayne - Grants for the Art.

Carbon Rifts was part of the exhibition 'Complex Value$' at the Somerset House Studios in 2018, which examined the implications of producing, collecting and sorting data for society and the individual. The works in the exhibition took a critical look at the systematic ambiguity, opacity and complexity of mediation processes.
Carbon Rifts is an art-led enquiry which considers the ambiguity and complexity of carbon as a unit of measurement (of nature) and of abstraction. The installation offers a critical gaze onto carbon emissions, mensuration and valuation, through an experimental archaeology of wrecks. It proposes forests and foreshores as salvage sites for carbon incorporating questions such as salvage accumulation, waste management, indentured labour and slavery.
The installation questions the emphasis of the green economy on flow oriented ontologies and network structures whose systemic violence affords a tree to operate as the ultimate siphon between the exhaust of a sweatshop and climate change data banks; or in which designer furniture such as the Paimio chair can become a sleek apparatus for carbon storage, exchange or accumulation.
It contains an interface that randomly loads clips from a large database of Carbon Rifts documentation (the process of unearthing (floating) and gathering wreck wood), a "Slinger" salvaged Montague whaler wreck, a scale, a database video (indefinite length), a video loop 9'00", a wreck wood carbon value (updated in real-time) 600cm x 300cm, asphalt deposit from Pitch Lake (Trinidad) and Sperm Whale oil.

Credits:
The interface is a fork of YoHa's automaton editor.
Live carbon futures pricing was programmed by Alessia Milo, and can be found at carbonderivation.space.

Acknowledgements:
Carbon Rifts would not have been possible without the special support of YoHa (Yokokoji, Harwood) and collaboration from Belton Way Small Craft Club, Leigh Heritage Centre, Southend Borough Council, Alessia Milo, Lani Harwood, Paul Huxler, Brum, Michael Meddle, & Norman Day, among many others. Carbon Rifts was commissioned with the generous support of the London Community Foundation and Cockayne - Grants for the Art, for the Complex Value$ exhibition at the Somerset House Studios.

ATARAXIA was curated by Koyo Kouoh as part of the Venice Biennale's Salon Suisse in 2017. ATARAXIA aimed at unpicking Switzerland’s socalled political ‘neutrality’ within a global fabric of economics, culture, technology and science. In 'cultivating well', part of Salon Three, Carbon Derivatives was presented by together with Guido Rudolphi.


Carbon Derivaties examined the conflicts arising from market involvement in the management of ‘nature’, and the ties between the forest as a storage resource of carbon, the boreal forest’s disappearance and emission trading systems (ETS). For ATARAXIA, and Guido Rudolphi developed the cryptocurrency Indulgentia and a Tar Sorbet to lead a discussion around the affective and contentious powers emerging from green trade.

In collaboration with Francisca Roseiro, a contribution to the theme of art as resource was conceptualised based on the developement of Fields of May. The latter proposes salvaging as a way to question the meaning of traditions in the context of the unprecedented environmental crisis which creates recurring emergencies. It also considers how the real possibility of there not being a world to "hand over" to the coming generations, or a possibility (or desire) to "return to the sources", reframes the discussion around how we could re-claim traditions?
Para que haya fiesta tiene que danzar el bosque is curated by Michy Marxuach in collaboration with multiple transhemispheric voices. The show runs from the 2nd of July to the 26th of September 2021 at TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes in the Canary Islands, Spain.

Midsummer Mast was realised as part of the exhibition Meadow, organised by ONOMA in Fiskars Village during Summer 2020.

Meadow was curated by Taru Elfving and produced by The Cooperative of Artisans, Designers and Artists in Fiskars ONOMA.

The Midsummer Mast was hoisted a second time on the Varvintori square in Turku 29.5.-1.7.2021 beside the museum ship Sigyn on the occasion of the ship’s reopening after restoration. The work has been realised in collaboration with shipwrights and carpenters using the salvaged old masts and other maritime wares from the Sigyn.

On the occasion of its hoisting, Midsummer Mast was adorned on Saturday 29th May with a birch garland, wild flowers and medicinal herbs in collaboration with artist Lotta Petronella. On Sunday 30th May we began the collection of testimonies before the mast, inspired by the tradition of Fields of May as popular tribunals, to interrogate blue growth and the bioeconomy. This is part of an ongoing project that will continue on the island of Seili (see Fields of May).

Midsummer Mast is commissioned and produced by CAA as part of Spectres in Change project, funded by Kone Foundation. It is presented in Turku in co-operation with Forum Marinum and supported by the City of Turku. The mast was first presented in Fiskars as part of the exhibition Meadow during summer 2020 in collaboration with ONOMA.

Fields of May is a commision permanently installed in Seili (in the Finnish Archipelago) as part the Archipelago Research Institute (Turku University). It acts as a location and conduit of Witnessing Seminars on the subject of the blue economy, the ecology of law, and the climate crisis. It is an architecture of engagement that coalesces a diverse ecology of practices and historical-material specificities with the aim of cultivating the conditions of possibility that might conjure worlds attuned to non-extractive rhythms.

The installation consists of salvaged discarded masts, spars and other maritime wares donated from the museum-ship Sigyn (Turku, FI), a wooden barque built in 1887 that crossed the Atlantic and Indian oceans - as well as the North and Baltic seas - for trade. As Seili is situated next to the old Baltic maritime timber trade route, where passenger ferries pass today, Sigyn routinely sailed past this island. In 2018, the ship needed new masts. Unlike last two centuries, when Finland provided most European Empires with the timber and tar to build their fleets, when scouting for mast timber in 2018, only a handful of trees were found to be of suitable size. The masts which compose the seating area bear witness to the commodification of trees, the transatlantic timber trade as much as to the changing nature of Finnish forests, now largely servicing pulp production or the blue bio-economy at large.

Fields of May is commissioned by Contemporary Art Archipelago as part of Spectres in Change, and it is funded by Canada Art Council, Acción Cultural Española, and Kone Foundation.