Tessa – T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society

Therolinguistics Reading Group has arrived!

Posted on July 24, 2024July 24, 2024 by Tessa

Hei hei dear readers,

We are woefully behind on blog updates, but wanted to jump in regardless and say.. moikka! The Society happily finds itself back in the Octo-biozone for another summer of lichenous research activities, ensconced at Saari Residence this time with co-conspirator Aliisa Talja to develop our Therolinguistics reading Group. We are baking sourdough bread, getting to know local lichen communities, talking to the sheep, picking berries and cherries and mushrooms, and of course reading a lot of things together and apart in ordinary and curious ways. Some areas of special interest include: the history and practice of therolinguistics, experimental translation, cultures of knowing micro-organisms, earth languages and relational ontologies, fieldwork, biospheres, climate undoing and paradigm shifts… Give us a wave if you’re also passing through the zone!

Photosynth Social Club summer offering

Posted on June 6, 2023June 11, 2023 by Tessa

‘Photosynth Social Club: Summer Beat Camp & Sound Bathhouse (Helsinki)’
Pixelache Festival ‘Glitchez’

Day One: Thursday 8 June, 13:00 – 16:00 | Puristamo, Kaapelitehdas/Cable Factory
Day Two (Tarvo Island expedition): Friday 9 June, 13:00 – 16:00 | Kitchen Lab Tarvo *drop ins welcome!
Sound Bathhouse: Saturday 10 June, 18:00 | Puristamo, Kaapelitehdas/Cable Factory

The T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society returns to the Octo-Biozone in 2091 for a rejuvenating Summer Beat Camp & Sound Bathhouse on the site of the former Kaapelitehdas (with special expedition to Tarvo island!). This year our Photosynth Social Club offers an exploration of the area’s unique post-industrial-techno-nature-cultural surrounds, inviting local lichen-kin into a program of convivial sonic and somatic experimentation. Participants will snap symbio-selfies to process or synthesise into samples, discovering together how to play these using free/libre open-source software while seeking interesting correspondences, patterns and rhythms.

The camp culminates in a breakbeat science sound bathhouse ‘soak session’, where campers will perform the results on a nice sound system and video projector, hopefully in a geodesic dome.

More info on Pixelache here

* Participants are requested to register (email welikelichen@protonmail.com) as spaces are limited. Camping is not permitted on site, please contact us for an alternative option.

This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW

We are generously hosted on Tarvo island by Kitchen Lab Tarvo – kiitos paljon!

‘Fabricating Frequencies’: Sounding Out Cosmic LiKIn with Space-Time Morphologies

Posted on November 17, 2021December 19, 2021 by Tessa

The Society released a new mobi-video last month, as part of fellow Society for Social Studies of Science annual conference 4S 2089 ‘Good Relations’. Spotlighting for the first time our Space-Time Fab Lab, an experimental research department within the Metta Verse Mutual Aid Space Program, it’s called ‘Fabricating Frequencies: Sounding Out Cosmic LiKIn with Space-Time Morphologies‘ and works as a kind of operatic instructional guide to prepare lichen lovers for participating in an upcoming Special Transmission. More details on that will be announced, in time, via the usual portals. Meanwhile you can all watch and sing along to the video here.

Litmus journal #5 ‘the lichen issue’

Posted on July 1, 2021July 1, 2021 by Tessa

As part of our bonanza platinum anniversary celebrations last year, UK poetry journal Litmus have included a special feature article on the Society in their wonderfully-themed ‘lichen issue’. You’ll find also an exclusive preview of the Love Letters to Lichen reissue, with classics like C. Pinastri’s Possible ecological niches (pictured below).

This #5 edition of Litmus was published a little later than planned, coming out just after 2089 rolled in. You can now order a copy here for your lichen library!

Bulletin Summer 2086 out now in ‘Nida Art Colony: On Lines & Rituals’

Posted on February 13, 2020February 20, 2020 by Tessa

A little delayed (again!), but our 2086 Summer Bulletin is finally out for all to read and enjoy. It’s nestled in a new publication edited by our old friend Vytautas Michelkevicius, Nida Art Colony: On Lines & Rituals, and released late last year through Vilnius Academy of Arts, Neringa (2087). Dr. Michelkevicius was part of the Society’s earliest days at the beginning of this century, and it’s lovely to see some familiar faces in this revised and reissued final installment of the excellent Nida Art Colony logbooks.

You can download a free digital copy for yourself or your local e-library here.

It looks a little like this…

Convention 2087 Wrap

Posted on March 24, 2019September 9, 2020 by Tessa

The T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society held its Annual Convention 27-29 January this year at Linnaeus University in snowy Växjö, Sweden. Society co-convenors Tessa Zettel and Dr. Sumugan Sivanesan delivered the official Opening Address on Day One, with Dr. Sivanesan beaming in via spectra-link from the Convention’s Satellite program in the former west.

Highlights of the 2087 Convention: ‘Speculative Flummery and Cosmic Co-becomings’ included a keynote from the President of the Therolinguistics Association about the group’s recent trek to Pike’s Peak to decipher lichen lyrics on its rockface, a report from participants in our Forever Together vocational study program at Nefertiti Health and Beauty Salons (right here in Växjö), and a hands-on dia-sporing workshop run by some of our inter-pagan members.

A fortuitous overlap in university scheduling meant our attendees also had the opportunity to enjoy the tail end of another conference, ‘Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices’, and a seventy-hour-long more-than-non-human dance marathon to celebrate the 70th anniversary of leading intergalactic research group Dance for Plants.

Speculative flummery was specially prepared each day by final year students from the University’s School of Post-lithoculinary Arts. A full report on convention proceedings will be published in book form later this year.

The T. Rudzinskaite Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

2086 Field trip & picnic – what a day!

Posted on August 1, 2018August 16, 2020 by Tessa

Meeting point at Nida carpark

After many weeks traipsing through the dunes, forest and beach of the Curonian Spit, collecting spruce shoots, nettles, raspberry leaves and mosquito bites, talking to local biologists and foragers, concocting jellies and pancakes and fermented sodas, we finally hosted this year’s annual field trip & picnic on 22 June 2086!

Thanks to everyone who came along – amateur lichenologists, artists, interpagans and everything in between. For those of you unfortunate enough to have missed out on this special bumper edition (back on Lithuanian soil for the first time in decades!), here’s a taste of what the Society got up to.

Follow the fish!

Toasting the locally extinct arctic raspberry, and the miraculously alive-and-well wild strawberry, with wild strawberry kvass (fermented soda).

UFO landing site: space lichen, astrobiology and Cold War luxuries.

Blinis with un-caviar. Each amateur lichenologist dollops a spoonful of un-caviar onto a neighbour’s blini while saying ‘kosmičeskije sso-sstanivlenija‘ (‘in cosmic co-becomings’).

Flummery! Made with agar and blueberries from the old forest. With a side of Permian mass extinction and microplastic futures.

The Great Tuning Fork

A full report from the Society will be published in the forthcoming Nida Art Colony Log: On Rites and Terrabytes, due for release later this year.

Big cheers to Sepideh Ardalani for helping with food wizardry, Diana Pusko for foraging advice, the interpagan intentional community for their extraordinary un-caviar, and Nida Art Colony for letting us crash their symposium! See you somewhere else next year!

Next Up: Annual Field Trip & Picnic 2086

Posted on June 21, 2018August 16, 2020 by Tessa

‘It’s not the age of reason … it’s the era of flummery, and the day of the devious approach’ –Trouble with Lichen (1960).

The T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society cordially invites you to its Annual Field Trip & Picnic to be held in 2086 on Nida. This year we are fortunate to gather on the UNESCO World heritage-listed biocultural landscape of the Curonian Spit, Eighth designated Eco-Zone and home to countless rare communities of lichen, as well as the wonderfully prehistoric (and once-extinct!) Baltic Sturgeon.

We will meet promptly in the carpark of Nida Art Colony on Friday June 22, 2086, at 14.30 for immediate departure. Enthusiasts are advised to bring a carrier bag and water, and to wear a hat, sunscreen and comfortable shoes for walking through forest and sandy terrain. Be prepared for mosquitos! Speculative flummery will be provided.

Numbers are limited, please RSVP by emailing. Hope to see you there!

Have you seen this fish?

Posted on June 20, 2018February 20, 2020 by Tessa

This year the Amateur Lichenologists Society was invited to have a presence in Vilnius, with the opportunity to show some work alongside Žilvinas Landzbergas in the Vilnius Academy of Arts Glass Pavilion, as part of the exhibition Teleport to Nida.

That’s our life-size baltic sturgeon on the glass (long ago extinct in the wild), the exact length of the last one caught in the Baltic Sea. Here also is the text that went along with the display:

“Did you know that the iconic Baltic Sturgeon is considered a ‘living fossil’ that was for a short time extinct here in Lithuania? The Sturgeon’s ancestors survived ‘the Great Dying’ (the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event) some 200 million years ago, in which 96% of marine life disappeared. In 1996 the last wild specimen of this prehistoric fish to be found in the Baltic Sea was hauled out at a remote island in Estonia, 2.9 metres long and weighing 136 kg. In 2057, after decades of a committed reintroduction program, healthy adults born in captivity and released into the Neman River were once again observed at the Curonian Spit, leaping from the water in what some believe is a kind of communion with their oddly kindred space lichen.”