The Threads of Fate: Becoming/Verðandi
ABOAGORA 2017 was held on August 23-25 at the Sibelius Museum in Turku. Via art and various academic disciplines, the Symposium discussed the significance of “becoming,” the idea of incompleteness and being in the making with reference to humanist, scientific, economic, and social aspects.
Becoming refers to an unfinished development or an event that is in progress but not accomplished yet, to alteration and to the incompleteness inherent in the present, as well as ‘possibility’ and ‘potentiality.’ Are there any unchangeable, eternal and essential laws or patterns behind the chaos of our contemporary times? Or is the longing for such universal models just a reverie?
the Norn of Becoming
Becoming (Verðandi) refers to an unfinished development or an event that is in progress but not yet accomplished, to alteration, and to the incompleteness inherent in the present as well as to ‘possibility’ and ‘potentiality’.
In the years 2016–2018 Aboagora built a thematic trilogy under the title The Threads of Fate. The title refers to Old Norse mythology and beings called Norns, who rule the destinies of both gods and humans. The three most important Norns were Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld. They have at times been interpreted as the past, the present and the future but, in fact, the layers of temporality are unavoidably entangled. The question of fate (Urðr), for instance, stretches from the past to the future, and the idea of burden (Skuld) refers both to our heritage and to something that we have to confront in the future.
Each Norn offers a perspective to the current state of the world, which is discussed during the agora, blurring the boundaries between arts and sciences. At the same time, this trilogy allowed a profound investigation of urgent issues, such as identity and ethnicity, human impact on the environment, and the future of the Earth.
Some fo the Agora lectures from Aboagora 2017 remain available on ABOAGORA’s YouTube channel:
Howy Jacobs
Director, Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki; Professor, Molecular Biology, University of Tampere
Life – A Tree with Three Intertwined Branches
Pierre Guillet de Monthoux & Jenny Helin
Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (Professor, Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School; Director of CBS Art Initiative) & Jenny Helin (Associate Professor, Business Studies, Uppsala University)
Art in Becoming, Welcome to the Bureau of Poetics