Design in Between Worlds invites the reader to imagine what sciences and technologies of multiple cosmologies might look like.
Moving beyond categorizations of the modern and the traditional, framings of cultures as either nature-bound or technological, and hierarchies between Indigenous knowledge and life sciences, Emilia Tikka develops design as an intercosmological practice.
The book offers new methodologies for working in between worlds – in ways that maintain their divergence while embracing moments of not-knowing.
The study is based on five years of artistic collaboration within nomadic reindeer worlds in sub-arctic Sápmi, alongside engagements with epigenetic scientists. Films and speculative objects materialize a future world in which transgenerational living relations with reindeer guide new forms of technoscientific practices and land politics.
Read open access
Order the print book
Photo: Krista Luoma
Johtingeaidnu - The Path Within
Research based artwork by Emilia Tikka, Oula A. Valkeapää and Leena Valkeapää
Solo-show at Schering Stiftung in Berlin 10.4.2025 - 18.7.2025
Contamination of Time at Seinäjoki Kunsthalle 12.6.2026 - 9.1.2027
The artwork brings together two worlds: reindeer nomadism in the Arctic Sápmi region and the bioscience of epigenetics. The artwork speculates on a different kind of science that stems from the relationality of time and the relations within nomadic reindeer worlds.
It engages with the concept of shared embodied memories carried within humans, reindeer, and Johtingeaidnu – the ancestral migratory paths.
The installation comprises two short films projected on the wall, a four-metre-high laavu tent, a circular topographic map overlaid with an animation, and a framed circular drawing.
More about the project here
I am a Finnish-born Doctor of Arts and postdoctoral researcher. I work across design research, science and technology studies, and anthropology with an emphasis on Arctic futures.
My work is situated between technoscience worlds and what are often labelled as Indigenous knowledges. Central to my research is developing the co-creation of future imaginaries as an intercosmological method, enabling dialogue between knowledge cultures and ways of being.
Alongside writing and academic publishing, I make films, objects and art installations.
More about me and my work here
Videos and images above are scenes from Johtingeaidnu - The Path Within, by Emilia Tikka, Oula A. Valkeapää and Leena Valkeapää, videos shot by Eduardo Mattos and Jan Helmer Olsen