Nomadic Science Fiction: Experiencing Diversity and Alterity Through Urbanising Mongolia

Nomadic Science Fiction: Experiencing Diversity and Alterity through Urbanising Mongolia is my dissertation submitted as partial fulfilment of a doctoral degree for Aalto University, the doctoral work also including a production part. The dissertation has been conducted at Aalto University, Department of Art (Visual Culture) with the starting point in mind to experiment art and curating as research practices and travelling and narrative writing as ways of collecting and conveying ‘experience’.

Nomadic Science Fiction is a project I have based on exhibition exchanges, travels, residencies and publications realised by visual artists, architects and curators between Western countries and Mongolia from 2005 to 2014. The main exhibitions were Mongolia: Perception and Utopia, 2008 (curated by Saara Hacklin, Pirkko Siitari and Annu Wilenius), Bare house. Pori-Rotterdam-Ulaanbaatar, 2010 (curated by Annu Wilenius) and Bare house. Ulaanbaatar, 2011 (curated by Annu Wilenius). In context with the exhibitions there were publications: Mongolia: Perception and Utopia, (edited by Saara Hacklin and Annu Wilenius), 2008, Bare house. Pori-Rotterdam Ulaanbaatar, (edited by Annu Wilenius), 2011, Bare house. Ulaanbaatar – At the Building Site (edited by Annu Wilenius), 2014. The exhibitions and publications are the production part of this doctoral work.There have been a number of articles – both within and about – this project. Some of the texts in this dissertation have been published before. The essays in the exhibition publications are separately indicated. Also the essay Nomadic Urbanism and Other Oxymorons to Learn from was published in a Viennese Libertine Magazine, 2010, and the article Neighbours and Gardens: Social and Environmental Change in the Ulaanbaatar Ger District of Bayanzurkh, written in collaboration with Melitta Kuglitsch was published in the conference publication The Great Wall – Architecture and Identity in China and Mongolia (Vienna Technical University, 2010).

I call this research project nomadic science fiction because it has been travelling in space, time and intensity. I see it as science fiction because I believe science fiction to be trying to reach out to what seems impossible and then acting as if it were possible. The impossible may be the utmost adventure.

This dissertation and the productions are my proposal for Aalto University for the Degree of Doctor of Art.