Reconstruction and public re-reveal of ‘Joko vai’

Joko vai is an anti-uranium mining artwork located in the municipality of Askola in southern Finland. The artwork was made in 2006 by Finnish artist Pessi Manner (1969–2015) as a reaction to ongoing uranium prospecting in the area by the French company Areva. For nearly 20 years, the exact location of this piece of Finnish environmental rock art history remained a mystery, and it was thought to have been lost forever.

However, in the autumn of 2023, former Askola resident Eerika Korhonen located the destroyed artwork, and contacted me. A decision was quickly made to reconstruct the artwork, for which we received a permit from Pessi’s father Juhana Manner as well as the current landowner. Based on one surviving photograph, we knew that the piece had originally consisted of a carving in the geographical shape of Finland with loose rocks laid on top of it to represent mining waste rock.

Reconstruction of the artwork took place on 7 June 2024. In the course of over 15 years, all of the loose rocks had fallen down the steep rock face in which the carving is located, and had become covered in a thick layer of dirt and moss. As we began our excavations for the missing rocks, we also came across signs of other activities on the site, such as a fireplace right beneath the carving. Due to the inconvenient topography of the site, it is likely that the fireplace dates to the time of the carving’s making, perhaps the exact moment when the artwork was revealed to the public on 5 December 2006, one day before the Finnish independence day.

We were able to find enough rocks to fill the whole two-metre long carving, but because the rock face was covered in lichen, the artwork was not as easily visible as it had originally been when a halo of freshly cut lighter colour rock made the carving stand out easily. In order to increase the visibility of the artwork, we used an electric drill with a wire brush bit to make the carving stand out from the surrounding darker rock.

The reconstructed artwork was revealed to the public on 8 June 2024. About 40 people gathered for an event that was facilitated by a local association called Juornaankylän Nuorisoseura (Juornaankylä Youth Association) in their premises in an old wooden house built in 1911. First coffee and rhubarb cake was served, then a welcoming speech was given by Eerika Korhonen, followed by a speech by journalist Timo-Erkki Heino. Heino researched Manner’s art for a short article on environmental art (2021), but never managed to locate Joko vai, and decided to leave it out of his article. I presented my recent and ongoing research on Finnish anti-uranium mining social movements, their artistic interventions – including Manner’s – and the significance of the landscape to Finnish anti-uranium mining activism. My presentation was followed by a speech by Juhana Manner who concluded by stating how he and Pessi always shared the idea that no one can own a landscape, only parts of it. Finally, singer-songwriter Kaisla Tuuli performed some of her original songs.

After about an hour of speeches and performances inside, the audience was transported to the actual artwork. There experiences of anti-uranium mining activism were shared, as were memories of Pessi Manner. The artwork remains free to visit by anyone (60.57063, 25.77267).

The strongest feeling that I was left with after the event was hopefulness. This feeling was strengthened by the generally very positive feedback from the audience, but perhaps even more important was how much Manner’s relatives and close friends showed appreciation of the fact that his art is now being used as a site for re-remembering. Pessi always feared that his art would be forgotten, but as expressed by Pessi’s father, even if Joko vai will again be left to slowly degrade on its own, it became clear during the event that one can never fully anticipate the afterlives and effects of their intellectual or artistic contributions in the world.