field guide (noun) — an illustrated manual for identifying natural objects, flora, or fauna in nature.

A spell. An incantation. An effect in the world. A field guide is a tool for identifying natural objects. The physical flora that are named within this particular field guide became disconnected from the manual and set loose. Things named. Things as they are. Objects arranged in a certain order. The magic potential of lists. The reciting of names begins to make something happen. Words next to one another. One after another. Words you do not recognise yet. Memories from your future.  Unseen words, mysterious and opaque. Sounds, frequencies, and waves.

The place where you are standing right now is a garden. A wild place. A link between the soil by way of the mouths we open. Flowers sent across oceans and back, collecting voices in their wake. Heaps and heaps of snow. Fauna in the dark. Names waiting to germinate. A circle makes a spell. Without beginning and without end. Ravens spiral over your head, just a bit higher than your ears. Things becoming apparent. Spoken into being. Nothing to see. 

A field guide to time and to yourself. A quarter of an hour, and then a half, and then the hour full, and then we are round again once more. Those seconds and minutes stop being something countable. Objects grow under your feet. Seeds in the new world. Countable you.

Bring winter. One song. This song. Not a pop song. Not something you can sing along to. This one. Released in the old century. A record label in a northern country. Bright in the summer and dark in the cold. That’s it. The last song. The one you have to take with you. The song is a field guide. It contains everything you need to begin again.

Field Guide is the tenth chapter of the constellation artwork With Forests in Our Mouths — Speaking Queer Utopias into Being by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS (2024-25). 

Field Guide is a list of one-hundred-and-sixty-eight flowers and plants that grow in Finland, translated into the Queer language Damiá and recited by four voices. The plant names were selected by ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS and translated into Damiá by Aslan. The original voice recordings, along with field recordings of two gardens in North Karelia and Central Finland captured at the tail-end of winter, are transformed by Joni Judén into a looping sound composition. The sound work is presented in the group show SORRY at Loisti gallery in November 2025, and simultaneously in the forests surrounding ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS’ hometown, Outokumpu, and released digitally on the record label True Aether.

Illustrations