In the summer of 2020, The Other Side aural space was reimagined and relocated to the garden of an abandoned house, in periphery of Finland. Perennial melliferous plants, planted by several generations in this beloved garden, continue their life cycles, attracting insect pollinators that find the flowers from the rampant vegetation.

Short video clips introduce the garden, seen from a perspective of a bee or other insect pollinator and invite the visitor to listen to nine text excerpts, selected to The Other Side aural space. The duration of clips in English vary from 90 secs till 4 minutes. Furthermore, language versions of the same texts are available as soundtracks in French, Spanish and Catalan. The videos start when you click the flower icons next to the text!

The residents and caretakers of the house and its garden moved to other places and other sides for long time ago but a touch of their likings, mixed with the wild, is found in the rampant garden. A rich variety of flowering plants appear in the course of the summer:
Kultapallo (Rudbeckia laciniata), maitohorsma (Chamaenerion angustifolium), tuoksuvatukka (Rubus odoratus), ranta-alpi (Lysimachia vulgaris),  lupiini (Lupinus polyphyllus), varjolilja (Lilium martagon), jättiputki (Heracleum persicum), kotkansiipi (Matteuccia struthiopteris), punainen viinimarja (Ribes rubrum), ruiskaunokki (Centaurea cyanus), mesiangervo (Filipendula ulmaria), siankärsämö (Achillea millefolium), rohtovirmajuuri (Valeriana officinalis), palavarakkaus (Silene chalcedonica), hiirenvirna (Vicia cracca), vuohenputki (Aegopodium podagraria), nokkonen (Urtica dioica), musta viinimarja (Ribes nigrum), karviainen (Ribes uva-crispa), vadelma (Rubus idaeus), karhunputki (Angelica sylvestris)…

The pollinator spectrum in 2020 is rich, but there are no bee visitors in the garden. The climate of Finland is still too cool for wild bee populations and there are no beekeepers around this area. The insects showing up in the videos are wild insect pollinators. However, it is the imaginative bee that we are following meanwhile listening to the bee related literature from the distant past to the present day.

Credits: Icon illustrations: Andrés Marin Jarque, Video recordings: Ulla Taipale, Readings: Kira O´Reilly, Video editing: Visa Knuuttila, Sound recordings and editing: Kirill Lorech