The artwork is set in the lands of Sápmi. Here, the centuries-old practice of nomadic reindeer husbandry has faced numerous challenges throughout its history: first from settlers and borders, and today it is climate change and the expansion of infrastructure and tourism that threaten the ancestral migration paths. Rather than illustrating the end of nomadic reindeer husbandry, the artwork envisions a hopeful future emerging from the ruins of contemporary worlds.

One of the stories invites us into Oula A. Valkeapää’s reindeer world where relationships with Arctic flowers, stones, rivers, and technological objects come alive in daily practices. Using an action camera to film his everyday life with the reindeer, the video illustrates how the past intertwines with his contemporary life through embodied memories – as echoes of lives lived along the now lost migratory paths.

The second story is a short film directed by Emilia Tikka, set in a speculative future after a climate catastrophe. However, it is not a story told in linear time: in this world the epigenetic memories of past nomads are alive and carried within reindeer bones and migratory paths. The story follows a bioscientist who has come to the Arctic to find new techniques for remembering.

The research-based artwork is based on methodologies of collaborative speculative design and filmmaking during 2021–2024. Drawing from living relationships within contemporary reindeer worlds and bioscientific research, the artwork materializes a world where epigenetic memories are shared between humans and reindeer, and carried within the ancestral migratory paths –Johtingeaidnu. Rather than separating the divergent worlds, the exhibition weaves them together as stories of new practices of remembering in places where past, present, and hopeful futures intertwine.

The project has been advised by Professor Miriam Liedvogel (epigenetics of animal migration), Professor Oded Rechavi (transgenerational epigenetic memories), and others. Johtingeaidnu – The Path Within is a collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as part of the __matter Festival 2025. The research-based artwork was previously supported by the Kone Foundation and Bioart Society, Finland.