The Past Is a Foreign Country

The Past Is a Foreign Country begins with tar production in northern Finland for a global market shaped by maritime trade and imperial expansion. It draws attention to what this history of production leaves behind—not only in collective memory, but also in air, soil, water and forests.

Produced on site at AaltoSiilo, the work incorporates music by Finnish artist and musician Lau Nau and Sontag Shogun, reworked by LuxuryLogico as part of the installation. This collaboration connects the work’s exploration of place, environmental traces and industrial memory to its Finnish context.