Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center

Marko Marila is an Associate Professor of Museology at the University of Jyväskylä and an Adjunct Professor of Heritage Archaeology at the University of Turku in Finland. With a PhD in history and philosophy or archaeology from the University of Helsinki (2020), Marila’s research explores themes ranging from archaeological speculation to creative methods in critical heritage studies, bringing together historical and archaeological perspectives with contemporary art practice.

Human attempts to communicate with the distant future date back millennia. From efforts to preserve the teachings of the Buddha to attempts to convey the risks of high-level nuclear waste – intended to last 100,000 years – deep-time communication has employed a range of semiotic strategies, highlighting the difficulty of anticipating the nature of the message’s recipient. All such future communication challenges involve questions concerning both the preservation of the medium and the intelligibility of the message.

In this talk, Marila reflects on historical examples of deep-time communication, focusing on his research into future communication strategies in anti-nuclear and anti-uranium mining activist art. Drawing on cases from Finland, Sweden, and the United States, Marila demonstrates how efforts to communicate contemporary energy politics and environmental concerns to the distant future have made use of stone and rock. Marila argues that rock was chosen not only for its durability but also for its cosmological significance across millennia.

For more details, email mhc@maine.edu