Borrowed Cities is a site-specific audio-walk that leads audiences on a guided tour through Helsinki.
The work uses the city itself as the stage for exploring how ecological loss and migration unsettle our sense of place. By projecting fragments of endangered cities onto the streets of Helsinki, the piece challenges the idea that crises belong only to their locations and suggests that cities absorb stories, griefs, and futures from far away.
The narratives of the ones whose lives have been shaped by ecological trauma – local communities, immigrants, and others with lived experience of environmental instability, guide the walk and allow Helsinki to be seen through their perspective. By walking together, the work tries to create a shared space of listening, care, and cross-cultural understanding.
What does it mean to carry multiple geographies within one body? How can memory reveal the uneven realities of climate injustice?
Director: Shaghayegh Ansari, Aref Houshmandnia
Writer: Aref Houshmandnia
Performer: Shaghayegh Ansari
Sound designer: Maija Suominen
Performance language: English
The performance sets off from Cultural Centre Caisa on the courtyard of Kaikukatu 4 B.
Performance duration: 1.5 h
Photo: Ashwin Rajan
