Praxis and Proximity along the UKK Hiking Trail

This paper is anchored in an extended piece of artistic field work undertaken along the 900 km “UKK” hiking trail in Finland, which extends from Koli in North Karelia to the Urho Kekkonen National Park in Sápmi/North-East Lapland. Through a mix of poetic and documentary registrars, and with a specific focus on sound art practice and “long-distance listening” the paper discusses the methodological approach in relation to post-qualitative and practice-research methods through the concepts of “proximity” (Rantala et al. 2024) and “praxis” (Nelson, 2013, 2022) in order to explore some of the meeting points of ethics and aesthetics in tourism and art contexts. Using examples of situations along the UKK, the presentation will reflect and diffract on the processes of practice, and how the entangled acts of walking, listening, and living on the trail demonstrate inseparable forms of knowing that are created relationally with other species.