Futurity Island Finds New Shores: Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas at the Helsinki Biennial

Above images: Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, in collaboration with Indrė Umbrasaitė, Nicole L’Huillier, Markus J. Buehler. Futurity Island (2018-25). Helsinki Biennial 2025, Vallisaari Island. Photo: © HAM/Helsinki Biennial/Henni Hyvärinen.

Originally conceived in collaboration with architect Indrė Umbrasaitė for the Venice Architecture Biennale’s Swamp Pavilion, Futurity Island was born from utopian ambition: a floating, climbable structure designed to engage the body and senses, offering physical, acoustic and metaphorical instability. “We wanted to create something that made one move differently, sense and feel differently, while being immersed in the soundscape of the invisible world of the sediment,” Urbonas explains. “A space that’s not just looked at—but lived in.”

While the project wasn’t able to be realized for Venice at that time, it caught the eye of curator Christine Shaw, Director of the Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where she is also Associate Professor of Curatorial and Visual Studies. Shaw invited the Urbonases to bring the project to Toronto’s Mississauga where toxic mud from Lake Ontario undergoes phytoremediation. With support from local manufacturers who donated the pipe materials, the piece came to life on land at a heavily industrialized waterfront—an area known for heavy industries including water treatment, oil refinery, and cement production, which service the entirety of Toronto.

What makes Futurity Island more than just a sculptural playground is its integrated soundscape, developed in collaboration with sound artist and MIT Media Lab alumna Nicole L’Huillier. “Nicole spent so much time tuning the soundtrack to the specificity of spatial structure equipped with ultrasonic transducers,” Urbonas reminisces. “The whole piece becomes an instrument.” Drawing on data collected from environmental agency, the audio includes interpretations of toxic soil readings and recordings of the caddisfly—an aquatic insect whose larval stage builds protective tubes from debris. “We were fascinated with the caddisfly as more-than-human architect and it became a conceptual device for this project,” says Urbonas. “This larvae is an amazing environmental engineer as well that constructs perfect tubular homes underwater, and then weaves spider-like nets that keep sediments together and provide infrastructure for other species.”

Above images: Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, in collaboration with Indrė Umbrasaitė, Nicole L’Huillier, Markus J. Buehler. Futurity Island (2018-25). Helsinki Biennial 2025, Vallisaari Island. Photo: © HAM/Helsinki Biennial/Maija Toivanen.

After Toronto, Futurity Island migrated to MIT’s campus in Cambridge, transported by a zero-emission Volvo truck branded “Swamp on the Move.” It was installed next to Walker Memorial between the Charles River and the MIT Green Building, echoing with its environmental soundtrack as well as the ambient noise of campus life, and welcoming the first land acknowledgement act on MIT campus conducted by Erin Genia (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) (SMACT ’19), and Sadada Jackson (Nipmuc) (Harvard Divinity School, MTS ’19), followed by the symposium on Submerged Perspectives, Extinction, and Decolonial Futures with Macarena Gómez-Barris, Eben Kirksey, Glorianna Davenport, and others.

Then came COVID, and with it, a pause. The structure was stored, uncertain whether it would be reactivated or recycled. “We were in limbo,” recalls Urbonas. “It’s always a challenge with artworks at this scale—you can’t just tuck them away.” Eventually, the call came to shown it in Lithuania—first at the UNESCO protected site by the sea, where the first environmental movement in the U.S.S.R. took place as a response to the Chernobyl ecological disaster, and later in front of the National Gallery in Vilnius as part of the artists’ retrospective, Partially Swamped Institution.

Just as the sculpture found what seemed like a permanent home in a private collection in Lithuania, the Helsinki Biennial reached out. “Almost the moment it was permanently installed, we got the call from Helsinki,” Urbonas laughs. Blanca de la Torre and Kati Kivinen, the curators of the Helsinki Biennial had found what they felt was a perfect location on Vallisaari— a partially decommissioned military zone, now ecological reserve, home to a unique array of flora and fauna. “They suggested: ‘Come see. This is your spot.’ And they were right.”

Above images: Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, in collaboration with Indrė Umbrasaitė, Nicole L’Huillier, Markus J. Buehler. Futurity Island (2018-25). Helsinki Biennial 2025, Vallisaari Island. Photo: Urbonas Studio.

Surrounded by biodiversity and buffeted by sea winds, Futurity Island takes on a heightened resonance. The installation’s integrated transducer speakers vibrate the pipes themselves, mixing with the gusts of wind and transforming the sculpture into a speaker that emits the caddisfly-inspired soundscape. “It’s so well-tuned that visitors often can’t tell where the sound is coming from—if it’s environment or the sculpture itself. It’s a moment of confusion and curiosity,” Urbonas says. “Futurity Island benefits from the presence of natural forces. The wind, the trees, the insects, and birds—they all become part of the soundtrack.”

To mark this latest phase, a new soundtrack was developed—this time exploring the molecular structure of the caddisfly’s saliva, which allows it to build the web of life underwater. Collaborating with MIT material scientist Markus Buehler, who uses acoustics to identify and model protein structures, the artists translated this vibrant material data into sonic experience. While we do not have larvae itself, its embodiment in a form of sonic reverberation inhabits the multiocular (Tapio Makela) structure. A second edition of their distinctive blue vinyl record will include both this new composition and the original.

In many ways, Futurity Island has become what it was always meant to be—not just a structure, but a platform for interdisciplinary co-creation. “It’s connected to so diverse contexts now: industrial, academic, heritage, and now post-military. It’s listening, vibrating, transforming. We always imagined it as temporary, maybe even utopian,” says Urbonas. “But somehow, it keeps resurfacing. It insists on moving forward and prompting us with new assignments how to connect with environment, diverse disciplines and other ways of knowing the world.”

Above images: Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, in collaboration with Indrė Umbrasaitė, Nicole L’Huillier, Markus J. Buehler. Futurity Island (2018-25). Helsinki Biennial 2025, Vallisaari Island. Photo: Urbonas Studio.

2018-25

recycled PVC pipe, ultrasonic transducers, six channel sound

Futurity Island repurposes peatland drainage pipes-once tools of environmental extraction-into a platform for interspecies communication. Echoing the tubular shelters of Hydropsyche larvae, the pipes become acoustic instruments amplifying non-human voices. The soundscape blends larvae recordings with soil toxicity data sonified through transducers. Nanoscale models of caddisfly silk proteins-known for their underwater binding properties-are translated into sound frequencies that form a spatial score, evoking the silky nets spun by Hydropsyche to stabilize and shape aquatic ecosystems. Futurity Island is a learning environment that attunes us to the voices of the insect world, whose reality remains largely mysterious to humans.

Courtesy of the Lithuanian Art Centre TARTLE and Ellex Valiunas.

Project is created by artists Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas in collaboartion with architect Indrė Umbrasaitė, sound artist Nicole L’Huillier, materials scientist Markus J. Buehler, with the contribution by artists Grönlund-Nisunen.

Thank you
MIT.nano, Vladimir Bulović, STUDIO.nano, Samantha Farrell, Tobias Putrih, Giedrius Gulbinas, Special Mention Projects, Lithuanian Art Centre TARTLE, Ellex Valiunas

Commissioner
Futurity Island 2018 was commissioned by Blackwood Gallery for the Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea curated by Christine Shaw.

Helsinki Biennial is curated by Blanca de la Torre and Kati Kivinen and brings together 37 artists and collectives on Vallisaari Island, in Esplanade Park, and at HAM Helsinki Art Museum. Organized for the third time, the theme of this year’s biennial is Shelter: Below and Beyond, Becoming and Belonging. It is on view from June 8 – September 21, 2025.