Zodiak Laboratory is Zodiak's residency concept. In November 2025, the ZodLab residency artist is Terhi Hartikainen, together with their working group.
The residency begins with a question: What might agrarisexuality entail? Is it the manure-scented cousin of ecosexuality, or something else entirely? And what is the erotic potential of the countryside or its withering libido?
Agraariseksuaali is examined both as a physical landscape – where rural smells, terrains, and echoes seep into the body’s valleys– and as an autonomous socio-economic and cultural being.
During their residency, the artists immerse themselves in traditional rural labour: haymaking, ploughing and chopping firewood. They revel in the cheeky metaphors of sowing and ploughing, trudge about in wellies, come together in song, and embody exaggerated rustic characters.
The work draws inspiration from the poem Song of Myself (1855) by the late ‘agrarisexual’ Walt Whitman:
‘-- You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you,
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you,
Broad, muscular fields, branches of liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you, --'
The working group consists of: convenor and dance artist Terhi Hartikainen (she/they), dance artists Maria Mäkelä (she/they) and Johanna Karlberg (she/her), scenographer Helka Saariniemi (they/them), sound designer Satu Kankkonen (they/them) and performance dramaturg Miko Kivinen (he/him).