The Hut (2020-ongoing)

The Hut is a traditional Finnish log cabin inoculated with mushrooms by Alm Gnista. This fungi hut hosts various offers from the team of human and nonhuman collaborators. Together they experiment with ways of living in the symbiocene infused with life; fungi, human presences, and regenerative practices.
The fungi hut is a co-created living being, dedicated to the queendom of fungi which now resides in the wooden structures of the hut as well as the soil. The hut has traveled from Pomarkku to Tenhola, during a process of regenerative practices. The fungi are both invited and inoculated, as well as wild-grown. In June 2022 the hut was placed in the Stoa square/Helsinki, and a mushroom garden was grown with the intention to offer the fungi a space to thrive. The garden installation transformed into a space that is open to the public for various forms of encounters. The Hut is an invitation to witness life forms unfolding in ways that we stand alongside, acknowledging unseen processes happening on other timescales. Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot offer a durational performance of embodied and musical mushroom encounters in collaboration with Stefan Rusconi who plays the hut as a hybrid instrument, together with fungi, soil, robot arms, human listening, and prepared piano. They are also joined by long-term ally Shelley Etkin, who leans towards the voices beyond language, tracking articulations that have emerged through communicative processes.

With and from: Jared Gradinger, Angela Schubot, Alm Gnista, Shelley Etkin, Stefan Rusconi
In Co-Creation with: The soil, The moisture, The fungi (inoculated: Turkey tail, Reishi, Birch Polypore, The Hoof Fungus, The Coral Tooth fungus, The Bitter Oyster and others), The moss, The lichen, The stones, The plants, The pine, The spruce, The birch, The glow in the dark, The underground, The unseen
Production Assistant: Riikka Lakea
Produced by: Schubot/Gradinger in close collaboration with Moving in November
Residencies: Moving in November
Supported by: Konstsamfundet
Special thanks to: Javier Mansilla, Laetitia Cañete, Görkem Yücesoy, Aune Kallinen

The Hut has since then evolved: It was moved to the schoolyard of Tölö Gymnasium, where students built its foundation, studied soil and fungi, and used it as a living classroom. (2023-2025). In 2025 The Hut was dismantled and reassembled one final time in Takalanlehto Nature Reserve, where it will be left to decompose at its own pace. The garden remains at the school as a trace, a memory, and a continued site of growth.

This 10-minute FUNGI HUT AUDIO,  written and spoken by Shelley Etkin explores multiplicity through the pronoun ‘we’ in the contexts of co-creative collaborations with fungi, with human and non-human beings, with the hut, and with processes of growth and decomposition.
This text was created within the context of The Hut by Angela Schubot, Jared Gradinger, Alm Gnista, Stefan Rusconi and Shelley Etkin and many forms of fungi, plants, trees, soil, and weather conditions.