LIMUS

LIMUS – Living Images of Urban Soil

Location of activities and scope

Lahti, Finland

Finland – Artistic ambassador

Executive Summary

Living Images of Urban Soil Memory (LIMUS) brings together visual art and soil science to make the invisible microbial life of urban soils visible and relatable. The project explores soil memory—the soil’s ability to store and transmit traces of its past—through microbial photography, participatory workshops, videos, and a travelling suitcase exhibition. Audiences encounter beneficial microbes such as wild yeasts and Mrakia as active collaborators, not abstract subjects, fostering new forms of soil literacy.
LIMUS creates accessible formats for schools, libraries, and communities, linking artistic practice with research in microbiology, soil ecology, and epigenetics. The outcomes include a photo series, a video artwork, a replicable workshop toolkit, and public talks. Intangible results include increased awareness of soil health, stronger community–science ties, and new interdisciplinary models that can be adapted across Europe, advancing the goals of A Soil Deal for Europe.

Motivation Statement

Soil is part of the rhizome that connects all life.
What looks fragile is in fact fundamental.
Beneath the visible world stretches a vast, non-linear network — a quiet architecture of roots, filaments, microbes and memory.
In this web, there is no centre. Only connection. And from this connection, everything grows.
The rhizome has been central to Johanna Rotko’s artistic work since 2014, but the phrasing was first articulated at the Soilscape seminar in summer 2025. Since then, it has served as a way of expressing the deep connections between soil, beneficial microbes, memory, and life.