18.-19.5.2023

The City is a thin line / Kaupunki on veteen piirretty viiva was a 2-day art + research event with nine works/gestures by Helsinki sea shore and a symposium in Vuosaari. During the event the artists, their works and the symposium guests were invited to share their works, ideas and sensations of how the city outlines are by nature always porous and negotiated, moving and wavy – be they geographical, conceptual, mental or imagined. The participants were also invited to discuss how the art works might shine in relation to norms, neighbourhoods, and dreaming. 

photos © Lena Malm
BUS STOP 1, MUNKKINIEMENRANTA 10:20 –11:00
A dream of a compositor  〰Riikka Pelo



A fictional gesture (a reading; a prose fragment from a work-in-progress novel The First Skin)
Duration of the stop 40 minutes. Walking from the bus stop to the beach and back 10+10 min and reading on the beach 20 minutes.

It is the year 1915. Sofia, a pregnant wife of a construction master, wanders in her dream to an aquatic utopian world underneath a scale model city of new Greater Helsinki. She is guided by women from the past and the future and especially by her new acquaintance, Loja, a weaving artist and a wife of the architect in charge of the new urban plan. Loja has built the model with her two children, Pipsan and Poju, in her atelier outside of the city. The huge work is ready, the vision of the future shared by Loja and her husband despite the war getting nearer to the contours of the country. Sofia’s husband has also worked as a land surveyor for the top secret project now to be made public. In the haunting dream-images eugenic implications of the new (wo)man buried in the vision of the new world unravels as Sofia realizes roaming on very fragile surfaces of her own forgotten and imperfect body, on the skin of a sleeping compositor. The prose fragment reflects the dreams and ideas of two very different women on the verge of possible futures. The author reads out her text in Finnish on the floating contour of the sea and the land, on the site of Eliel Saarinen’s outstanding urban utopia, Munkkiniemi-Haaga city plan, and letter by letter, cell by cell becoming the speaker of the text: her great grandmother. Or is it rather vice versa?



BUS STOP 2A, HIETANIEMI BEACH 11:15–11:45
TEMPUS FUGIT (aika katoaa)  〰Tanja Kiiveri
The dial is bronze and the base below it is black granite.
The base has a text: TEMPUS FUGIT (time disappears) and year and signature MCMXXXI G. Qvist





BUS STOP 2B, HIETANIEMI BEACH / TAIVALSAAREN RANTA 12:00–12:30
Aamiainen ruovikolla [le petit déjeuner sur le champ de roseaux ] 〰Maiju Loukola

-- memories come in waves
Raking in the lost and found of years
And though I'd like to laugh--
–David Sylvian (1987)

After the ice age, soil elevation is approximately 35 cm per 100 years in this region. Taivalsaarenranta and the surrounding Taivallahti and Hietaniemi beach area belong to a cultural environment that is considered to be of regional value in a city having formed around the Empire Centre built in the early 1800s, with ‘year rings’ from the beginning of the 19th century to the 1950s. The area is connected to Meilahti villa area and Seurasaari on the opposite side of by the sea.
Aamiainen ruovikolla – le petit déjeuner sur le champ de roseaux is a tribute to time, sea breeze, trees, and everyman's rights in urban nature.



BUS STOP 3: KATAJANOKKA / MATRUUSINPUISTO, GPS: 60°09'56.2"N 24°58'35.7"E) 13:00–13:30
Memphis (Taking a line for a walk) 〰Nina Liebenberg
Duration of the stop 25 minutes



The city as a thin line by the sea unfurls (here) into a series of longings that span across time, space, and species. Taking the form of a collection of maps composed by a cartographer whose heart is aching for a companion 13 551km away, these works and gestures employ human and more-than human modes of being, to forge a connection across vast distances and immense timeframes.



BUS STOP 4, SOMPASAARI (east sea shore) 13:45–14:15
The city as a thin line by the sea – Merihaka and Sompasaari  〰Alex Arteaga
An aurally-informed exploratory essay
Duration of the stop: max 30 minutes in Sompasaari



The piece consists of an aurally informed exploratory essay in two parts. It aims to describe the city as a thin line by the sea at the shores of Merihaka and Sompasaari. It was written between May 3 and 8 at these two places. The object of research provided by the research project City as Space of Rules and Dreams has been mobilized to realize an initial iteration of a new research project—The Sense of Common Self (a subproject of How to Live Together in Sound? Towards Sonic Democracy). While this exploratory essay intends to contribute to City as Space of Rules and Dreams by providing intuitive insights into a tangential comparison between two neighborhoods—Merihaka and Sompasaari—its function within The Sense of Common Self is to conceive the project’s main research practices—“aurally informed aesthetic research practices”—through practicing them in a specific case. These practices connect two media, in this case aurality—the sonic medium—and the written language. The first medium is activated by practices of listening and hearing, which constitute the basis and background on which writing is performed.

Consequently, in this case, the city that is thought through writing as a thin line by the sea is the city that comes to be through listening and hearing. The above paragraph indicates the phenomenological orientation of this essay and the practices that generated it. The city here is approached as a phenomenon that emerges in the moment of its aural observation through aurally informed writing. The point of departure is neither a predefined concept of the city nor any theory or previous experience of the urban space. “The city as a thin line by the sea” is taken as an empty formulation within the contours of which the city (as a thin line) appears as incipient meaning.



BUS STOP 5, HERMANNINRANTA 14:30–15:00
Mobile Neighbourhood 〰Liisa Ikonen



The artistic gesture provides the opportunity to spend a moment in an interspecies neighbourliness. The gesture consists of twenty folding camping chairs that form a line to the undeveloped wasteland of Hermanninranta, a lush ruderal park where numerous bird species nest. It offers an opportunity to sit, listen, and to sense the proximity of other species and to reflect on one's own relationship with coexistence at a time when massive construction is taking over the surrounding areas. Hermanninranta ruderal park forms a temporary biotope of high biodiversity value, providing food and habitat for a wide range of insects, birds and reptiles. Although housing and services for around 5 500 residents will be built in the nearby area from 2026, much of the existing riverside park will remain as a natural park area. According to Helsinki city, it is intended to preserve the existing natural environment and develop it into an increasingly diverse area. The aim is to create a natural biodiversity park on the waterfront, where the flooding of the beach and the ecosystems it generates will be allowed to flourish. My gesture is an invitation to stop and notice these quiet neighbourlinesses. It is also a reminder of the expansion of the city and the changing relationships between species. The line of chairs, the Mobile Neighbourhood, is also susceptible to change. Each move changes the relationship to the whole of being together. The installation is temporary and will be freely available on Thursday 18 May during 00.01–23.59 near the Hermanninranta waterfront, in the area marked on the map, provided it has not been moved by random passers-by to other neighbourhoods. The time and duration of the visit is optional. Location is marked on the area with an orange stick with an orange flag with the letters MobN.



END STOP 6, AURINKOLAHTI BEACH (3 works)  
16:30–17:00
Slow motion on the Beach (2023)  〰Mia Seppälä
Act on the Aurinkolahti Beach
Location: Urheilukalastajankuja 1 https://goo.gl/maps/in9fk2sZvTCoQYwq8
Wished duration for stop-over by the piece: 10-15 min (duration of the act in full approx. 60 min)



Painting off at Aurinkolahti Beach Combining *off painting* and public space is my way of approaching societal norms. In off painting, the image space and public space blend together as I work in the Aurinkolahti Beach observing surroundings and removing pigment from the photograph with water and brush. The act creates a space that is not entirely public, but not private either. At public beaches, signs and instructions dictate behavior and restrict an individual's freedom to act in their own way, even though the surrounding nature and its beauty are accessible to everyone. When the off painted picture of the seascape is juxtaposed with the signs and instructions, it is emphasizing their absurd nature. The off painted seascape is an image of the landscape that has always existed and will exist, regardless of the rules and restrictions imposed.


17:15–17:45
Maanalaisia viivoja / Under Ground Lines 〰Denise Ziegler  
Aurinkolahti beach, 2023 tussi gessolle, noin 35 cm x 18 cm

Teos koostuu automatismin menetelmällä Metrojunien kanssa yhteistyössä tehdyistä viivamaalauksista. Teokset ovat syntyneet Metromatkan aikana välillä Tapiola – Vuosaari. Maanalaisia viivoja on yritys visualisoida unenomaista tilaa, johon metronkäyttäjän keho joutuu matkan aikana. Metromatkan aikana siirryn usein hypnoottiseen unenkaltaiseen tilaan, johon vaivun junan toistuvien liikkeiden, äänten, Helsingin metron istuinten kirkkaan oranssin värin ja ympäröivän pimeyden saattamana. Eräänä sateisena päivänä seurasin pientä vesilätäkköä, joka liikkui metron lattialla vuorotellen edes ja takaisin. Mietin, että kun ihminen on yli 60% vettä, niin minussakin neste liikkuu ja hytkyy matkan aikana ilman, että minä voin sille mitään. Aloitin kokeiluja, jossa sijoitin tipan tussia metrojunan lattialle asettamani maalauspohjan keskelle. Metron liikkeet, kiihdytykset ja jarrutukset liikuttavat tussia piirtäen tai lähinnä laajentaen viivan matkan aikana. Helsingin metrojunat itse piirtävät aina uudelleen kaupungin maanalaista ääriviiva maan ja meren tuntumassa.
// The work consists of line paintings made in cooperation with the subway trains by a method of automatism. The drawings are created during the Metro trip between Tapiola – Vuosaari. Under Ground Lines is an attempt to visualize the dreamlike state in which the subway user’s body is entering during the journey. During the metro journey, I often move to a hypnotic dreamlike state, which I fall into along with repeating train movements, sounds, bright orange colors of the Helsinki metro seats and the surrounding darkness. One rainy day I followed a small puddle of water that was moving on the subway floor back and forth. I came to think that when a person is more than 60% water, the liquid moves in me as well, and it gnaws during the journey without me being able to do anything about it. I started experimenting with a drop of ink in the middle of the canvas I placed on the floor of the subway train. Metro movements, accelerations and brakes move the ink by drawing or mainly expanding the line during the journey. The Helsinki metro trains themselves are always redrawing the city's underground outline by the earth and the sea.


18:00–18:30
Partially autonomous 〰Pia Euro & Laura Euro
Aurinkolahti beach, swim guard’s tower 18.–19.5. 2023




Partially autonomous is a concrete imagination leaning on an existing space. It can be seen as a reflection of our constructed reality, or as a dream from another kind of world. The work is a sculptural space that does not exist without the situation and the elements from which it is built. A beautiful parasite. The work is the first part of a wider series of works built on spatial and/or temporal in-between spaces.


BIOGRAPHIES

Riikka Pelo (b. 1972) is a novelist and a visiting professor in the master’s writing program at the University of the Arts in Helsinki. Her second novel Our Earthly Life (2013) was awarded with the Finlandia Prize. Pelo’s third novel, All that Is Alive, came out in autumn 2019. She is a doctoral student at the Aalto University, Department of Film and Television, but has lately pursued her artistic research by writing prose.

Tanja Kiiveri (ent. Koponen) is an artist based in Helsinki. She has graduated from the Department of Time and Space in The Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki in 2005. Her works are site- and situation specific installations or arrangements. Currently Kiiveri is working as a lecturer in The Uniarts, Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki.

Maiju Loukola is a university lecturer at the Doctoral Programme in the Academy of Fine Arts/UNIARTS. Maiju’s current research focuses on urban space and the related situation-responsive spatial practices, often involving a tuning with peripherality + everyday performative element. Maiju heads the City as Space of Rules and Dreaming / Kaupunki sääntöjen ja uneksunnan tilana project (2021– 2024). Her former artistic research includes the Floating Peripheries – Mediating the Sense of Place project (2017-2021).

Nina Liebenberg is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. Liebenberg completed her PhD (2022) and her Masters (2011) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. 11 Before embarking on her current research, she taught various courses on UCT’s Honours in Curatorship programme from 2013 – 2021 and facilitated annual interdisciplinary workshops for the programme, using curation as methodology to explore various overlaps and connections between diverse university departments. As a practising artist-curator, she draws on the expertise of individuals from disciplines ranging from chemistry, medical imaging, physics, engineering and botany, to create artworks and curate shows portraying the intersection between the quantifiable and the poetic.

Alex Arteaga is an artist researcher who combines and hybridizes aesthetic, phenomenological and enactivist research practices through an inquiry into embodiments, environments and aesthetic sensemaking. He studied music theory, piano, electronic music, composition and architecture in Barcelona and at the Berlin University of the Arts, and received a PhD in philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin. He is visiting researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki in the framework of the artistic research project How to live together in sound? Towards sonic democracy, funded by the Kone foundation. Former artistic research projects are, among others, Architecture of Embodiment (www.architecture-embodiment.org) and Contingent Agencies (www.contingentagencies.net).

Liisa Ikonen is a scenographer and professor in Design for the Performing Arts at the University of the Arts, Theatre Academy. She has a long-term career in both experimental and institutional fields of theatre and performing arts. In addition she has conducted artistic research, especially on the changing working methods and environments of the scenographer, including Hypnos project (1994-2000), SpiceSpiritualizing Public Spaces (2010), Floating Peripheries – Mediating the Sense of Place (2017-2021).

Denise Ziegler, born in Switzerland, is a Helsinki-based visual artist and postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts, university of the Arts Helsinki. Doctorate (DFA 2010), thesis title: Features of the Poetic – The Mimetic Practice of the Visual Artist. Ziegler’s interventional artworks and research pose questions to public infrastructure, to walls, fences, buildings and pedestrian routes. In a post-beuysian vein, the artist’s workshop is extended to public space in order to work with its mechanisms and possibilities.In her recent research Ziegler is developing with colleges Petri Kaverma and Tero Heikkinen the method of the Continues Prototype trough which is tested what future situation a given situation found in our present surroundings could be a prototype of. Ziegler uses the method to read and develop temporary experiences with and in public space. denise-ziegler.squarespace.com

Mia Seppälä is a multidisciplinary Finnish visual artist working with performance, photography and moving image. Her works often concern existing socio-cultural structures and established procedures. Seppälä is completing her doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in the University of the Arts Helsinki, where graduated as MFA in 2017.

Pia Euro is a visual artist and lecturer at School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Aalto University. Her work combines different mediums and technics such as degradable materials, moving image, drawings, and constructions.

Laura Euro is designer interested in experimental and participatory practices. She graduated from Aalto University major in spatial design, and she works as library designer in City of Espoo




Day 2, Friday 19 May 2023
SYMPOSIUM AT LILLA VILLA LILL KALLVIK VUOSAARI
14:00 Welcome + intro, Maiju Loukola and Pia Euro
14:30 Hossam Hewidy’s guest talk (title tbc)
15:00 Discussion
15:30 Talks by City as Space of Rules and Dreaming project researchers Aino Hirvola and Paul Tiensuu
16:30 Nina Liebenberg Taking a line for a walk (after Klee)
A performative talk that navigates a selection of artworks, texts, and audio. It situates Memphis (Taking a line for a walk) within a larger context of explorers who have all faced the terra incognito in its various forms – and found ways to not only traverse it but map it in courageous new ways.
17:00 Alex Arteaga The city as a thin line by the sea—Merihaka and Sompasaari.
An aurally-informed exploratory essay
A reading of selected passages of the essay introduced by a brief clarification of the practice.
17:30 discussion with artists, reseachers, audience
〰 18:30– After-ski at Villa Lill Kallvik

SYMPOSIUM BIOGRAPHIES

Hossam Hewidy teaches and studies Regional and Urban Planning. He has been nominated as a lecturer at the department of architecture in June 2015. Hewidy’s interests are: Planning Policy and multiculturalism, Public Participation, Town Planning for Sustainable Tourism as well as Sustainability in Urban Planning. Hewidy believes in the social role of an architect. Hewidy worked as an hourly-paid tutor in most of the Urban Planning courses from 2006-2014 in Aalto University.

Hewidy has worked also as a University Teacher in the academic year 2014-2015. Hewidy has been graduated in Helsinki University of Technology with a Master of Science (Architecture) 2009, with distinction. His Major is Urban Planning and Design and Minor is Building design. He got his B.Sc. (Architecture) in 1987 from the Military Technical College, Cairo.

Hewidy’s doctoral dissertation The hidden city of immigrants in Helsinki's urban leftovers – The homogenization of the city and the lost diversity (2022 Aalto University) °shows shortcomings in the city's ability to take into account the diversity of urban space°;

“The increase in the number of city dwellers with an immigrant background is reflected in the diversification of Helsinki's urban space. Concentrations of services related to foreign cultures have emerged in different parts of Helsinki. Such services, whether secular or spiritual, represent the spatialization of multiculturalism and are an important part of the daily lives of city dwellers. Over the last two decades, such concentrations have been identified especially in old shopping malls and residential business centers. In a recent dissertation, Hossam Hewidy from Aalto University examines urban change and related issues through these concentrations. Currently, Finnish urban planning lacks a clear vision to support the emergence of multiculturalism.

The dissertation seeks to fill this gap and raise awareness on the issue of multicultural planning. Ultimately, it is a question of equality: the equal right of every citizen to urban space and whether planning can be culturally neutral. The dissertation focuses on immigrants’ entrepreneurial clusters and the spatial transformation caused by them. The results of the study show that such transformation, with its symbolic and spatial features, is enterprising and innovative, as well as a logical consequence of immigrants’ under-representation in the labor market. Immigrants’ entrepreneurial clusters have boosted the vitality of many residential areas. They have contributed to the emergence of places and served as a starting point for the revival of active urban life in many areas. Despite this, services related to different cultures in Helsinki are under threat in many of these concentrations.

The results of the study further show that urban planning has failed to take multiculturalism into account in a growing city. The city pursues a policy of responding to segregation, and the measures to limit it are destabilizing multiculturalism. The data shows that this phenomenon is reflected in both traditional design and alternative design methods, such as scenario planning and urban planning competitions. Urban planning processes have simply failed to consider immigrants in urban development. Doctoral researcher Hossam Hewidy argues that in Helsinki both the lack of political will and the fear of segregation have led to ignoring the immigrants’ right to the city.”

See the thesis in full: The Hidden city of immigrants in Helsinki's urban leftovers – the homogenization of the city and the lost diversity More of Hossam’s published work: https://people.aalto.fi/hossam.hewidy#publications

Aino Hirvola, M.Sc. (arch.), doctoral candidate in urban planning Aino’s doctoral thesis examines professional lobbying in urban planning and politicization as a source of democratic legitimacy of planning. Her main research interest is planning theory, within which she studies politicization, populism, emancipation, and transparency in planning. Currently she is also working in the research project ‘Transforming Anatomies of Democratic Planning: Combining Planning-Theoretical and Legal Perspectives on Flexible Regulation in Finnish Land-Use Law’ (TRANAPLAN) funded by the Academy of Finland. She is also a university teacher in the department of built environment, Aalto University. In CITY AS SPACE OF RULES AND DREAMING, Aino works in the ‘neighbourhood component’, where she focuses on the connection between emancipation and urban space and planning.

Paul Tiensuu, MSSc, doctoral candidate in law at the University of Helsinki Tiensuu’s main areas of research in CITY AS SPACE OF RULES AND DREAMING project are in the norms component, where he develops the theory of norms and their materialisation and effect in the urban space, and in the neighbourhood component where he studies how the urban space affects the potential of collective political action in neighbourhoods. He specialises on 20th century French philosophy, particularly structural theory, and in this vein contributes to the general theoretic background of the project. In his thesis Tiensuu elaborates upon network and systems theoretic research to study the structural effect of the regulatory 14 systems to the change of laws, including how the regulation can be influenced from outside. This issue he has tackled also in his recent research on lobbying.

Nina Liebenberg is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. Liebenberg completed her PhD (2022) and her Masters (2011) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Before embarking on her current research, she taught various courses on UCT’s Honours in Curatorship programme from 2013 – 2021 and facilitated annual interdisciplinary workshops for the programme, using curation as methodology to explore various overlaps and connections between diverse university departments. As a practising artist-curator, she draws on the expertise of individuals from disciplines ranging from chemistry, medical imaging, physics, engineering and botany, to create artworks and curate shows portraying the intersection between the quantifiable and the poetic.

Alex Arteaga is an artist researcher who combines and hybridizes aesthetic, phenomenological and enactivist research practices through an inquiry into embodiments, environments and aesthetic sensemaking. He studied music theory, piano, electronic music, composition and architecture in Barcelona and at the Berlin University of the Arts, and received a PhD in philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin. He is visiting researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki in the framework of the artistic research project How to live together in sound? Towards sonic democracy, funded by the Kone foundation. Former artistic research projects are, among others, Architecture of Embodiment (www.architecture-embodiment.org) and Contingent Agencies (www.contingentagencies.net).

25.-26.8.2022
25.8–26.8.20

Group exhibition  /  Art Event Hietsusta avaruuteen

Ari Hirvosen muistoseminaarin yhteydessä 

Artists: Salla Myllylä, Mia Seppälä, Antti Nyyssölä, Denise Ziegler, Marko Karo, Tanja Kiiveri, Pia Euro, Mika Elo, Maiju Loukola (convener)

Hietsun Paviljonki Helsinki

Denise Ziegler                                                              

Maiju Loukola

Tanja Kiiveri, Marko Karo

Pia Euro