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ART + RESEARCH EVENT IN 21–23 May 2024
c i t y i s s o u n d , c i t y i s q u i c k s a n d
– voicing imaginaries and dissonances
°City is sound, city is quicksand – voicing imaginaries and dissonances° is the third and final art + research event organized by the City as Space of Rules and Dreaming research project[i] (enabled by Kone Foundation 2021–2025) at Hietsu Pavilion in Helsinki on May 21–23, 2024. The event focuses on spaces, voices and practices of uncertainty and potentiality in urban landscape.
VENUE & TIME
May 21–23, 2024 in Hietsu Pavilion (Address: Hiekkarannantie 9, Helsinki)PROGRAMME The event is a celebration of artworks / installations and performances, talks, presentations and workshops by 37 artists and/or researchers. The artworks are exhibited during the whole time of the event inside and outside of the surroundings of Hietsu Pavilion. Please see all the details of the artists and their works and the schedules of performances and workshops, as well as talks and presentations below.
Tuesday 21.5.
11:00–13:30
WORKSHOP Wandering soundscapes by
Jaakko Ruuska,
featuring Brigitta Stone-Johnson + BJ Engelbrecht, Jill Richards & Jurgen Meekel
Duration: 2,5 hoursMaximum of 9 participants
Meeting point: in front of the pavilion
In the Wandering soundscapes workshop, the aim is to study the event of listening. How do we situate ourselves with the soundscapes of the city? How do we listen? In this practical workshop, the participants are invited to take short walks and listen to the soundscapes of the southern corner of Helsinki. The task is to invent instructions for listening, and to try them out together. The goal is to study, how the event of listening situates us within the urban ecology.
*Note the weather reservation. In case of the heavy rain, the workshop will be cancelled. Otherwise, dress according to the weather.
*PER REGISTRATION / inquiries jaakko.ruuska@uniarts.fi
14:00–14:30
PERFORMANCE Sirpa Jokinen, Places, sounds, wordsCoffee
15:00–17:30 GUEST ARTIST’S PERFORMANCE by Danae Theodoridou,
One Three Some - An Attempt for Devising a Democratic Assembly
Duration: appr. 2 hours followed by discussion
Maximum of 40 participants
Location: pavilion big hall / paviljongin iso sali
In An Attempt for Devising a Democratic Assembly, the audience members/participants create their own citizens’ assembly following a text given to them at the beginning of the performance. The text assigns ‘roles’ (of speaker, listener, moderator, etc.) to the members of the assembly, instructing them on what to do or say (or even refuse to do or say if they want to). Part of the text is left open, giving space to the participating individuals to freely express their thoughts about democracy and our social coexistence. Through a game structure, the assembly is led step by step into a collective reflection on the practice of assembly and our personal attitude towards it. Recognizing the central role of the body in politics, this participatory performance explores how the way we use and position our bodies in relation to other bodies can affect the way we think, speak, feel and act politically.
An Attempt for Devising a Democratic Assembly is the third phase of the artist’s research on the relationship between art and democracy. After the Analogue Campaign, which focused on the practice of public speaking, and Languages of the Unheard, which experimented with the language of protests, this time the focus is on an embodied approach to the practice of assembling.
*PER REGISTRATION / inquiries maiju.loukola@uniarts.fi
17:00–19:00
PERFORMANCE by Timo Tähkänen, Little Mermaid18:00– OPENING OF EVENT + EXHIBITION
Feat. Anita Szentesi’s continuous workshop The Land and I:
PART 1 – Briefing inside the Hietsu Pavilion. Anita’s workshop aims to create an emotional awareness with the land that we inhabit on this earth. It is a land gratitude workshop designed to nurture our relationship with the land. The workshop will begin on the evening of 21 May at 18:00pm and conclude on 23 May at 11:00am. ✦See additional info below.
Wednesday 22.5.
9:00–11:00
WORKSHOP: Get Hooked by Marloeke van der VlugtDuration: 2 hours
Minimum of 6 / maximum of 12 participants.
Meeting point: in the pavilion
This workshop introduces participants to my artistic research and creation method Touching which aims to actively distribute agency between materialities ((non)human bodies, objects, spaces). Touching attempts to sensitize participants for their reciprocal relation to ‘the world around’. I will focus on the Hietsu Pavilion to jointly explore if and how Touching can support uncovering or refinding connections that were lost within this building over the last 65 years. To do so, I will guide the participants experientially to notice relations between materialities and time, to jointly (re)formulate and transform historical anecdotes into actual imaginations and poetic material speculations.
*PER REGISTRATION / inquiries maiju.loukola@uniarts.fi
This workshop introduces participants to my artistic research and creation method Touching which aims to actively distribute agency between materialities ((non)human bodies, objects, spaces). Touching attempts to sensitize participants for their reciprocal relation to ‘the world around’. I will focus on the Hietsu Pavilion to jointly explore if and how Touching can support uncovering or refinding connections that were lost within this building over the last 65 years. To do so, I will guide the participants experientially to notice relations between materialities and time, to jointly (re)formulate and transform historical anecdotes into actual imaginations and poetic material speculations.
*PER REGISTRATION / inquiries maiju.loukola@uniarts.fi
11:00–13:00
PERFORMANCE by Timo Tähkänen, Little Mermaid11:45–12:30
SOUND INSTALLATION Poetry of Small things,Playgroup: Jill Richards, BJ Engelbrecht & Jurgen Meekel, intr. by Jaakko Ruuska
12:30–13:30 Lunch
13:30–16:00
PANEL DISCUSSION
Artistic research and city space: ”How will we live together?”
Chaired by Stefan Winter
Panelists:
Anita Szentesi | Lauri Jäntti | Danae Theodoridou | Paul Tiensuu | BEEHIVE CULTURE WORX: Prince Massingham, Mocke J van Veuren, Neo Monyamane, Rashid Juma, Sophy Wentzel | Heidi Hänninen | Alexander Damianisch Coffee
16:30–18:00
SOUNDINGS, TALKS 1Eerika Jalasaho, smelling space and time (talk)
Jan-Erik Andersson, A Leaf and a Hexagon – Viruses for Change (talk)
Andy Best, OBJEKTI – art as an actor for social empowerment (talk)
18:30–
EVENING BY THE BEACH w Taivallahti Protectorate: As we reach the end, we go to the beginning, which only means the end must change (Henna-Riikka Halonen & Maiju Loukola)Thursday 23.5.
9:00–10:45
SOUNDINGS, TALKS 2Otso Aavanranta, Unité sonore mobile (sound performance, followed by discussion)
Samedha Arora, Assent Listening of Dissent: A listener in a political environment; Helsinki Protests for Gaza Ceasefire in 2023- 2024 (talk)
Alex Arteaga, Exploring signlesness. An essay on the proto-phenomenal city (extended reading)
11:00–13:00
WITS interventionsAnita Szentesi
Zen Marie
Brigitta Stone-Johnson
13:00–14:00 Lunch
14:00–15:00
GUEST ARTIST’S LECTURE-PERFORMANCE, Shubhangi Singh, Rest/Unrest15:30–17:00
ROUNDTABLE, City as Space of Rules and DreamingHenna Halonen, Aino Hirvola, Maiju Loukola, Jaakko Ruuska, Tanja Tiekso, Paul Tiensuu
17:15–18:00
ON PUBLISHING (with Coffee)Zen Marie & Brigitta Stone-Johnson, with ellipses [--] journal cfp launch
Halonen-Loukola-Tiekso, RUUKKU theme issue cfp launch
EXHIBITION
Open: Tue 18:00–22:00, Wed & Thu 9:00–18:00
☆Quien bien quiete tarde olvida ~ Elisa Villota☆ spof ~ Simo Kellokumpu
☆ Little Mermaid ~ Timo Tähkänen
☆ (tbc) Carrier bag bricolages ~Brigitta Stone-Johnson
☆ 1/3 ikebana (Helsinki, Paris, Lyon, Montreal, Tokyo, Helsinki), 2010-20191/3 ikebana (Helsinki), 2024 ~ Vincent Roumagnac
☆ An Attempt to Devise a Democratic Assembly ~ Danae Theodoridou
☆ Citizen Pine ~ Annette Arlander
☆ Photosynthesis ~ Nina Liebenberg
☆ Unité sonore mobile ~ Otso Aavanranta
☆ Sugar Free: A Digital Manifesto ~ Zen Marie
☆ Places, Sounds, Words ~ Sirpa Jokinen
☆ Kukkulan kuningas / King of the hill ~ Mika Elo
☆ processual work with focus on external factors ~ Euro & Kiiveri
☆ Float ~ Mohammed "Moe" Mohammed Moe Mustafa
☆ The Poetry of Small Things ~ Playgroup
☆ Bringing a Poem to a Gunfight ~ Shubhangi Singh
☆ As we reach the end, we go to the beginning, which only means the end must change ~ Henna-Riikka Halonen & Maiju Loukola
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS / RESEARCHERS / SPEAKERS
/ PANEL & WORKSHOP CONVENERS (from ø to a)
Stefan Winter, Convener of Panel discussion, Wed 22.5.:
Artistic Research and the City Space: “How will we live together?”
PANEL STATEMENT
In the Global North as in the Global South, we are witnessing the slow beginnings of a tectonic shift that is about to change the understanding of architecture and urban design. In this process, urban development is moving away from top-down planning towards mediated bottom-up processes in which all stakeholders can be involved. The single building is no longer seen as an isolated entity but rather considered to be a cell within the living tissue of the city. And most fundamentally, the city space itself is not primarily apprehended as a built environment, as a hard infrastructure anymore, but understood as a habitat, taking into account the “soft infrastructure,” the cultural lifeworld dimension that makes the city work. The Venice Biennale Architecture 2021 marked this shift by unpacking its guiding question “How will we live together?” In this opening, artistic research can enter into novel collaborations and unfold its potential to explore, map and project the city space and to make an impact in urban development processes. The panel is showcasing this potential in various aspects by presenting and discussing a wide range of concrete projects from the Global North and Global South.
BIO
Stefan Winter, philosopher and author, is Honorary Professor for Artistic Research and Head of the Institute for Artistic Research at Film University Babelsberg, and Visiting Professor at the Wits School of Architecture and Planning in Johannesburg / South Africa. He served as representative of Germany in the European Forum for Advanced Practices. In his research and teaching at universities and art schools in Basel, Berlin, Bochum, Braunschweig, Düsseldorf, Helsinki, Perugia and Potsdam, he traversed and connected artistic and scientific knowledge cultures. Numerous publications on all epochs in the history of knowledge and on present-day questions across the disciplines.
Elisa Villota, Quien bien quiere tarde olvida (Installation)
Quien bien quiere tarde olvida speaks of the only thing that remains to be found or perceived in places in which there are only traces of what once was and still is, but which tomorrow could cease to be. The piece shows businesses or establishments with an abandoned appearance, but which are still in operation today. What happens in these places? These sensations linked to these spaces will remain mainly in the memory, but will these memories be lost with the passage of time?
Therefore, Quien bien quiere tarde olvida seeks to show what still remains against what will be forgotten, recovering and making visible forgotten spaces.Thus, through several journeys through different cities, towns and neighbourhoods, the audiovisual work captures the spaces on video and photography, as well as the sounds that allude to them.
BIO
In my artistic practice, I reflect on what I perceive in the places I select to work in, usually situated between the urban and the rural. My practice moves between different disciplines such as audio, video, or photography, ending up in a set of installations in which different readings can be generated, giving rise to multiple points of view and seeking to make the public feel appealed to and relate to the work. Through these installations, I aim to encourage viewers to engage with their surroundings in new ways that provoke curiosity.
Marloeke van der Vlugt, Get Hooked (Workshop Wed 22.5.)
Duration: 2 hours
Minimum of 6 / maximum of 12 participants.
This workshop introduces participants to my artistic research and creation method Touching which aims to actively distribute agency between materialities ((non)human bodies, objects, spaces). Touching attempts to sensitize participants for their reciprocal relation to ‘the world around’. I will focus on the Hietsu Pavilion to jointly explore if and how Touching can support uncovering or refinding connections that were lost within this building over the last 65 years. To do so, I will guide the participants experientially to notice relations between materialities and time, to jointly (re)formulate and transform historical anecdotes into actual imaginations and poetic material speculations.
This workshop introduces participants to my artistic research and creation method Touching which aims to actively distribute agency between materialities ((non)human bodies, objects, spaces). Touching attempts to sensitize participants for their reciprocal relation to ‘the world around’. I will focus on the Hietsu Pavilion to jointly explore if and how Touching can support uncovering or refinding connections that were lost within this building over the last 65 years. To do so, I will guide the participants experientially to notice relations between materialities and time, to jointly (re)formulate and transform historical anecdotes into actual imaginations and poetic material speculations.
BIO
Marloeke van der Vlugt is a Dutch cross-disciplinary artist-researcher based in Amsterdam with a background in performance, fine arts, and scenography. Her work has been exhibited and performed in multiple gallery exhibitions and theatres. In 2015 her book Performance as Interface | Interface as Performance was released in which she explores her living in a technology-driven, networked world and its impact on the body. She is a lecturer at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and a researcher at the Professorship Performative Processes. In 2019 she started her artistic PhD project that inquires into our aesthetic interaction with materialities (bodies, objects, spaces) through the lens of Touching.
Timo Tähkänen, Little Mermaid (Performance, Tue 21.5. & Wed 22.5.)
In the Little Mermaid performance, the non-binary mermaid character’s species is on the brink of extinction, and they are searching for a new habitat in the city. They ask the audience/passersby if there is space for them in the city. They also inquire about where they can find a safe restroom.
Beside the mermaid, there is a sign explaining the purpose of the performance. Additionally, the sign urges to keep the mermaid wet until their matters are resolved. The audience can spray water on the mermaid using spray bottles. During the performance, the mermaid takes notes in their diary. The Little Mermaid performance is a continuation of Tähkänen’s performances, which they consider as field research.
BIO
Timo Tähkänen is a visual and drag artist and a first-year doctoral student (2023-) at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts. In their autoethnographic research, they examine the importance of listening and art-pedagogical thinking for the work of a queer visual artist. They obtained an MA in Fine Art at the Academy of Fine Art (Finland) in 2014. They graduated as a visual artist from the University of Applied Sciences of South-Karelia (Finland) in 2007. Their artistic research is supported by the Kone Foundation.
Paul Tiensuu (Panel discussion, Wed 22.5. + Roundtable Thu 23.5.)
PANEL STATEMENT
How will we live together? Will we live together? Do we want to live together? Do we want together? These questions form my perspective to the discussion at hand. I am concerned with the disintegration of the diverse communities in the contemporary societies on the one hand, and with the collective action capacity or the lack thereof of these communities on the other.
BIO
Researcher in City as Space of Rules and Dreaming project. Focus on the regulation of space by norms, and the actualisation of norms in space.
Tanja Tiekso (Roundtable, Thu 23.5.)
BIO
Tanja Tiekso is a PhD and researcher specializing in avant-garde studies. Her previous research projects include, e.g., studies in the aesthetics of experimental music, Italian Futurism and new music during the Cold War. In CITY AS SPACE OF RULES AND DREAMING Tanja studies the history of the artist practice of ‘dreaming’ in the city space in the context of the early avant-garde art as well as sound as the subconscious of the city. In addition to her research, Tanja works as an experimental musician and writer.
Danae Theodoridou, An Attempt to Devise a Democratic Assembly
(Performance, Tue 21.5. + Panel, Wed 22.5.)
In An Attempt to Devise a Democratic Assembly, the audience members/participants create their own citizens’ assembly following a script given to them at the beginning of the performance. The script assigns ‘roles’ (of speaker, listener, moderator, etc.) to the members of the assembly, instructing them on what to do or say (or even refuse to do or say if they want to). Part of the text is left open, giving space to participants to freely express their thoughts about democracy and our social coexistence. Through a game structure, participants are led step by step into a collective reflection on the practice of assembly and our attitude towards it. Recognizing the central role of the body in politics, this participatory performance explores how the way we use and position our bodies in relation to other bodies can affect the way we think, speak, feel and act politically.
An Attempt to Devise a Democratic Assembly is the third phase of the artist’s research on the relationship between art and democracy. After the Analogue Campaign, which focused on the
practice of public speaking, and Languages of the Unheard, which experimented with the language of protests, this time the focus is on an embodied approach to the practice of assembling.
Creation: Danae Theodoridou
in collaboration with: Betina Panagiotara, Manos Vavadakis, Katerina Zisoudi
Performed by: 42-45 audience members
Set & costume design: Magda Dimou
Dramaturgical advice: Lara Barsacq, Rudi Laermans, Efrosini Protopapa
BIO
Danae Theodoridou (www.danaetheodoridou.com) is a performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. She completed her practice-led PhD in Roehampton University in London (2013). Her artistic research focuses on social imaginaries, the practice of democracy and the way that art contributes to the emergence of socio-political alternatives. She teaches in the MA Performing Public Space in Fontys Academy of the Arts (NL), curates practice-led research projects, and presents and publishes her work internationally. She is the co-author of The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017) and the author of Publicing - Practising Democracy Through Performance (Nissos, 2022).
Anita Szentesi (Workshop, Tue 21.5.–Thu 23.5. + Panel, Wed 22.5.)
PANEL STATEMENT
For the panel discussion, she will be presenting an aspect of her research which focuses on the notion that one place contains multiple narratives and how that same place can be read from the point of view of multiple characters. The importance of this aspect in her research is to create awareness for a designer, by including multiple voices, the voice of the designer, and the voice of the users and other beings, in the design process of a building in its context. The aim is to achieve a design which is led by multiple voices who have an embodied lived experience of a place rather than from a top-down single voicewho may not really understand the diverse nuances and complexities of that place.
Anita Szentesi will facilitate a continuous workshop during this event called The Land and I which is a land gratitude workshop designed to nurture our relationship with the land.
✦WORKSHOP INFO:
Participants will engage with the land by ‘being in the land’ and creating a visual narrative called ‘The Land and I’ prompted by the facilitator of the workshop. The visual narrative will include the creation of a land character, through drawing, and the relationship of the participant with the land character in the visual story that they create, also through drawing. The narrative will involve a past, present and future exploration of the land and its relationship to the participant. The context of the workshop is in and around the Hietsu Pavilion, which means that for local participants, there may be a focus on the unresolved disagreements between the proposed building project for a spa hotel in Hietaniemi, and its effects on the nearby beach area, and the people of Helsinki. For those participants who are not local, they may focus on similarland issues which are contextually relevant to where they come from.
Part 1 – Briefing inside the Hietsu Pavilion / Part 2 – ‘Being in the Land’ Meditation (Outside and around the Hietsu Pavilion) / Part 3 – Drawing the Land Character and Yoursel / Part 4 – Drawing the Visual Narrative (Storyboard).
Architectural Drawing Film attached to the Hietsu Pavilion windows act as the surface for participantsto draw their land characters and narratives. Participants will meditate and observe the surrounding environment and return to the pavilion to draw what and how they experienced their affective and emotional relationship with the site and spaces onto the film in the pavilion windows. They may first draw the land character and themselves and after they may draw the visual storyboard in the form of apast, present and future narrative, creating three chronological story frames (triptych). Depending on the availability of the windows inside the pavilion, the workshop may include 20 – 40 participants. A participatory discussion will be held about the completed character and narrative drawings during the Wits Interventions on 23 May in a designated timeslot between 11:00am and 13:00pm.Participants may receive an Information Sheet and a Consent Form to sign so that the information may be used in the research (PhD / publications) of the facilitator.
BIO
Anita Szentesi is an architect, filmmaker, lecturer, and researcher, currently situated in the Universityof the Witwatersrand School of Architecture and Planning in Johannesburg, South Africa. In her research she identifies that diverse and complex relationships exist between people, culture, identity,history and buildings and places. She proposes a design methodology called character-led design,which combines architecture and film, to explore possibilities to engage new ways of designing tomachieve socially conscious place-making, and new ways of communicating the complexities of life indesign representatons. Anita Szentesi’s research is currently in the form of a PhD doctorate, in its middle stages, and explores an interdisciplinary narrative-spatial relationship between architecture and film, which she began exploring in the Master of Arts Film and TV that she completed in 2018.
Brigitta Stone-Johnson (Feat. in Workshop, Tue 21.5. + WITS interventions, Thu 23.5.)
I will discuss the ideas developing around the works, around A ‘Carrier bag’ approach to urban ‘mapping’. Walking and Gathering detritus as a way of 'listening' and urban bricolages as a way of writing a material score.
BIO
Brigitta Stone-Johnson (Brigs) is an Architect, Fine artist and gardener who lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been a lecturer and interdisciplinary creative practice researcher at the Wits School of Architecture since 2016. Her research considers the materiality of post-extractive terrains, taking an environmental humanity and the post-human approach in the arts. Her PhD research and creative practice consider vital materiality and the Anthropocene through collaborations with more than human oddkin, such as local stone, tar, rubble and plastic, in post-extractive urban terrains.
Shubhangi Singh, Rest/Unrest: Notes on Loitering
(Invited guest artist talk, Thu 23.5. + Installation)
The streets hold the possibility of being a hegemonic site where power is exerted, expressed, and challenged. It is a complex yet uncontained petri dish where anonymity meets identity; thus making it a fertile ground of study.
Rest/Unrest: Notes on Loitering is a lecture-performance viewing public and social spaces as contact zones which further replicate and proliferate these existing patterns into everyday work, safety and leisure.
BIO
Shubhangi Singh’s practice often draws upon existing knowledges to address movement, identity, queries related to the body and its relationship with the environment. Singh considers ideas of absence and absenting in her work as a way of reflecting upon what is visible, particularly in relation to history, memory and the labour of memorialising. Working across media, from text to moving image and site-specific installations, Singh’s works are routinely suspended between fiction and non-fiction, often adopting the position of an unreliable narrator.
Jaakko Ruuska, Wandering soundscapes (Workshop, Tue 21.5.)
Feat. Brigitta Stone–Johnson + BJ Engelbrecht, Jurgen Meekel & Jill Richards
In this workshop, the aim is to study the event of listening. How do we situate ourselves with the soundscapes of the city? How do we listen? In this practical workshop, the participants are invited to take short walks and listen to the soundscapes of the southern corner of Helsinki. The task is to invent instructions for listening, and to try them out together. The goal is to study, how the event of listening situates us within the urban ecology.
*The meeting point for the workshop is in front of the Hietsu Pavilion.
*Note the weather reservation. In case of the heavy rain, the workshop will be cancelled. Otherwise, dress according to the weather.
*Max. 9 participants. Sign up in advance by e-mail: jaakko.ruuska(at)uniarts.fi
BIO
Jaakko Ruuska is an artist and researcher who lives in Helsinki, Finland. As a researcher, he is interested in problems concerning spatial practices. In particular, he is interested in the emerge of peripheries in the distribution of the sensible. Currently he is a visiting postdoctoral researcher in the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts in Helsinki (UNIARTS), and he participates the interdisciplinary research project: City as Space of Rules and Dreaming. His artistic practice is based on documentary filmmaking and live arts. Ruuska holds the Doctor of Fine Arts (UNIARTS), and a Master of Arts in Documentary Filmmaking (Aalto-university, 2012). Since 2009 he has also been a member of the live art collective Other Spaces.
Vincent Roumagnac, 1/3 ikebena (Berlin, Paris, Lyon, Montreal, Tokyo, Helsinki), 2010-2019 +
1/3 ikebana (Helsinki), 2024 (Installation)
From 2010 to 2019, once a year, Vincent Roumagnac engaged in the site-sensitive “1/3 Ikebana” series, during visits to, and walks through, large cities. In each iteration of the series, he follows the same protocol:
1. He selectively gathers freely-growing weeds and flowers from a "third-landscape" (1) area within the city.
2. With the vegetal finds, he crafts a floral arrangement in the traditional Ikebana Shōka style (2).
3. The resulting floral arrangement is showcased alongside a photograph of the site where the materials were collected.
For “City is Sound, City is Quicksand”; Vincent reactivates the series and realizes a 1/3 Ikebana using vegetation sourced from a third-landscape zone encountered in the surrounding of the Hietsu Pavilion. The arrangement is displayed within the exhibition space, accompanied by an image of the picking site and a retrospective of previous 1/3 Ikebanas.
(1) « The third landscape is the space unattended by man and ruled over by natural evolution » Gilles Clément, “Manifesto of the Third Landscape”, 2003.
(2) Shōka is a style of ikebana (Japanese traditional flower art) formalized in the late Edo Period (XVIIth C.). By using from one to three kinds of floral materials Shōka expresses the living form of plants rooted in the soil and growing upward. Shōka is suitable for being placed in the tokonoma of a small Japanese traditional room.
BIO
Vincent Roumagnac is a Helsinki-based Basque-French artist and researcher. Vincent started his career in theater as a director but gradually moved away from straight theater context. Instead, he had been focusing on how the concept of theatricality evolves in the context of climate change, technology, and discipline-fluidity, at the crossing of visual, installation, site-oriented and scenic arts. In 2020, Roumagnac completed a Doctorate in Arts at Uniarts Helsinki, with the artistic research project 'Reacclimating the Stage'. After that, he began the post-doctoral project DATA OCEAN THEATRE, as a visiting researcher at the same institution. In parallel, Vincent has been practicing floral design, based on the techniques learnt in his youth in a family of florists and gardeners, and on the practice of ikebana he has developed during many stays in Japan since 2008.
Playgroup: BJ Engelbrecht, Jill Richards, Jurgen Meekel, The Poetry of small things
(Sound installation at Hietsu Pavilion & at Lapinlahti former Mental Hospital)
Description: Within the framework of the ongoing artistic inquiry entitled "The Poetry of Small Things," we propose two distinct sound installations: one situated within the interior and/or exterior of the Hietsu Pavilion, and a sound installation in the repurposed mental hospital. These installations are conceived as intermittent broadcasts, each engaging with unique thematic concerns—sonic displacement and sonic subversion. The Pavilion's installation employs a range of aural mapping techniques to articulate the sonic landscape of Johannesburg, interrogating the intersections of aural cartography, composition, and sound installation practices. This piece raises critical questions regarding the experiential and perceptual shifts that occur when sounds characteristic of one locality are transposed into a disparate context. Conversely, the installation in the cafeteria seeks to subtly subvert traditional modes of musical reception by modifying the ambient 'muzak' inherent to such spaces, thereby altering the auditory expectations of the space's occupants. Lastly, the old mental hospital, now reused as a public exhibition space where the installation will broadcast sound from the earlier-mentioned two spaces combined. Both installations are aimed at questioning the nuances of the background soundscape, asking how transient auditory experiences can provoke a deeper understanding of how sound can deepen our understanding of the city.
BIO
Playgroup is a Johannesburg-based multidisciplinary art collective whose main creative and theoretical interest is in the city space, with a particular focus on how it is experienced through sound. The group has three members: Jurgen Meekel, Jill Richards, and Barend Engelbrecht. Jurgen Meekel, a multi-disciplinary artist and lecturer at Wits University, explores various fields within filmmaking, with a particular interest in the intersection of visual art and sound art. Jill Richards is a classically trained pianist, free improviser, sound artist and inter-disciplinary collaborator. Barend Engelbrecht is an artist and researcher. His current research interest aims to provide an auditory perspective on the relationship between urban design and the cultural ecology of the city.
Mohammed “Moe” Mustafa, Float (Installation)
In recent years, I’ve found myself drawn to the nostalgic tunes of Arabic 80s pop, reminiscent of my childhood. However, instead of evoking familiar memories, these melodies now serve as a lens through which I perceive my diasporic existence, highlighting the feelings of detachment and alienation in the host country. This shift prompted me to examine the materiality of sound, questioning which sounds resonate with me and have contributed to shaping my identity. This exploration stems from a pressing need to understand the implications of environmental sound on my Arab queer identity, particularly in the context of feeling detached from my surroundings in Helsinki, my current host country. In my installation, I employ the resonance of objects and bodies to construct temporal and spatial dimensions through sound. Selecting two distinct songs from my childhood, I repeatedly record them within the host body until the resonance of the body overwhelms and absorbs the original sound, replacing it with its own unique frequency. This process serves as a metaphorical representation of the fusion of personal and cultural identity within the diasporic experience, where individual resonance ultimately shapes and defines one’s sense of belonging and connection.
BIO
Mohammed "Moe" Mustafa, is a Jordanian-Palestinian artist, based in Helsinki. Moe’s a multidisciplinary artist blending sound, text, and performance into a personal and artistic narrative, therefore the work is deeply rooted in his own life, weaving autobiographical
threads into an immersive experience for the audience. At the center of Moe's artistic exploration lies the poignant theme of navigating diasporic queer identity within a foreign host environment. Through his work, he confronts the complexities of cultural displacement and the quest for belonging, inviting viewers to engage with diverse layers of his experiences.
Zen Marie, xenoepistemics: creative practice and radical solidarity
(WITS interventions + On Publishing, Thu 23.5.)
This offering is a derivé through a cluster of thoughts, prompts, riffs and questions. It starts from a point of frustration and fear of the increasing closure of common or free spaces. Public spaces and public institutions are squeezed into neoliberal frameworks, as we are all coerced into becoming entrepreneurs and monetising ourselves and our creative practices as brands. Physical space and virtual space are increasingly locked behind paywalls, and those few remaining public spaces seem to exist merely as lures for the capture, and commodification of those who move through it.
This offering looks for these moments historically in 'avant-garde' and subversive practices that ferment in political frameworks such as the black radical tradition, radical feminism or queer theory, or manifest in aesthetic forms such as psychogeography, dada, punk, gonzo, beat and more. This is to argue for a search for a radical politics and aesthetics to come, and are as yet unknown and unknowable, insisting on forms of solidarity and knowledge that are radically other. This is a search for dreams that go far far beyond the rules that limit imaginations, and limit actions.
BIO
Zen Marie is an artist and educator based in Johannesburg, South Africa. His practice and research engage video, film, photography, performance, and writing, using site specific or relational processes to critically explore power relations within spaces.
See www.paradisefallen.site for recent work.
Marie holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Art from the University of the Witswatersrand (WITS), an MA in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam and is a graduate of the two-year residency program at DeAteliers in Amsterdam. He is Senior editor of the journal for creative practice ellipses [...], which he founded in 2015, as part of the ongoing project of asserting creative and disruptive approaches to research processes and outputs. This work is further sustained in his commitment to the project of the art school.He has taught at the WITS School of Arts since his appointment in 2009.
Maiju Loukola, Taivallahti Protectorate – As we reach the end, we go to the beginning, which only means the end must change (Soil & sound installation w Henna-Riikka Halonen + Roundtable, Thu 23.5.)
The sound and soil work attends the not-yet-been and imagines the Taivallahti site (the spa hotel) as a ruin and as a multi species condition, fragile, fleeting, unpredictable, but still resilient. The work can be experienced by walking around in the Taivallahti peninsula area.
To retain sensations and transcend time. What is done today remains as ruins of the past. In thousand years, as the aesthetic capsules of the 2024 are opened, we will see what kind of deadlock the then existing beings were facing.
Taivallahti Protectorate is a quicksand-like working group by Henna-Riikka Halonen and Maiju Loukola. They let their interventional practices land on the Taivallahti peninsula in parataxis, side by side, for a period of time as wind blows.
BIO
Maiju’s artistic research practice involves spatial and site-related urban space interventions. Her attention is directed on the politics of space and speculative spatial, temporal and narrative practices in urban space, examined in relation to democratization of space, peripherality and in-/exclusive practices. Maiju is a member of the editorial committee of the RUUKKU Studies in Artistic Research journal. In CITY AS SPACE OF RULES AND DREAMING she looks at spaces of belonging and co-existence in the polemical crossings of normative and imaginary site-formation.
Nina Liebenberg, Photosynthesis (2024) (Installation)
Photons of light speed down sunbeam arrows for exactly 8.3 seconds and splash through the outer layer of the epidermis and into the heart of the palisade cells. The molecules of light race into the chloroplast, into the perfect little green discs of the grana. The light is drawn further and further in, helplessly attracted by the magnesium at the heart of the little chlorophyll molecules. Light and green embrace, dancing a wild jig of excitement for a tiny fraction of time while the little molecule of light gives up its energy. The chlorophyll molecule is so agitated by this encounter that it splits a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The plant releases the oxygen into the air, for us to breathe.
Extract from Kate Atkinson’s Human Croquet (1997) A small curatorial installation (consisting of image, text, objects, and projection) that uses the term ‘photosynthesis’ as a prompt to think about breath and light, and its movement into, and through, human and more-than-human agencies.
BIO
Nina Liebenberg is a South African artist-curator, currently conducting her post-doctoral research at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. Using curation as method, she explores overlaps and connections between various university departments, and regularly draws on the expertise of individuals from chemistry, medical imaging, physics, engineering, and botany, to create artworks and curate shows portraying the intersection between the quantifiable and the poetic. Her current project, Planthology, explores human- plant relationships, using curatorship to convene diverse perspectives on the theme.
Pia Euro & Tanja Kiiveri (Installation)
The focus of our work is on external factors, such as
wind
light
noise
snow
fox and rat
birds
passers-by
and friends becoming part of the work. We are interested in intermediate spaces, the boundaries of the work and of limitation. Our works are built in spaces where capitalist structures and cracks appear on the surfaces of the built environment and those who do not agree to these agreements an uncontrolled world invades the works.
BIO
We have made experimental collective works that seek out the edges of (art) institutions since 2008.
Simo Kellokumpu, spof, 2017-2024 (Choreographic installation)
Choreographic series / Performance: Simo Kellokumpu
/ Images: Vincent Roumagnac.
spof is an ongoing urban choreoreading exploration focusing on the concept ‘single point of failure’ (spof), which is, in system theory, a potential risk posed by a flaw in the design, implementation or configuration of a circuit or system. During walks in San Francisco, Busan, Tokyo, Paris, and Helsinki, I spoffed. The exhibited work presents the embodied responses towards specific urban motion, when queering the vertical walking-through in relation to the rotational axis of the planet Earth, which is approximately 23,5°. The whole project is a choreographic experiment overlapping urban and cosmic scales, exploring the interplay between place, space, and choreographic body.
BIO
Simo Kellokumpu is a Finnish choreographer and researcher born in Lapland and based in Helsinki. They completed the Doctorate of Arts in 2019 in the Performing Arts Research Centre, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki based on the artistic research project Choreography as Reading Practice. Simo’s artworks examine the choreographic relations between corporeality and materiality in various scales and contexts and they explore the entanglement of hyper-reading, contemporary speculative fiction, and site-specificity. Besides artistic work Simo works currently as a lecturer in the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki and facilitator in Pengerkatu 7 – Työhuone in Helsinki.
Heidi Hänninen (Panel discussion, Wed 22.5.)
PANEL STATEMENT
Heidi Hänninen works as a community artist and is preparing her PhD research related to community art and public art for the Doctoral Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Uniarts Helsinki. Heidi lives and works in East Helsinki suburb called Kontula, where she is leading her community-based KAS! Kontula Art School project focused on socially engaged public art and street art practice. Besides developing these art fields the aim of Heidi’s research is to build ethically sensitive tool kit to be used in culturally diverse and socially layered contexts, including substance use cultures. Heidi has been using and developing street art as a form of socially engaged art practice. For her street art is both a form of public art and a method for community art with an ability to (learn to) communicate, not only between residents, but also between people and institutions who might otherwise stay far away from each other. In her art practice street is an arena for visibility and existence, where new realities can be born and seen, enabling people to encounter.
BIO
Heidi Hänninen works as a community artist and is preparing her PhD research related to community art and public art for the Doctoral Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Uniarts Helsinki. Heidi lives and works in East Helsinki suburb called Kontula, where she is leading her community-based KAS! Kontula Art School project focused on socially engaged public art and street art practice. Besides developing these art fields the aim of Heidi’s research is to build ethically sensitive tool kit to be used in culturally diverse and socially layered contexts, including substance use cultures. Heidi has been using and developing street art as a form of socially engaged art practice. For her street art is both a form of public art and a method for community art with an ability to (learn to) communicate, not only between residents, but also between people and institutions who might otherwise stay far away from each other. In her art practice street is an arena for visibility and existence, where new realities can be born and seen, enabling people to encounter.
BIO
Heidi has her background in concrete sculpture (Uniarts, Helsinki, M.F.A 2016) and art education (University of Lapland, M.A 2017). She has studied at the Department of Monumental Painting in St. Petersburg (2008–2009) and after an inspiring year in exchange she painted murals in Finland and abroad. She is experienced in working within different street art assembles.
Facebook and Instagram: @kaskontulartschool, www.heidihanninen.com
Contact: heidi.hanninen@uniarts.fi / kontulartschool@gmail.com
Facebook and Instagram: @kaskontulartschool, www.heidihanninen.com
Contact: heidi.hanninen@uniarts.fi / kontulartschool@gmail.com
Lauri Jäntti (Panel discussion, Wed 22.5.)
PANEL STATEMENT
Being human means living with others and being affected by the world into which one is 'thrown'.In my contribution to this panel discussion, I approach the question – 'How will we live together?' – by discussing insights from my research that involves the use of art-based methods and participatory experimentation in urban spaces. These insights are connected to two projects: the first involved building a communal art space called Galleria Kasvihuone in downtown Helsinki and the other combined psycho-geographic experimentation with participatory cartography. Through practical examples, I aim to present inspiring perspectives on post-humanist geographical thought, which I hope will spark discussions on the forces shaping possibilities for coexistence in the city, while also offering new ways to engage with questions of artistic research in urban contexts.
BIO
I am currently working as a doctoral researcher at the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the University of Helsinki. My research focuses on experimental methods in geography education, aiming to integrate art-based methods and participatory experimentation with post-humanist/non-representational geographical theorizing of learning.In connection with my academic work, lies my everlasting passion for developing artistic-activist proposals that aim to open urban reality as a site for playful exploration and experimentation together with various others. This interest has prompted me to e.g. arrange dance improvisation events that traverse cityscapes and develop the practice Urban Hitchhiking as a tool to create serendipitous encounters with fellow city dwellers.
Sirpa Jokinen, Places, Sounds, Words (Sound performance, Tue 21.5.)
In “Places, Sounds, Words,” Helsinki artist Sirpa Jokinen explores these questions through a series of exchanges with other people conducted in Moscow and San Francisco. Some are her friends; others are strangers. She asks them to take her to a place of some personal importance. She photographs them there and, with sensitive microphones, records both the sounds of the sites and her interlocutors’ explanations of their significance.
By focusing on sound, Jokinen pre-empts the presupposition of the world’s immediate, objective givenness –implied by sight – and presents the experience of place rather as dynamic, relational, and temporal. In the distance a man calls out for his friend. The wind comes up and then dies away. A passing skateboard interrupts the stillness of the day. Listening then to her contributors’ explanations of the meanings these places hold for them, these dynamics are shown to be value laden, highly subjective, and deeply personal. A garden is not defined merely by its flowers and a fence, but rather as a place one woman shares with her husband. A street corner is defined not merely by its stores and traffic signals, but as the scene of one man’s first outing alone as a boy– with all the promise and terror it entailed. Beyond the merely physical, Jokinen explores the poetic constitution of place. And, by juxtaposing interviews from Moscow and San Francisco, reveals these poetics to be socially and historically qualified, as well as highly personal.
BIO
Sirpa Jokinen is Helsinki based media artist making performances and compositions as well as installations with objects. Sound performances of Sirpa Jokinen are layered sound experiments made with synthesizers she has built herself, field recordings, objects and various instruments. She is member in the synthesizer duo Brutou Dou. Installation works of Sirpa Jokinen are experiments to find alternative ways to reproduce sound, they are searches for literal reference and making sculptural environments. Her sound-works are based on field-recordings. They are about human presence through narration in an acoustical space and the soundscape in this situation. https://kuvataiteilijamatrikkeli.fi/en/taiteilija/sirpa-jokinen
https://soundcloud.com/sirpajokinen
Eerika Jalasaho (Talk/presentation, Wed 22.5.)
BIO
Eerika Jalasaho is a media artist who uses kinetic sculpture, photography and moving images as the main mediums in her works. She often studies relationships between human and non-human, two and three-dimensionality and an experience of connection and communication in her works. She graduated from Aalto University with a Master of Arts in 2023. Her work has been shown widely in Finland and internationally.
Aino Hirvola (Roundtable, Thu 23.5.)
BIO
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.
Henna-Riikka Halonen, As we reach the end, we go to the beginning, which only means the end must change – Taivallahti Protectorate (Sound & soil installation w Maiju Loukola + Roundtable, Thu 23.5.)
The sound and soil work attends the not-yet-been and imagines the Taivallahti site (the spa hotel) as a ruin and as a multi species condition, fragile, fleeting, unpredictable, but still resilient. The work can be experienced by walking around in the Taivallahti peninsula area.
To retain sensations and transcend time. What is done today remains as ruins of the past. In thousand years, as the aesthetic capsules of the 2024 are opened, we will see what kind of deadlock the then existing beings were facing.
Taivallahti Protectorate is a quicksand-like working group by Henna-Riikka Halonen and Maiju Loukola. They let their interventional practices land on the Taivallahti peninsula in parataxis, side by side, for a period of time as wind blows.
BIO
Her recent projects and research are concerned with how relations and spaces are conditioned by technological, ecological, and political developments and are often initiated by a physical encounter with a specific context or a site. She develops systems within systems that seek to subvert perceptions and evoke forms of resistance using speculative fictions and the site’s materiality as catalysts.
Halonen has worked on and produced many collaborative and large-scale projects and commissions in Israel, Ireland, France, Finland, Sweden, and the UK and has shown her work widely in international exhibitions and festivals.
Halonen graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London in 2006. She completed a Doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2020.
Mika Elo, Kukkulan kuningas | King of the hill (2024) (Installation)
According to a slogan attributed to Mary Douglas, dirt is matter out of place. In a winterly city snow amounts to dirt in a double sense: snow clearing creates dirty mountains that seem out of place.
To climb those mountains and get photographed.
To get sucked into the photographic circulation of places that matter. An expedition.
BIO
My research interests include theory of photographic media, philosophical media theory, and epistemology of artistic research. I am participating in discussions in these areas in the capacity of curator, visual artist and researcher. Since 2015 I work as professor of artistic research and as the head of the doctoral program in Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki.
Alexander Damianisch (Panel discussion, Wed 22.5.)
PANEL STATEMENT
From the perspective of developing a living research culture, I aim to take a fresh look at the expansion of sensory fields. In doing so, it is about investigating in the metaphorical city space how qualities of encounter, of being together, can be rethought, especially in times of transformative unrest and uncertainty. How far do we have to go, what can we endure in order not to give up? Especially in relation to art and research of resistance that wants to understand insight as a transformative force and must - and wants to - reflect on this, I will ask what active modes of sharing can and should be today in an openly accessible form of interaction.
BIO
Alexander Damianisch is working in the field of research innovation and higher education management. He is the Head of the Support Art and Research Department at University of Applied Arts Vienna, a board member of Applied Interdisciplinary Laboratory (AIL), and from 2014 to 2024 was the director of Zentrum Fokus Forschung. With a focus and strong background in research funding strategies, institutional development, as well as art and cultural management, Damianisch is active in advancing the discourse on innovative and interdisciplinary research practices within academic and further settings. His work is characterised by a deep commitment to fostering collaborative approaches.
Andy Best, OBJEKTI – art as an actor for social empowerment (Talk/presentation, Wed 22.5.)
This paper presents OBJEKTI, an annual contemporary art exhibition in Espoon Keskus, a suburban area near Helsinki, Finland. OBJEKTI was arranged six times between 2014 – 2020 by artists Andy Best and Merja Puustinen, working under the banner of Espoo Kunsthalle. OBJEKTI aimed to bring challenging art into the everyday lives of local people, provoking and challenging them to look at their surroundings with fresh eyes. Surprising juxtapositions, new materials, shapes and forms placed into the city landscape can help to trigger positive emotions and open thoughts and eyes to new horizons.
BIO
Andy Best was born in 1963 in the south of England. He moved to Finland in 1988 and has been creating art and media projects with his wife Merja Puustinen since 1993. Andy and Merja both have backgrounds in sculpture, video and installation art. They were amongst the first artists working online, and during the mid to late 1990’s created beautiful, but provocative, multiuser 3D worlds on the internet. Their company Meetfactory has developed a web-based 3D multiuser community platform as well as virtual pet and e-learning applications for mobile phones. They focus on developing playful, physically engaging installations, robotic, and interactive works using physical computing techniques. They founded Espoo Kunsthalle, an initiative to bring critically engaged art to the suburban areas of Espoo. They run the Imagining Godzilla project, taking artists and researchers to experience the ecology and history of the Baltic Sea. Andy Best has presented works and papers at many international conferences and festivals of new media, art, and technology. Andy Best is an experienced curator, producer and educator, and is Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki, and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and Media at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture.
BEEHIVE CULTURE WORX: Prince Massingham, Mocke J van Veuren, Neo Monyamane, Rashid Juma, Sophy Wentzel, A Beehive and the Great Wall, Magical transformations through Film and Environmental Activism project (Panel discussion, Wed 22.5.)
BEEHIVE CULTURE WORX PANEL STATEMENT
This presentation discusses the work of The Beehive Culture Worx and Go Green Go Clean in Kliptown and Eldorado Park, Johannesburg. Through reference to film clips and images illustrating both the production process and final film, “Mense Phola Hier” is presented as an experiment in community-based filmmaking as a transformative praxis, where a collectively produced feature film has started to change the social context within which it is produced.
Pivoting on a theme of magic (where one of our members, Rashid Juma, delivers a stage magic performance within the film), we look at how the Go Green project has transformed a dangerous dumping site into a beloved community park.
Filmmaking, mural art, animation and landscaping are considered in the way that art may unlock potential for radical transformation of both external urban spaces, the topography of relational networks, and internal psychological landscapes.
BIOS OF THE BEEHIVE GROUP
Mocke Jansen van Veuren, A Beehive and the Great Wall, Magical transformations through Film and Environmental Activism project
Educator, filmmaker and researcher born and working in Johannesburg – Mocke J van Veuren is currently developing a PhD study focusing on community-based digital film education pedagogies. He has developed curricula, unit standards, qualifications and programmes for numerous education institutions and government agencies, and has taught film, animation, and digital multimedia. His artistic work includes experimental film, sound and dance collaborations with choreographer and performer Nelisiwe Xaba. Their work “Uncles & Angels” was awarded the FNB Art Prize in 2013. Van Veuren currently works as a lecturer and deputy Head of Department at the Wits Department of Film and Television. He collaborated on the production and public screenings of “Die Matras”, “The Beehive” and “The Great Wall of Eldorado”, leading to the formation of The Beehive Culture Worx, a non-profit organisation developing film and education programmes in Kliptown and Eldorado Park.
Sophy Wentzel, A Beehive and the Great Wall, Magical transformations through Film and Environmental Activism project
Community activist and actress – Sophy Wentzel has been integral to the development of film culture in Kliptown as a lead actress and community organiser since 2015. Her portrayal of “Stompie” in three successive films (“Die Matras”, “The Beehive”, and “Mense Phola Hier”) has made the character a fixture of local culture. She is a community leader in Kliptown and a Director of The Beehive Culture Worx, where she has played a key role as Community Liaison officer.
Neo Monyamane, A Beehive and the Great Wall, Magical transformations through Film and Environmental Activism project
Independent filmmaker hailing from Odendaalsrus, a small mining town in the Free State – Neo Monyamane graduated from the Academy of Sound Engineering with a Diploma in Television and Screen media in 2016, winning the Best Independent Film award. In 2017 he was nominated for an award at the Cambridge International Film Festival under the category of “Future Filmmaker” for his documentary “G-Face - The Documentary About Nothing” and 2018 saw him receive two more international nominations from the Dhaka International Film Festival in Bangladesh and the Nepal Human right’s Film Festival. In 2019 Neo was selected as part of the NFVF youth director programme. Neo has directed and produced 5 short films, a 6 part documentary series, 2 documentary films and recently “Die Matras” and “The Beehive”, in collaboration with the community film initiative in Kliptown.
Prince Massingham, A Beehive and the Great Wall, Magical transformations through Film and Environmental Activism project
Author, script writer, actor, researcher and educator born and bred in Kliptown, Soweto – Prince Massingham trained at the Afrika Cultural Centre where he became a facilitator in Drama and Theatre, and Co-ordinated the Annual Community Theatre Festival and the Annual Children’s Festival. His book of short stories and poems “Kliptown Stories” was published in 2008, illustrated with artworks by Clifford Charles. He has recently worked as an actor in a number of local productions, including “The Queen” and “Bicycle Man”. Massingham developed characters and wrote the scripts of the short film “Die Matras” (2019) and the feature “The Beehive”, filmed as part of the Kliptown community film initiative in 2020 and 2021, and acted as community liaison and organiser for cast, crew and locations for both productions.
Rashid Juma, A Beehive and the Great Wall, Magical transformations through Film and Environmental Activism project
Community environmental activist and professional stage magician – Rashid Juma has led the creation of a vibrant eco-park out of a dangerous and toxic dumping ground within a large tract of land in Eldorado Park. The site, now called Go Green Go Clean, is home to green lawns, flower gardens, land art, murals and walkways where before piles of refuse, drug dealers and crime proliferated. The project has taken almost a decade of community organisation, advocacy, diplomacy and physical labour to reach its current state as beloved and safe public space. He has recently joined The Beehive Culture Worx as Director and has played a key role in community liaison and workshop facilitation while developing a body of photographic work.
Alex Arteaga, Exploring signlesness – An essay on the proto-phenomenal city
(Reading, Thu 23.5.)
BIO
Alex Arteaga is an artist researcher who combines and hybridizes aesthetic, phenomenological and enactivist research practices through an inquiry into embodiments, environments and aesthetic sense-making. He studied music and architecture in Barcelona and Berlin and received a PhD in philosophy at the Humboldt University Berlin. He is visiting researchers at the University of the Arts Helsinki, lectures in different universities and develops long-term artistic research projects such as The Sense of Common Self, Contingent Agencies, or Architecture of Embodiment.
Samedha Arora, Assent Listening of Dissent: A listener in a political environment;Helsinki Protests for Gaza Ceasefire in 2023- 2024 (Talk/presentation, Thu 23.5.)
The talk focuses on the recent protests in Helsinki for the Gaza ceasefire. The talk delves into theories of political listening and rhetorical listening and prompts the listener in a space of social demonstration to extend a view of collective listening. Moreover, what can personal and collective listening do in a protest where the subject of the protest is far away from the site of demonstration.
BIO
Samedha Arora is a second year master's student at Aalto University in Sound in New Media. Her practice and research focuses on field recordings and rhetorical listening in exploring the themes of social hierarchy, climate change and listening privileges.
Annette Arlander, Citizen Pine (Sound and video work)
Citizen Pine is a sound and video work presented as a temporary installation outside the pavilion, to be listened to and watched with your own phone in a hammock between two of the pine trees. It consists of recordings of some conversations with the pines concerning the idea of citizenship. Could we consider pines living in the city as citizens of sorts? Citizen Pine is part of the three-lingual project Pondering with Pines – Miettii mäntyjen kanssa – Funderar med furor, which focuses on the question “how to develop ways of recognizing and engaging with the subjectivities of life forms such as trees, which we tend to consider whole ‘other’?” What if we considered pine trees as citizens, as city dwellers among others? By addressing the pine trees in conversations, I am experimenting with that possibility in a lighthearted manner and invite the viewer-listener to consider it, too, while relaxing in a hammock between them. The work is accessible via QR code. Please, bring your own phone and earphones/headphones.
More about Pondering with Pines presentation
https://www.uniarts.fi/en/projects/pondering-with-pines/
blog https://ponderingwithpines.com
media archive https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1323410/1589526
Podcast Talking with Trees https://soundcloud.com/user-90370389
BIO
Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and a pedagogue, former professor in performance art and theory and professor in artistic research at University of the Arts Helsinki, and at Stockholm University of the Arts. At present she is visiting researcher at Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki with the project Pondering with Pines (2022-2024). Her research interests include artistic research, performance-as-research and the environment. Her artwork moves between the traditions of performance art, video art and environmental art. See https://annettearlander.com
Jan-Erik Andersson (Talk/presentation, Wed 22.5.)
For an ecologically sound future, we need a built environment based on imagination and the use of natural forms, art and ornament as basic ingredients for the design. This statement is based on the fact that an environment built within these preferences, makes us want to stayand dwell in a place, to use a word from Heidegger’s famous text Building, Dwelling,Thinking. A place which inspires slow dwelling and daydreaming, reduces the will to travel and to consume. Travelling, as it is energetically shaped today, should be restricted to the most necessary. As the pop band Moody Blues sang in the 1960ties: “Thinking is the BestWay to Travel”.
BIO
Jan-Erik Andersson (b. 1954) is an artist who, since 1980, has presented installations, performances, public art works, interactive media works and architecture. In the course of the past three decades Andersson has collaborated with other artists and architects, especially with sound artist Shawn Decker from Chicago and architect Erkki Pitkäranta from Helsinki. Andersson’s best known work is the total artwork Life on a Leaf, now a residency for artists and researchers. The house, a product of collaboration with Pitkäranta, was the object for his Doctorate in Visual Arts 2008 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. The project explores the house as a membrane between nature and culture and the potential of art and ornamentation to create ”iconic space”. He is also an affiliated postdoc researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts. As a way to extend his research of the integration of art, architecture, space and place, he has just finished building a new hexagonal log house, called the Spruce House, close to the Leaf house. He also works on a book; New Spaces for a New Society.
Otso Aavanranta, Unité sonore mobile (Sound performance + discussion, Thu 23.5.) Unité Sonore Mobile is an environmental sound practice ini6ated by Otso Aavanranta and conducted in various iterations and collabora6ons for the past three years. The practice consists of investing selected urban/suburban/rural sites with instant composition in relation to the soundscape and its evolution. The sound work builds on a mobile, wireless and lightweight sound system carried around by the performer, enabling an agile and adventurous contextualisation of sound diffusion within the environment. Otso has been experimenting with the practice for someyears, in diverse locations such as the Helsinki coastline and Marseille (in duo with Alexandre Berthier).
BIO
See: hMps://otsola.org Documentation of some previous Unité Sonore Mobile experiments:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15tEkMlMRPcXCwAZDHCwIpSluEo2qXW5p?usp=sharing
ABOUT
City is a space of several intersecting and conflicting interests, practices, and orders. It is an aesthetic, political, legal, material, architectural, imaginary, virtual, and discursive space in which various dissonances and incompatible forces play their role. The city is very much also our/their space. It channels freedom, needs, actions, and desires of those inhabiting it.
The City is sound, city is quicksand – voicing imaginaries and dissonances event focuses on spaces, voices and practices of uncertainty and potentiality in the city. We invite practitioners and scholars, artists and researchers to come and share their insights and practices through any or many of the following fields: city, urban space, urban environment / spatial, visual, sonic, performative practices in arts / artistic research, architecture, aesthetics, law and legal theory and practice, cultural geography, or other – around questions such as:
How can the discourses and debates on distribution of sensibilities and politics of city practices be rethought from a spatial point of view? How to allow new spaces and positions to emerge and act differently from what the prevailing orders, norms and roles suggest? Can diverse encounters and clashes within a multiplicity of agents, human and more-than-human, trigger the opening-up of positions and spaces for reorganization, and if so, how?
WELCOME to discuss how urban space is formed and shared, and what kinds of processes, practices, structures and spaces of disagreement and controversy, as well as inclusion or marginalization are there? What kind of fractures, escape lines and dreams are hidden in the ‘normativity’ of urban space? What kinds of spaces of shadow, noise, potentialities, and dreams are there?
In the open call for proposal we welcomed 1) proposals of artworks, 2) talks/presentations, and 3) workshops – to make and take space for gestures and voices polemic and playful, incredible, and concrete.
Hietsu Pavilion
“The wooden dressing pavilion designed by Gunnar Tauscher in 1930 represents a shift from 1920s classicism to functionalism. The City Museum has defined the pavilion as a ‘culturally and historically valuable site’.” (From the recognition granted to the pavilion by the Association for Cultural Heritage of Finland 27.2.2018)
Hietsu Pavilion is an accessible space.
sound
verb
to echo, to seem, to voice, to announce, to scale, to plunge
adjective
logical, healthy, sturdy, solid, firm, valid
1: free from injury or disease ≈ exhibiting normal health
2: deep and undisturbed ≈ a sound sleep
3: free from flaw, defect or decay ≈ a sound design
4: based on juridical reasoning, or legally valid
5:showing good judgement or sense ≈ soundly adverb
noun
as in strait
≈ a narrow body of water between two land masses
“Sound.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sound. Accessed 10 Feb. 2024.
quicksand
synonyms
entaglement, mesh(es), morass, net, noose, snare, trap, web
1: sand readily yielding to pressure
≈ a deep mass of loose sand mixed with water into which heavy objects readily sink
2: something that entraps or frustrates≈ lead poor people into consumerist quicksand
–Robert Wright
“Quicksand.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quicksand. Accessed 10 Feb. 2024.
[i] The first of the two art + research events organized by the City as Space of Rules and Dreaming took place in the context of Academy of Fine Arts (KuvA) Research Days 2022: Spaces of Exception, Exceptional Spaces was part of the ‘Artistic Research and City Space’ section on December 12-13, 2022. The second, City is a Thin Line (city is no contour) took place by the seashores of Helsinki (10 artworks bus tour) and Villa Lill Kallvik in Vuosaari (symposium), on May 18–19, 2023.
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