at PUBLICS on 9 and 10 June 2022.
Open Up and Shape Helsinki discusses how equity, labour, money and structures of power are configured globally, while reflecting these questions back onto Helsinki’s cultural scene. Frame Contemporary Art Finland joins the collaboration by co-hosting one session in the context of Rehearsing Hospitalities public programme.
PUBLICS, Kunstahalle Kohta and Frame Contemporary Art Finland are collaborating to co-host a symposium planned in the framework of the three-year Open Up (Creative Europe) project, for which PUBLICS is a partner. Through Open Up and Shape Helsinki, PUBLICS will map out, invite, and nurture new audiences. Frame Contemporary Art Finland joins the collaboration by co-hosting one session in the context of Rehearsing Hospitalities public programme.
The Symposium discusses how equity, labour, money and structures of power are configured globally, while reflecting these questions back onto Helsinki’s cultural scene. It platforms questions and conversations on existing class structures and the distribution of power and resources across the contemporary art field and in the broader cultural scene. Central to the Rehearsing Hospitalities programme in 2022, these questions further our interest in curatorial and artistic practices that go beyond offers of hospitality, and transgress unbalanced forms of power distribution, such as those instilled in host and guest dynamics.
On the second day of the symposium, Frame will be co-hosting a Rants & Raves session, with a keynote talk by Cynthia Cruz, author of The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class (repeater books, 2021); with poet and novelist Niko Hallikainen.
More details:
The following position papers and Helsinki-based respondents are invited to the symposium:
Carolina Rito, co-editor of Institution as Praxis – New Curatorial Directions for Collaborative Research (Sternberg, 2020); followed by Joasia Krysia, Curator of Helsinki Biennial 2023.
Bassam El Baroni, editor of Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-Examination and Speculation in Art (Sternberg Press and Edith Russ Haus, 2022); in dialogue with the architect and researcher Constantinos Miltiadis.
Cynthia Cruz, author of The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class (repeater books, 2021); with poet and novelist Niko Hallikainen.
On Friday, June 10, Justina Zubaitė-Bundzė, Henri Terho, Helen Kaplinsky, Maria Mkrtycheva and Irina Mutt will participate in a public panel discussion around the three focuses of the Symposium: Infrastructures of power, and (re-)distribution; class, money and access; institutional reimagining and future publics.
In conjunction with SHAPE (Spaces, Helsinki, Art, Projects, Events), a mapping of art spaces and public events across the city, initiated in 2021 by PUBLICS and Kohta, the Symposium offers a platform for voicing individual and common challenges. Over 100 Helsinki-based art organisations and institutions have been invited to join in Rants & Raves of four minutes and thirty-three seconds each, inspired by John Cage’s composition 4’33’’. ‘Ranting’ and ‘Raving’ are useful modes of address; as immediate and liberating forms of public expression. They speak of the present while pointing to enduring conditions of pressure, and uncertainty and express a desire to look for alternatives. They can also be fun, cathartic and exhilarating.
Rants & Raves will form a choral, humorous and situated picture of Helsinki’s art scene; reflected by curator, artist and educator Dahlia El Broul, chair of the board at Catalysti, and Henna Harri, director of the Association of Photographic Artists and Photographic Gallery Hippolyte.
The event is open to everyone, and registration is not required. PUBLICS is located on the ground floor on the corner of Sturenkatu and Kangasalantie in Vallila, accessibility and other info about the space can be found on the PUBLICS website.