22-26 September 2020, Helsinki
Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities is a five-day annual gathering in September connecting artists, curators and other practitioners within the field of contemporary art. This year’s public programme experiments with formats for gathering and hosts opportunities to engage in person or remotely.
The 2020 programme addresses art and institutional potential to facilitate plural and decentralised forms of knowing and accessibility. It invites guests and audiences to rehearse and debate hospitality towards diverse ways of knowing and accessing.
The programme asks how dominant and institutionalised knowledges and accesses can be challenged from a range of perspectives. How can diverse access to language, environment, culture and archives produce a more equal and just contemporary reality?
Contributors in the Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities programme so far include Camille Auer, Biitsi, Jessie Bullivant & Jemina Lindholm, Viviana Checchia, Annet Dekker, Nora Heidorn, Flis Holland, Ali Akbar Mehta, Arjuna Neuman & Denise Ferreira da Silva, Iida Nissinen & Melanie Orenius (Burnout Mermaids), Laura Soisalon-Soininen, Kathy-Ann Tan, Touko Vaahtera, Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen and Susanna Ånäs.
The Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities programme is co-curated with digital culture and collaborative art agency M-cult and anti-racist and queer feminist project Museum of Impossible Forms, and produced in collaboration with additional partners.
Local knowledges in focus
The programme takes place in different locations across the city of Helsinki, Finland. Each of the sites reflect and question specific politics of access.
Connecting with situated knowledges, subaltern experience, and marginalised bodyminds, the programme draws on multiple locales and ways of knowing. The various events in the Gathering host critical dialogues on issues such as: approaches for accessing non-hegemonic forms of language and education; crip epistemologies; ableism and disability discrimination within cultural activity and barriers to participation; access to ‘natural’ sites and mobility in the city; public commons and access to areas in Helsinki with specific local knowledges and political struggles.
One day of the programme will be spent in Helsinki’s Central Park (Keskuspuisto) gathering around M-cult’s ‘Central Park Archives’ a long-format project exploring practices of collaborative archiving together with communities and residents of Maunula. The project connects a multiplicity of lived experiences while documenting micro-histories, struggles, ongoing change and future visions of the urban forest.
Another day is spent at Museum of Impossible Forms, where they will host a day-long programme on approaching cultural norms and ableism in art production and in society at large. Through the Merpersoning project, mermaiding and mermaid mythology is used as a way of raising further discussion on the accessibility of public spaces and body norms. It also comments on the cultural imagination that projects sexism onto other-than-human animals and human/animal hybrids, such as mermaids.
Engage with events in person or remotely
With artists and partners we are re-thinking approaches for gathering in person and at a distance, as well as possibilities for following the events live and afterwards. Physical events will be paired with a complimentary format to allow for remote engagement such as: online screenings, live transcriptions, sound recordings, streamed discussions and readings.
In addition to the public programme Frame will be arranging studio visits, one-on-one meetings, online research visits and networking opportunities for curators. If you are interested in visiting Helsinki for curatorial research during the event or meet with artists online, please contact Head of Programme Jussi Koitela (jussi.koitela@frame-finland.fi) latest 5th of August 2020.
New publication
Rehearsing Hospitalities Companion 2 is the second in a series of readers published by Frame and Archive Books. The series makes visible the processes, dialogues and influences that shape the content and relations within the wider Rehearsing Hospitalities programme. Each year we invite practitioners, who contribute with different approaches for practicing diverse forms of hospitality and knowledge.
This year the publication is a site for gathering and hosting. It holds thoughts, insights, references, provocations and responses for expanded forms of hospitalities and access in these times.
Rehearsing Hospitalities Companion 2 is comprised of contributions from artists, curators, thinkers and collaborating partners: Camille Auer, Annet Dekker, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Aimi Hamraie, Hanna Helander & Arla Magga, Astrida Neimanis, Marietta Radomska, Marianne Savallampi & Touko Vaahtera, Laura Soisalon-Soininen, digital culture and collaborative art agency M-cult, anti-racist and queer feminist project Museum of Impossible Forms and Frame’s programming team Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela.
Full programme of the Gathering released in August
A full programme and the full list of contributors will be released in August. Event attendance is free but some events will require booking. Registration will open with the release of the programme.
Following guidelines and taking precautions of care, physical attendance to events will be limited. We will be monitoring the situation and guidelines in the lead up to the Gathering. Several opportunities for following the programme remotely will be announced alongside the full programme release in August. Details on venue access will also be available at this time. Stay tuned.
Rehearsing Hospitalities
Rehearsing Hospitalities, Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s public programme for 2019-2023, connects artists, curators and other practitioners in the field of contemporary art and beyond to build up and mediate new practices, understandings and engagements with diverse hospitalities. It fosters critical discourse, pluralistic sharing and collaboration between diverse (artistic) practitioners in contemporary societies.
Image: Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen: Birthwheel, 2020.