Image: Virtual Tour. Mireia c. Saladrigues, 2017

BIOS

Monday 11.12.2017
Practices of notation – practices of reflection

Nikolaus Gansterer, is an artist, performer and researcher deeply interested in the links between drawing, thinking and action. His practice is grounded in a trans-medial approach, underpinned by conceptual discourse in the context of performative visualisation and cartographic representations. He is internationally active in performances, exhibitions and lecturing. Gansterer studied anthropology at University of Vienna and Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, he completed his cross-disciplinary studies at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. He is co-founder of the Institute for Transacoustic Research. Currently he is Guest Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. 
 
Gansterer’s fascination with the complex character of diagrammatic figures led to two books: “Drawing a Hypothesis - Figures of Thought”, (Vienna/New York: Springer, 2011) on the ontology of shapes of visualisations and the development of the diagrammatic perspective and “Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line”, (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2017) on the development of experimental notation systems and embodied diagrammatics, by staging an inter-disciplinary encounter between the lines of choreography, drawing and writing.
 

 

Tuesday 12.12.2017
Revisiting Utopias of Access

Mireia c. Saladrigues (Terrassa, 1978), is a visual artist and researcher at the Doctoral Programme of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Via her research Behaving Unconventionally in Gallery Settings, she documents and fosters human and non-human cases of alteration and strangeness in cultural practices by proposing an artistic and theoretical re-reading of unconventionality. She also experiments with implementing occasions for misrepresented behaviours that, within the (conceptual) architecture of display, are considered traditionally unacceptable. She has exhibited a large part of her work in Barcelona at Espai 13 of Joan Miró Foundation (2011), La Capella (2014), Antoni Tàpies Foundation (2014), Can Felipa (2014, 2013 and 2012), àngels barcelona gallery (2013, 2012 and 2008), at Cultural Centre of Caja Madrid (2011), at Aparador of Museum Abelló in Mollet del Vallés (2012), and at Espai Guinovart in Agramunt (2011). In Europe, she has exhibited in Venice at the 2nd Research Pavilion (2017), Finland at Kiasma (2009), at Pori Art Museum (2008), XL Art Space (2014) and the Kallio Kunsthalle Taidehalli (2012); at Onomatopee in Eindhoven (2015 and 2012); at La BF15,(2014) in Lyon; as much as at DIA and CAA in the United States. She has received numerous awards and grants, from which the most recent are Kone Foundation Research and Art Production Grant (2016-2019), SAAR. Summer University of Artistic Research (2016, 2015, 2014), ETAC. Artistic Research Residency (2014), OSIC. Research and creation grant, Catalunya (2012).
 

Tuesday 12.12.2017
The gift of seeing 

Carlos Salvador Diaz got his BA degree in Social Studies 1985 and BA in Indigenous Pedagogics 1990. He was one of the founders of the community-based bilingual secondary school Tatuutsi Maxakwaxi, the first one on the Western Sierra Madre mountains, and the headmaster of the school since 1998. He has served as a member of the board of Indigenous education in the community of Zapopan, Jalisco, as well as an advisor of political capacitation in the state of Jalisco. In 2004 he was invited by the organization INWENT to Berlin to receive a course in Education for Peace and he continued these studies in Bogota (2005) and in San Cristobal de las Casas, México (2006) to be educated in conflict solving. He has lectured on intercultural education in several educational centers, including College of Michoacan, in 2006. Carlos Salvador has served as a sub-secretary of the traditional governor of the community of Tateikie. He also served a member of the group of traditional authorities, rukuri+kate, at the tuki temple of the community of Tsikwaita (San Miguel Huaixtita) 2002–2007.

Katri Hirvonen-Nurmi is an anthropologist and museologist. She works as a curator in Helinä Rautavaara museum in Espoo. She has studied Social organisation among Mexican indigenous communities in the 1980'ies and again, since 2014, as Doctoral student at the University of Helsinki. She follows the founding of Wixarika community museum project through self-governing institutions. She has published on the representation of indigenous peoples in museums. 

Sense of Ritual -performance lecture by Otso Kautto and Theatre Quo Vadis
 
Otso Kautto is a Finnish writer, award winning theatre director, and a performing poet. His work has been translated to several languages, and he has been directing both in mainstream and marginal theatres, mainly at the Finnish National Theatre, and at Theatre Quo Vadis. Kautto performs his poetry with The Poetry Band. In his doctoral research for the Theatre Academy at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Kautto focuses on sense of ritual. The concept of ritual is seen through the scenic praxis, and scenic praxis through the ritual theories.
 
Dr. Sarah Corona-Berkin has taught at several universities in México, and is currently Professor of Communications at the Universidad de Guadalajara. She has being invited to teach at the University of Florida (Gainsville), the University of Bielefeld in Germany and the University of Sofia in Tokyo, Japan. Her research focuses on written and visual intercultural communication of different social groups. She has researched and published extensively on the subjects of education and communication, indigenous education, the history of government-sponsored education programs in Mexico, multiculturalism and the politics of education. In addition to this research, she has written and edited intercultural textbooks for children and written books and articles on education and communication to train adults. Sarah Corona-Berkin received her PhD in Communication from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Corona-Berkin is currently Director of the Center for Advanced Latinamerican Studies (CALAS), based in the University of Guadalajara.

 

Wednesday 13.12.2017 
Collisions. The contemporary in artistic research

 

Jacob Lund, School of Communication and Culture - Aesthetics and Culture, Århus University

Jacob Lund is Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Culture and Director of the research programme Contemporary Aesthetics and Technology at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is also Editor-in-Chief of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, a position he has held since 2007. Lund has published widely within aesthetics, art studies, critical theory, and comparative literature on topics such as image-politics, subjectivity, memory, mediality, enunciation, and contemporaneity. Currently he is engaged on a research project called The Contemporary Condition, which focuses on the concept of contemporaneity and changes in our experiences of time as these might be seen to be registered in contemporary art: www.contemporaneity.au.dk. As part of this project he recently published The Contemporary Condition: Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art (Berlin: Sternberg, 2016; with Geoff Cox).

Paul O’Neill, Curator, artist, writer, educator and Artistic Director of Checkpoint Helsinki

Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer and educator. He is Artistic Director of Checkpoint Helsinki. From 2013 until July 2017 he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College. O’Neill is one of the most widely published authors in the field, most notably with The Culture of Curating, the Curating of Culture(s), published by MIT Press in 2012. 

Elizabeth Fisher, Curator 

Elizabeth Fisher is an independent curator based in the UK. She has produced over forty exhibitions and publications on modern and contemporary art, including On Not Knowing: How Artists Think (Black Dog Publications, 2014) and The Experimental Generation: networks of interdisciplinary praxis in British art, 1950-70 (Interdisciplinary Science Reviews issue 42.1, July 2017). She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge.  

Hami Bahadori, Artist, Activist, Organizer and Writer

Hami Bahadori is an artist, activist, organizer and writer based in Helsinki. He is the founder of artist collective “This Might Not Work” and responsible for curating and organizing many international exhibitions and happenings including “Red May Seattle”, (a month-long radical festival), as well as “Stop Deportation festival" in collaboration with Jo Kjaergaard and “Right To Live” group in Helsinki. Currently, he is the co-organizer of an autonomous reading group for artists and activists.

Sezgin Boynik, Writer and Editor

Sezgin Boynik is theoretician and publisher based in Helsinki. He has completed PhD on the political aspect of Yugoslav "Black Wave" cinema. He has published on structuralist films, cultural nationalism, hard-core punk and conceptual art. He is editor of Rab-Rab: journal for political and formal inquiries in art. 

Minna Henriksson, Artist

Minna Henriksson (b. 1976, Oulu) is a visual artist living in Helsinki. Her work is research-based and aims to relate to discussions arising from anti-racist, leftist and feminist struggles. Among her recent works are an installation about history of race science in Nordic countries and a book and installation about the struggles by paper industrialists against leftist organising. In 2017 Henriksson was awarded with the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Award of artistic work committed to the ideal of democracy and antifascism. http://minnahenriksson.com/

Marianne Niemelä, curator

Marianne Niemelä (b. 1985) is an independent curator based in Helsinki. She has an MA in curating from Aalto University and a MA in art history from the University of Glasgow. Her practice is working in the crossings of art, activism and politics, with emphasis on queer and feminist thinking. She is currently co-director of the Museum of Impossible Forms culture space in Kontula, Helsinki, and member of the Third Space collective and art space.

Elina Suoyrjö, Curator

Elina Suoyrjö is an independent curator and a PhD candidate at Middlesex University, London. Her curatorial practice evolves around working collaboratively and site-specifically with artists. Her recent exhibition projects include Only the Lonely (La Galerie, Paris) and Good Vibrations (SIC, Helsinki). She holds an MA in curating from Stockholm University and MAs in both art history and gender studies from the University of Helsinki. Her PhD research focuses on feminist strategies in curating contemporary art, with focus on working with affect, emotion and energies. At the moment she is working as the director of Artist Association Arte and Titanik art space in Turku, Finland.

Knut Ebeling, Medientheorie und Asthetik, Kunsthochshule Berlin

Knut Ebeling is professor for Media theory and aesthetics at Weißensee – art academy berlin. Numerous publications on contemporary theory, art and aesthetics, recently: Das Archiv brennt (together with Georges Didi-Huberman), Berlin 2007; Archivologie. Theorien des Archivs in Philosophie, Medien und Künsten (Mithg.), Berlin 2009; Wilde Archäologien 1. Theorien materieller Kultur von Kant bis Kittler, Berlin 2012; Wilde Archäologien 2. Begriffe der Materialität der Zeit von Archiv bis Zerstörung, Berlin 2016; There is Now Now: An Archaeolgy of Contemporaneity, Berlin: Sternberg 2017.