Art exhibition
Natural Hope
Sandy Bee
Natural Hope is a live exhibition whose message is, “Let’s bloom into something new together!” Nature and Sandy’s paintings interact, and with nature as the theme, it adapts and becomes reflected in her paintings in a new and remarkable way.
Sandra Wallin, also known as Sandy Bee grew up in a cultural and artistic environment. Her style is childish, banal, remarkable and easily recognisable. She likes to call her style sandyism: her colours are surrounded by outlines, which are in turn overrun by other lines in different thicknesses.
Light design: Sandy Bee & the sun
Performances
- Date & time
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Performance
Home Findings
Minna Karttunen with Aida Tervo, Dasha Che & Elise Knudson
Home Findings is a practice Minna Karttunen launched during the time of Covid-19 social distancing. Karttunen made videos of 10 different costumes she made of objects found at home. Now she has invited three artists to share the practice with her in a workshop, where they will prepare their own costumes and make a video performance of their Home Findings experience.
Karttunen’s previous videos can be seen on YouTube.
Minna Karttunen is a freelance dance artist who is interested in finding and building safe and supportive environments where a variety of expressions can be unleashed.
Aida Tervo is a dancer from Helsinki. She is interested in the different ways of expression, about the things behind the movement and the cultural and sociological aspects of dance.
Dasha Che is a Russian American queer performance artist, educator and an artistic researcher whose foci points at the moment are science fiction economies, intimacy with abandoned objects and body weakness.
Elise Knudson is a dance artist who teaches contact improvisation and facilitates CI at festivals and studios around the world. Elise is interested in developing fluidity between instantaneous and premeditated choreography.
Workshop leader and performer: Minna Karttunen
Performers: Aida Tervo, Dasha Che, Elise Knudson
Costume design: performers
Performance lecture
On the mechanics of Hope
Olga Spyropoulou
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any undetermined height in their natural state one would reach bottom and one would fly away
Nikki Giovanni, The laws of motion
According to string theory, the universe operates within a certain number of dimensions. The last dimension is the point where all possibilities and imaginations have been exhausted. On the mechanics of hope is a speculative performance lecture in two parts that proposes hope as another dimension and examines how this speculation may alter our perception of the universe and the laws of Nature. If we combine our mass, will our hope gain greater energy? Can we hope better together?
The audience is encouraged to bring their own pen and paper!
Olga Spyropoulou is a performance artist and researcher who utilizes disorder as an artistic practice. She is interested in how we relate to each other and experiments with different modalities of spectactorship and non-hierarchical methodologies.
Workshop
Sound & Sensibility
Maija Mikkola & Annika Sohlman
What is sensibility to sounds? What kind of things are left outside of the visual horizon? How about silence? What kind of things or words does it contain? What does it cover? In the two-part workshop participants will approach these questions by listening, writing, wandering, and discussing in the museum space. Saturday is reserved for resting while listening to sound art.
The sound piece Soundwalk and Silence in Ateneum is a site and time-specific audio memo of the Sound and Sensibility workshop. The workshop was a part of the UrbanApa × Ateneum 2020 festival. During the workshop, participants reflected on and wrote about listening, soundscapes, and silences in English and in Finnish. These writings were later assembled together by Maija Mikkola and Annika Sohlman.
As you listen to the piece, you can take the moment as rest. It is warmly welcomed to fall asleep.
Please listen to the piece with headphones on.
Content warning: the second part of the workshop includes discussions on racism and whiteness.
Annika Sohlman and Maija Mikkola form a duet of art educators who work with interactive, artistic and pedagogical practices. Their work is based on artistic epistemologies and ways of knowing. Their collaborations originate from intertwined personal projects and observations.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 19.08 14:00—16:00
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Meet-up at the ticket sales hall
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2h 0min
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Finnish and English
Performance
In my arms
Salla Talvikki Nieminen
In my arms is a performance about softness. It is an invitation to stop and contemplate softness while I patiently hold it in my arms. The work explores the relationship between the body and softness, looking for ways to surrender to it but also recognizing that there cannot be softness without hardness.
“Hardness and softness are things we meet because we’re alive.” (Eli Siegel)
Salla Talvikki Nieminen is a cross-disciplinary artist working with performance, dance, photography and writing. Her work often involves minimal aesthetics, simple actions and subtle humour.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 19.08 16:00—18:00
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Cubus, Gallery 33, 3rd floor
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2h 0min
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the piece does not include language
PERFORMANCE
decay
Kardo Shiwan, Wilhelmina Ojanen, Samuel Kujala, Elsa Heikkilä, Veera Kauhanen
maatua / decay is an audio-visual-corporeal work-in-process delving into the themes of decomposing, the cycle of matter and the complex interrelations, knots and entanglements of every thing. The performance locates itself at the meeting point of life and death, a liminal and cyclical space in which both are ever-present. What is left of our bodies, where and who is it left in?
care – porous borders – weaving – sympoiesis – reciprocity – planetary responsibility
The teaser can be seen here. Watch the trailer here.
The artists behind maatua / decay are a multidisciplinary artistic working group. At the moment, the group is formed of five members: movement practitioners and choreographers Kardo Shiwan and Wilhelmina Ojanen, actor and performer Samuel Kujala as well as visual, spatial and sound artists Veera Kauhanen and Elsa Heikkilä.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 19.08 17:30—18:00
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Ateneum Hall
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30min
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Finnish and English
Performance
Betty Fvck presents Art of Diversity
Betty Fvck
Welcome to the world of Queerlesque: Drag, Burlesque, and variety show. We are of different cultures, skin colours and backgrounds but tonight we are united in Art. Join Hasard le Sin’s Balloon Buffoon, Miss Chrissy Kiss’s Stardust Deluxe and Betty Fvcks Asia Mystique!
Betty Fvck’s Queerlesque is a production of diverse Queer Art and Culture in Helsinki. We are #antiracism, #unity and #positivity
Age recommendation: 15
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Wednesday 19.08 18:30—19:00
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Ateneum Hall
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30min
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English
Discussion
How does dancing feel?
Wilhelm Blomberg & Taru Aho
How does dancing feel? is a podcast where Wilhelm Blomberg and Taru Aho try to understand what makes dancing unique. The podcast is an attempt to give words to dancing as a private, communal and societal phenomenon.
Ofimja Mizrahi and Anna Koskela guest on Thursday’s and Friday’s podcast, respectively.
Taru Aho is a freelance dance artist and a performer who is especially interested in questions relating to the dramaturgy and agency of the performer.
Wilhelm Blomberg is a performer to whom art is a means to share resources and sincere curiosity to try to recognise and voice non-compartmentalised experiences.
Joonas is a sound designer specialized in theatre, performance art, dance and musical theatre, with further experience in radio plays.
Discussion
Classics and change?
Warda Ahmed & Shareef Askar
How are classics born and whose classics are considered classics? Do subversive classics exist? Artists Warda Ahmed and Shareef Askar discuss classics, art, change and hope.
Visual artist, teacher and illustrator Warda Ahmed is an artist who lives and works in the Helsinki metropolitan area. As an anti-racist feminist, Ahmed participates actively in the public debate about the unequal structures of society, and makes comics about her family’s migration stories.
As a Finnish media artist and filmmaker, Shareef Askar is interested in creating films that explore shaping one’s identity in a western social structure from the perspective of characters that belong to different minorities or generally struggle to fit in.
Workshop
On keeping a notebook
Anne Naukkarinen & Maarit Mustonen
The workshop On keeping a notebook will focus on different methods of taking notes: writing, recording, images and movements. We will explore and discuss what meaning notes hold for each participant in their life and work. What is the relationship between private notes and public space? When combined, what kinds of affects, information and worlds can the notes of different people create together?
A notebook page or a body can carry a shopping list, theory quotes, smudges and expressions of emotions. Together we will experiment how notes, which are personal, fragmented and ordinary in their nature, can question the norms of established stories, images and bodies.
Remember to bring your own pen and paper!
Maarit Mustonen and Anne Naukkarinen are Helsinki-based artists who have been collaborating since 2014 with performances, installations and publications.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Thursday 20.08 14:00—16:00
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Meet-up at the ticket sales hall
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2h 0min
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Finnish and English
Performance
UNETO
Pinja Poropudas
Uneto is a piece that looks like its creators. It is a treatise on hopeful sound and corporeality, on how hope manifests itself as a bodily feeling, a rhythmic vibration that happens in both time and space.
Pinja Poropudas is a freelance dance artist. In her artistic process, Poropudas uses improvisation and somatic practices.
Max Merikoski is a student to whom producing music and sound design has become a passion. In his sound design, Merikoski is influenced by dub techno, disco and jazz.
Sound design: Max Merikoski
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Thursday 20.08 16:00—16:30
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Ateneum’s main staircase
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30min
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Finnish
Screening
Hope and subversive narratives! RAFIKI screening + discussion with Ubuntu Film Club
Rafiki (Swahili for ‘friend’) is a 2018 Kenyan drama film directed by Wanuri Kahiu. Rafiki is the story of romance that grows between two young women, Kena and Ziki, amidst family and political pressures around LGBT rights in Kenya. The film had its international premiere in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival; it was the first Kenyan film to be screened at the festival.
Content warning: queerphobia and queerphobic violence
Watch the film trailer here.
We need new stories! – A discussion on hope and subversive narratives
Fiona Musanga from Ubuntu Film Club and Sharron Todd, whose short film Dear Elijah will premiere during the festival, talk about hope and subversive narratives.
Fiona Musanga is a Rwandese filmmaker, writer, photographer and activist currently based in Turku, Finland. She graduated from Turku Classical Upper Secondary School with a diploma in acting, later moving on to study filmmaking at the Academy of Moving People & Images, an independent film school in Helsinki. She has made two short films titled Alonely and Don’t worry and is currently writing a script for her debut feature film.
Director: Wanuri Kahiu
Producer: Steven Markovitz
Writer: Wanuri Kahiu & Jena Cato Bass
Actors: Samantha Mugatsia & Sheila Munyiva
Cinematography: Christopher Wessels
Editing: Isabelle Dedieu
Tickets
Free admission (max. 50 seats)
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Thursday 20.08 16:45—19:45
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Ateneum Hall
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3h 0min
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English, swahili
Workshop
Shake _______ off
Ella Effendy
Shake _______ off
Hour of shaking
Hour of letting go
Hour of detaching from someone or something
I get rid of
You get rid of
To get rid of
Let go
Let go
Let go
The workshop is an exploration in letting go through your own body based on shaking and relaxation. Working happens in our own bodies and safely respecting social distancing.
Ella Effendy is originally from Helsinki, gyrating around, feeling at home where there is a chance for a bass massage in the safety of a dance floor. Effendy makes it a practise to actively expand her perspective by taking part in creative processes all over the world.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 21.08 10:00—11:00
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Meet-up in front of the museum
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60min
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Finnish or English depending on the workshop participants
Discussion
Onko meillä toivoa? Keskustelu taiteesta ja toivosta poikkeustilan aikana
Artist and curator Emmi Venna, Ateneum’s director Marja Sakari and UrbanApa’s artistic director Sonya Lindfors discuss hope and art over coffee. The discussion will be held in Finnish.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 21.08 10:00—11:00
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Ateneum’s Bistro
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60min
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Finnish
Screening
Tones and Motions: With a little help from my friends
Oriane Paras & Riikka Lakea
With a little help from my friends, a musical short film by Oriane Paras and Riikka Lakea, is the result of a collective effort: it exists thanks to the strength and generosity of the artists in front of and behind the camera. The film is a collage of desires, ideas and borrowed songs gathered from and performed by its participants, and curated together by Paras and Lakea. It is a sequence of short stories and moments of song, dance, performance, and friendship situated in the everyday urban spaces of Copenhagen.
The short film’s trailers can be seen here and here!
Riikka Lakea (former Laurilehto) is a dance artist and producer. At the core of her artistic practice are collective group work and improvisation as a work and performance tool.
Oriane Paras is an international dancer and choreographer who challenges all types of physicality, voice, space and improvisation.
Tickets
Free admission (max. 50 seats)
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 21.08 14:00—15:30
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Ateneum Hall
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1h 30min
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English
Screening
Tones and Motions: Fuck you tetrao urosfallus
Salvador Ikonen
A bird of incredibly ill omens has stuck its moldy beak in an old school, thus corroding its structures and the minds of innocent students. A young knight from the future arrives through poisonous thorns in order to strip their armour in front of this insolent bird.
Salvador Ikonen is a 22-year-old dance student from Helsinki. He is currently inspired and moved by tiredness, extremity and animals.
Tickets
Free admission (max. 50 seats)
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 21.08 14:00—15:30
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Ateneum Hall
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1h 30min
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English
Tones and Motions: That Song
Laika Maa
That Song was the first single and music video to be released off of Cinquantesix’s debut album Blatz Ruche that came out in March 2020. Blatz Ruche, an homage to the late Lutz Bacher, is an exercise in conceptualism with a heavy focus on the function of narrative. It is comprised of meditations on relationships, their dynamics and the authenticity and inauthenticity of the performed, as well as the innate character and its function within the narrative/narratives. That Song is a study on objectification, idealization and a larger critique on the music industry and its ramifications on the collective psyche.
Laika Maa is best known for having produced a full length LP, several EPs, two music videos, a short film and several performances and DJ sets in the Helsinki underground scene as well as prominent clubs and festivals under her alias Cinquantesix.
Content warning: epilepsy warning
Performance, editing, writing, directing: Laika Maa
Cinematography: Pamir Shakir & Kerkko Lappalainen
Production assistance: Siiri Siltala & Onni Laine
Tickets
Free admission (max. 50 seats)
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 21.08 14:00—15:30
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Ateneum Hall
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1h 30min
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Tones and Motions: Tulva
Johan Högsten & Ainu Kyrönseppä
Tulva examines the different dimensions of digitality. Is an internet user merely a recipient controlled by an enormous network, or can we ourselves control modern data collection and our own thinking? It also reflects on how the internet’s various possibilities affect our identities.
Two people describe the power of virtual reality through dance, video and light art. A spectrum of technology lies before you. Nowadays you might forget to stop. This visual piece helps reflect life in a world that develops at a quick pace.
Content warning: flashing lights and bustling noises
Ainu Kyrönseppä ja Johan Högsten are an artist duo that mainly works in dance, but interest in other branches of art arise through new experiences.
Performers: Johan Högsten & Ainu Kyrönseppä
Light design: Liisa Kyrönseppä
Sound design: Elias Salmenkallio
Set design: Johan Högsten, Ainu Kyrönseppä & Ansa Matikainen
Costume design: Ansa Matikainen
Collaboration: URB 20 / Kiasma
Tickets
Free admission (max. 50 seats)
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Friday 21.08 14:00—15:30
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Ateneum Hall
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1h 30min
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Finnish
Discussion
Jab Molassie – the devil masquerade and cultural resilience
Dwayne White & Mari Pitkänen
Dwayne White & Mari Pitkänen facilitate a Zoom discussion on Jab Molassie, the devil masquerade in Caribbean Carnival tradition. The devil character is famous for its grotesque expression. This discussion looks for ways of negotiating the carnivalesque strategies as building cultural resilience and strategies through costume creation, ritual and rebellion.
Dwayne White is a Tobagonian actor, theatre maker and Carnival artist, whose interest is to find intersection points between the traditional and contemporary traditions of carnival.
Mari Pitkänen is an actor and performing artist who works with applied theater and performance processes. In her work she focuses on the transformations of bodies and their affects in public spaces.
Performance
Impressions
Godwin Otieno
An improvisational piece by performance artist Godwin Otieno.
Born and raised in Kenya, Godwin Otieno started his performing arts career at a young age and eventually in 2009, he started professionally training in various forms of dance. Otieno has worked internationally with various dance companies and choreographers and has been part of several festivals in Eastern Africa both as a performer and as a choreographer.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 22.08 11:30—12:00
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Ateneum courtyard
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30min
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Workshop
Sinking in the time of neoliberal work conditions
Dasha Che & Suvi Tuominen
Sinking in the time of neoliberal work conditions is a project that will actualise in the form of a 25 minute performance lecture and a 60 min follow-up workshop. The project looks deeply into the ecologies of neoliberal work conditions that take over and occupy the sites of performance actualisation such as bodies and institutional fields. The project is even more important now, in the time of the global crisis, when we, as artists, are still pulled to compete and prove our worth through a rigorous artistic response to the pandemic, and become resourceful, purposeful and efficient. Sinking into procrastination, drifting and withdrawal is not seen as a meaningful response in the current times. In their work Dasha and Tuominen are exploring what can come out when rigour and purposefulness are put aside, and current states of uncertainty and confusion are lured in.
Dasha Che and Suvi Tuominen are a performance artist duo with established practices in the field of dance and performance art. In their collaboration, Che and Tuominen seek ways to destabilise conceptual and aesthetic processes.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 22.08 12:00—13:30
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Meet-up at the ticket sales hall
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1h 30min
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English, Finnish, Russian
THE GATHERING – Hope in the Dark
The festival ends with a gathering consisting of short films, performances, poetry and deep listening.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 22.08 14:00—16:00
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Ateneum Hall
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2h 0min
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Sameer
Shareef Askar
Sameer is an experimental short film about the hope of integration, longing for home and the never ending bureaucracy of being accepted. The short film strives to portray Finnishness and readdressing one’s own identity through the point of view of an asylum seeker and a person of colour.
As a Finnish media artist and filmmaker, Shareef Askar is interested in creating films that explore the theme of identity in western societies from the perspective of characters with minority backgrounds.
Working group: Shareef Askar, Eeva Karoliina Mäenpää, Arja Pekurinen, Carlos Marroquin, Samuli Salonen
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 22.08 14:15—14:23
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Ateneum Hall
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8min
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Finnish
Spheres & Circles Circles & Spheres
Isaiah Lopaz
Charting the trajectories of two entities who follow each other across time and space, Spheres & Circles Circles & Spheres is a queer sci-fi myth which maps evolutions of gender identity and same sex practices in pre-colonial Africa, colonial greed, the transatlantic slave trade, the near extinction of the human race, and a futuristic diaspora on a distant planet, discovered in the dreams of low country women and femmes.
Isaiah Lopaz is a transdiscplinary artist who works with photography, text, collage, and performance. Themes and subjects central to his work include gender, race, sexuality, class, citizenship, Hoodoo, African and Afro-Diasporic histories and cultures.
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 22.08 14:30—14:50
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Ateneum Hall
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20min
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English (with some Spanish and some Geechee Creole)
Adventures of Harriharri
Harold Hejazi
Adventures of Harriharri is a prototype for a video game performed in hip hop. Through the form of a third-person action RPG, it tells the story of Harriharri and the numerous boundaries and obstacles he faces in pursuit of fitting into Finnish society. In order to conquer the most challenging levels of the game, Harriharri must draw upon a powerful combination of perseverance, grit and self-acceptance. However, even in the darkest moments one must have hope, victory could be just around the corner. No matter what, just keep going Harriharri!
Content warnings: strong or coarse language
Harold Hejazi, also known locally as “Harri,” is an artist and game designer whose work employs various modes of gamified performance in order to explore issues and ideas that span a broad spectrum of social life: from race and class to social memory and interpersonal dynamics.
Game development contributions: Topias Toppinen
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 22.08 15:00—15:25
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Ateneum Hall
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25min
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English
Dear Elijah
Sharron Todd
Dear Elijah is a short film written by Sharron Todd in the direct aftermath of the deaths of Black Americans by the police in 2019 and 2020.
Content warnings: strong language and brief nudity
Writer and director: Sharron Todd
Producer: Brenda Todd
Assistant producer: Mirna Shampemba-Ramstedt
Actresses: Erina G. Francesco & Maisha Ramstedt
Director of Photography: Shoot Hayley
Performances
- Date & time
- Location
- Duration
- Language
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Saturday 22.08 15:45—15:52
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Ateneum Hall
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7min
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English
