One of the worst betrayals of oppressive systems is destroying our sense of imagination and confining it to their limited worldview, where the word ‘woman’ is only synonymous with motherhood and with bodies that need to be controlled; where Jin Jiyan Azadi isn’t a valid manifesto because it sounds too romantic for the very patriarchal minds it wishes to change; where your idea of equality means that there should be the word ‘man’ next to ‘woman’; or it may seem the revolution is excluding men. So yes, we have the most progressive manifesto, but how to live up to it?
READEditorial / October 2022
In 2018 three Aurat March chapters across different cities - ostensibly non-hierarchical, avowedly self-funded - announced their Aurat Marches in their respective cities. There was an effusion of radical feminist digital art and hashtags, fiery debate and declarations, and mobilization on the streets, including street art murals, posters and solidarity building with working-class women’s organisations and marginalized communities. That first year, the marchers were modest in number, but the idea of women marching, singing, dancing, and shouting on the streets that were otherwise hostile to them every other day of the year had an extraordinary impact. Pakistanis sat up and paid attention - but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The march has happened every year since and has spread to smaller cities, including Peshawar, Quetta, Multan, Faisalabad, Hyderabad and Sukkur. And the backlash against it from mainstream media, government institutions, and religious militant organizations has continued to escalate and exponentially exceed its own scale.
READ5 Years of Pakistan’s Aurat March: the young feminist movement shocked the nation into paying attention. But where is it headed?
In my view, Sonia Boyce’s presence in Helsinki is complicated by Finnish institutions’ treatment of black people in Finland. This essay thus considers the conditions of possibility that Boyce’s presence catapults for black cultural productions in Finland. To be clear, I am not implying that for black cultural production to make sense in Finland, outside-Finnish-borders blackness needs always to be present; instead, I want to trouble this very tendency that many Finnish institutions seem to rely on.
READNoise, Sound and the ongoing project of Black cultural production: an essay reflecting on Sonia Boyce’s recent visit to Finland
With this text, I’m probing into ongoing processes at Aalto University in the last five years, which, among other things, led to the administrative decision to remove the University-Wide Art Studies (UWAS) program in 2021. The story starts in 2016 when something quite special was cooking in the Art, Design, and Architecture School, and a truly radical form of transdisciplinary education was lived and enjoyed by many, thanks to UWAS. I want to make sense of the sad fallout from such dream; a fallout that happened despite countless protests at different levels of the organization’s pyramid.
READTransdisciplinarity in Higher Education: Wicked Problems, Dreams, and Nightmares
When I reflected on the works from Speed Records, I questioned if there was supposed to be an element of parody. Was the use of the candy-colored paint intentional to comment on the glorification of US mass consumerism, specifically within the subculture of motorsports? Many works were created out of resin; was this to comment on the permanence of US-American mass culture? Or even the permanence of US-American cultural hegemony within the vast amounts of consumed nostalgia? Like consumable products, cultural media omnisciently persists through microplastics, carbon emissions, or successful propaganda.
READWhen Home Follows You Home: A Review of Anssi Kasitonni’s Speed Records
The exhibition opens with a series of sculptural elements installed in the first of Titanik’s two exhibition rooms. The dominant colour is a peachy orange, and the materials range from glazed ceramics to smooth silicone and fluffy fake fur. Some objects are similar to everyday things related to keeping cats, a climbing tree, climbable shelves on the wall, and cat beds. This everyday impression gets nudged toward the uncanny by some extra elements. From a shelf of the climbing tree, some sort of goo is dripping onto the floor, like a cat had lost the surface tension holding it together and became shapeless matter.
READThe Unbearable Existence of Kittens: A Review of Reija Meriläinen’s Snugglesafe
Sympathetic resonance in music is the reactionary sonar vibration in an object caused by the vibrations of a different object: It is like the awakening of a note in something that is not actively made to sound. When I see the newest paintings by Aishe Vejdani, this is what I feel. The visual resonance sounds a similar chord in my retina, and I feel emotional waves ripple through me.I am intrigued by how the paintings look, both ancient and new. These works reference Aishe’s ancestral past, including the hardship of her forefathers.
READFrom Memory to Memorial: A Conversation With Aishe Vejdani
Sonia Boyce is a pioneer of the British Black Art movement. Her practice stems from the visual arts but has grown in so many directions that categorizing her work into any single art form feels oversimplifying. Then again, that is partly the nature of Black Art: the need and ability to be multiple things and escape definition simultaneously. Sonia and I are from different generations; we work with distinct art forms in different contexts and very different parts of Europe. Despite these differences, we almost immediately find a common language. In our discussion, we define it as the language of blackness. Working as a black man in northern Finland, it is a rare opportunity to have a tête-a-tête with my elders. It can even be hard to recognize my elders. Sonia called it systemic amnesia, how our environments erase our lineages and make us think we are alone.
READDreaming Utopias Into Existence: A Conversation With Sonia Boyce
READAfter going missing for three months, Lisa, Suddenly appears at my midnight window. “I have an idea. A very bad idea” She whispers through the bars. I, both waking and dreaming Forgot to ask the important questions. “What? Tell me”.Bad Idea
