Editorial Index
Evading the Limits of Institutional Determination
On the Limits and Possibilities of Decolonising Universities
Prompted by the feelings of inadequacy when teaching “Decolonise your Studies”, Miia Laine reflects on her experiences with decolonial work at three universities in Germany, the UK and Finland.
STOP Cutting Funds for Higher Education in the Arts!
Taina Rajanti breaks down Aalto University’s argument of necessity of cuts in response to the ARTS students’ protesting the cuts, reorganizations of the departments, and the inaccessibility of the school premises.
Transdisciplinarity in Higher Education: Wicked Problems, Dreams, and Nightmares
On the ongoing processes at Aalto University in the last five years that led to the administrative decision to remove the University-Wide Art Studies (UWAS) program in 2021.
Editorial / April 2021
Elham Rahmati on the timeliness of advice towards an idealistic and ambitious art career and Vidha Saumya on the abrasive nature of the overused ‘softness’.
A Longing for Something Written in Memory
Ali Akbar Mehta’s review of Kirjasto/Library gathers thoughts on why archive-based exhibition-making practices are required.
From Memories Through the Soil to the Future
Juha Hilpas foregrounds a review of Art School MAA’s exhibition to talk about the school’s importance in nurturing a sense of belonging and networking.
Problematizing Perspectives and Positions: A Review of ARS22
How can the subaltern be meaningfully and non-performatively brought into the museum?
On (the lack of) Diversity in Academia: A Conversation With Vivetha Thambinathan
Naomi Shefali Joshi holds an intimate dialogue on the necessity of creating radical spaces for amplifying a plurality of voices that focus on counter-hegemonic perspectives in academia.
Noise, Sound and the Ongoing Project of Black Cultural Production: An Essay Reflecting on Sonia Boyce’s Recent Visit to Finland
Milka Njoroge on the fraught dynamics that structure the relation between art institutions and black people.
Mèconnaissance in Mänttä
Raine Aiava explores the institutional framework that guided Mänttä Art Festival 2021.
Our Efforts to Show Solidarity for Palestine Are Tested at Kiasma
Why is Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a person who funds an influential pro-Israeli lobbying organization serves as a member of the Kiasma Support Foundation?
A I S T I T – Coming to Our Senses: A Review in Three Paths
Timo S. Tuhkanen’s review asks if institutional structures allow coming to our senses. And is it possible to break the binary between metaphysics and phenomenology?
“A Very Marketable Commodity”
Spyropoulou’s review of “Performing a Lifetime” highlights its confessional and biographical nature, providing practical methods of resistance by exposing the ecologies of identity and trauma.
Loving Women: Loving Labels
Gladys Camilo’s review questions about the future of queerness within art institutions and queer art. How can queer curating exist and change what art institutions look like?
Who Watches Whom? Ruminations on Power, Gaze, and Field Through Pilvi Takala’s Close Watch
Ali Akbar Mehta’s review questions whether issues of embodiment and social intervention can ever be free of the power relations in the political, identity-driven understanding of society today.
Editorial / June 2022
Elham on why we must demand outrageously and repeatedly, and Vidha on the capacity of multilinguality of bringing intimacy and the habit of following through.
I Can’t Believe What You Say, Because I See What You Do
Farbod Fakharzadeh on the lack of diversity in Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s recruitment and engagement policies.
The Poor Rich People: A Review of ‘The Philosophy of Wealth’
Eetu Viren on questions of wealth and power and why the Finnish National Museum hosted an exhibition that characterizes the wealthy as a “minority group.”
Collaboration & Community Building
Celebration of Distant Bodies
Golrokh Nafisi writes about her collaborative project in Tehran, “An Equivalence of Our Distance,” made in the midst of the pandemic.
Confessions of a recovering Artist
Artist and lawyer-to-be, Riikka Kuoppala’s insights on how to make agreements and tackle different collaborations within the arts.
Some Notes on the Legalities of Collective Work
On the legal status of a working group and making payments to people not part of the core group.
Written on Ice: Edible Memories of the Neighborhood of San Juan
Martina Miño Pérez writes about her project, highlighting a more democratic relationship between contemporary art and food, eating, and tasting.
K-oh-llective: Maybe We’re in a Bad Marriage
K-oh-llective members on creating an online platform for resource-sharing, writing and discussing urgent topics among art practitioners in Egypt and the Arab world.
Blending Art, Friendship & Advocacy: A Conversation With Dr. Aiswarya Rao
Dr. Aiswarya Rao on navigating hostile spaces for people-particularly women- with disabilities through the organization ‘Better World Shelter for Women with Disabilities’.
Finding Anarchy: A Review of Helsinki International Film Festival
How can organizations dismantle power and operational structures within the world of film festivals to make them speak to the city’s various layers of inhabitants and their lives?
A Window to Listen
Sepideh Rahaa and Ceyda Berk-Söderblom’s reflections on equity, inclusion, and social justice in arts and culture in Finland.
Producing and Practicing Presence. Digital Commoning Practices in Oksasenkatu 11.
“Digital Commoning Practices asks us to pay increased attention to what (and who) facilitates our physical and digital presence while we can.”
On Working With Friction and Confrontation: Conversation With Lisa Kalkowski
Lisa Kalkowski shares her objectives and challenges of working as a producer in the field of art in Helsinki.
The Book as an Art Practice: A Conversation With Hikari Nishida
On the non-profit artistic practice of selling self-published and independent publishers’ books.
Why Are Community-Based Organisations Needed?
Ubuntu Film Club in conversation with Good Hair Day.
Plantasy: On the ABCs of TLC
On building communities and making utopias come true through consistent group communication and workable structures.
Choreographing Dissonance: A Response to Mishandled Archive
On creative methods of daily storytelling through working with unofficial, unpublished, and neglected histories using the archive of family photographs and documents in public places.
Editorial / October 2021
Elham Rahmati urges us to imagine principles and actions that would level the field from the ground up and Vidha Saumya on the brazen attitude of brown women.
E T A J Artist-Run Space, the ‘Make It’ Experience in the Art World
Ilina Schileru writes about a group of young artists in Bucharest and their endeavors to make it in an art world that offers no guarantees and is frequently a hostile environment for newcomers to the stage.
Creating Critical Tools Through Romani Vernacular Storytelling
Ioana Țîștea explores how Romani vernacular storytelling in dialogue can create critical tools for co-researchers situated in unequal power positions.
Leaving Minimal Imprints on the Landscape: A Conversation with Joasia Krysa
In an interview with Dahlia El Broul, curator of the second Helsinki Biennale, Joasia Krysa talks about the importance of collaborations in organising large art events at the time of various environmental crises.
Cinema and the Political Imaginary in Kirkuk
Natasha Marie Llorens addresses fantasy, daily life, solidarity, and individual resistance in a close reading of ‘Cineholic,’ a short film exploring cinema’s role in Kirkuk’s which is characterized by conflict.
How to Confuse Capitalism?
The Brink of the Platform: Riding With Deliveroo
How can algorithmic management lead to authoritarian management and precarious jobs?
Cracking the mind: You Are What the Attention Economy Wants
Sami Juhani Rekola questions the concept of “consent” and a “new work paradigm” in the era of post-peak attention economy, capitalism and polarizing contents.
Affordable Views
Narrated through the history of Sami Juhani Rekola’s father’s relationship with work and money, this is a story about the intersecting paths of the body and capitalism.
Crouched! Crouched Is My Position: A Review of the Adventures of Harriharri
Uzair Amjad articulates how a live game performance uncovers the overlapping of territories, the unsettling of institutions, the linking of languages and sites of exploitation.
POOJA, What Is This Behaviour?: Memes as Political Participation & Toolkit of Digital Resistance in India
Abhinit Khanna discusses meme culture, misinformation, trolling, and data-muddying in times of pandemic and war using the visual language of digital artworks.
When Home Follows You Home: A Review of Anssi Kasitonni’s Speed Records
Gabriella Presnal review focuses on reflective versus restorative nostalgia and the Americanization of Finnish visual and contemporary culture.
The Real Housewives Franchise: Series of Problematic -Isms and Car-Crash TV at Its Finest
Through reviewing the “Real Housewives” franchise, Ndéla Faye analyzes the fine line between escapism and voyeurism.
On Recognising the Moment of Hope: Speaking in Echoes With Hiwa K.
Ali Akbar Mehta interviews Hiwa K. on navigating the capitalistic system of art, ‘urgency’ of climate change and notions of homeland.
The Poor Rich People: A Review of ‘The Philosophy of Wealth’
Eetu Viren on questions of wealth and power and why the Finnish National Museum hosted an exhibition that characterizes the wealthy as a “minority group.”
Artistic Processes
Movement and Resistance: An Interview With Noora Geagea
On daily routine, power dynamics, struggles, resistance, attitudes, and structures.
To Follow a Ball of Yarn: A Conversation With Shubhangi Singh
On gendered forms of labor, collective struggles, domestic and public spaces in relation to the body.
On “The Feeling of Being on Display and Under Pressure” — a Conversation With Man Yau
On artistic processes, practices and labour as well as the intertwining of the personal and the thematic in Man Yau’s work.
On Soft Alphabets and the Hues of an Inside: An Interview With Corinna Helenelund
On the role of language and textuality, colors, pregnancy, and parenting in Helenelund’s work.
Weaving Connections in the Flow: A Conversation With Leila Seyedzadeh
On feminine approaches to collage making with fabrics and the influence of Negārgari, ancient paintings in Iran.
Countering Cohesive Narratives: Conversation with Azar Saiyar
Marja Viitahuhta interviews Azar Saiyar on the occasion of her exhibition ‘My Home and Roses’.
Accessibility Is Not Static: A Conversation With Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen
Iisa Lepistö’s interview with artist/activist Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen regarding politics of care, disability, and the aesthetics of assisting devices.
From Memory to Memorial: A Conversation With Aishe Vejdani
Anna Ruth interviews Iranian artist, Aishe Vejdani, on how literature, history, music, and social dissonance influence her artwork.
Taidekirppis: What Happens When an Archive-Based Project Ends Prematurely?
Andrea Coyotzi Borja, Farbod Fakharzadeh on the perils of short-term funding and the cycles of affirmation, abandonment, despair, and continuation it propels.
Playful Personification of Death: A Conversation With Melina Paakkonen
On visual storytelling, symbolism, and the whimsical representations of death.
Editorial / April 2022
On “promoting” the values they advocate for in their artwork, not when they’re trending but when they’re not, and the wish to have the freedom to speak one’s mind instead of feigning agreeability.
Venus, in the Threshold of the Screen
Focusing on movement exploration and feminist performative rewriting of the myth of the Western love goddess, this essay discusses the origin of the work Venus by Janina Rajakangas.
Contact Reality: A Conversation with Maija Blåfield
Maija Blåfield on her complex relationship with photography and revealing the magic behind the ordinary in moments created by the texts and photographs.
Micronarratives
What Do I Call You?
Minjee Hwang Kim on labelling and categorization of people, the power of assimilation, and the denial of structural oppression stretching into the model minority myth for Asians in the West.
Taking Off a White Coat: Notes From Under Sanctions
Adel Kim considers the perspectives of different art-workers under sanctions and associated with the arts in Russia.
A Co-Artistic Director Speaking
Lin Chih Tung on the challenges and aspirations working for an artist-run association. How do you redefine slogans, identify problematics, contemplate contradictions, and convey the message correctly?
A Midsummer Encounter
Tuomo Tuovinen on rare encounters with audiences from outside the professional art sphere.
Personal Decamerone
Eero Yli-Vakkuri on considering sex work as artistic practice.
Dear museum of Bad Art (MoBA)
What’s more genuine than putting all your efforts into what you truly believe in, and failing?
Gross & Melancholic
17 minutes podcast, with a singular goal: to understand how the hell did Roxana Sadvokassova end up being a half-baked comedian?
Queer Parables
Daddy’s Girl
A short-fiction by Toshiya Kamei.
Ejaculation Falls: A Queer Diasporic Review
Vishnu Vardhani Rajan on resisting the binary and refusing the insufficient status quo.
Lan Yu: Attraction of Opposites; Between Symbolism in Beijing Comrades
Yilin Ma’s review of Stanley Kwan’s film ‘Lan Yu’.
Bliss: With a Light Touch, With a Tender Gaze
Amanda Hunt’s review of Henrika Kull’s film ‘Bliss’.
Hello World: Tell Me if Something Bad Happens
Shia Conlon’s review of Kenneth Elvebakk’s film ‘Hello World’.
Sanctuary
A short-fiction by Toshiya Kamei.
Midsummer Spells
A short-fiction by Johanna Valjakka.
Two of Us: On Ageing Queer Love & Aged Queer Stereotypes
Isa Komsi’s review of Filippo Meneghetti’s film ‘Two of Us’
Loving Women: Loving Labels
Gladys Camilo’s review questions about the future of queerness within art institutions and queer art. How can queer curating exist and change what art institutions look like?
To Be a Verb Sometimes, Sometimes a Noun
Even Minn on capturing a shift in perception and language akin to the non-binary experience in the review of the exhibition ‘Gentle Gestures - Non-binary Conceptions of Difference’
No Shade: Betty Fvck & the House of Betty Fvck
House of Fvck members in a “no shade” interview with Betty Fvck.
“Most of the Time, It’s Just a Wonderful Thing”: Conversation With August Joensalo
Orlan Ohtonen talks to August Joensalo about how gender is represented in an image and how that could be changed.
Some Ways in Which a Gender May Be Felt
What if the nurses, doctors, therapists, and psychologists in Transpoli could see all the art Finland’s trans community produces?
Eva-Lisa’s Monument: Caring for the Archive of a Trans Pioneer
Deep Time Trans, a Lookinglass Into Prehistoric Queer Ecology: Conversation With Even Minn and Teo Ala-Ruona
The “I”s of Artistic Research
In this Research Paper, Rebecca Close writes about pleasure and the stakes of making and sharing knowledge through the “I”s of Artistic Research.
Politics of Care
Accessibility Is Not Static: A Conversation With Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen
Iisa Lepistö’s interview with artist/activist Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen regarding politics of care, disability, and the aesthetics of assisting devices.
Some Notes on the Legalities of Collective Work
On the legal status of a working group and making payments to people not part of the core group.
All I Want to Do Is to Hold Your Hand and Cry the Tears of Joy
Vera Kavaleuskaya convinces us to evade the rigid notion of professionalism, to not accept the invisible hand, and to kill the joy but to then revive it on your terms.
Friends and Their Homes
A poem and artwork by Priyanka Paul.
Noise: A Review of Vaiti by Laura Malmivaara
On the contradiction between the culture of silence and the MeToo movement in Finland.
Shrödinger’s Backflip
Julian Owusu’s reflective essay on the role of facilitator, its possibilities and outcomes in retrospect.
On Working With Friction and Confrontation: Conversation With Lisa Kalkowski
Lisa Kalkowski shares her objectives and challenges of working as a producer in the field of art in Helsinki.
Moment of Welcoming: Conversation With Eleni Tsitsirikou
Has there been a change in how art residencies are perceived? A conversation with HIAP’s residency manager.
Editorial / December 2021
Elham Rhmati reflects on difficult challenges alongside moments of immense joys in NO NIIN’s first year of publishing; and Vidha Saumya on the the buoyant nature of confrontation in friendship.
Editorial / March 2022
Elham Rahmati makes a case against sanctions and coaxes us to step down from high moral horses; and Vidha Saumya on leaning on planning when distressed by spontaneity.
Productive Bodies, Care and Destruction
Anna Varfolomeeva’s essay on the paradoxical parallels between more-than-human care and self-destruction in the realm of heavy industries.
Finding Forms to Recognise Warmth: A Conversation With Bogna Luiza Wisniewska
Conversational pathway created by Katie Lenanton and Bogna Luiza Wisniewska through critical distance and intimacy with image-prompts.
In the Crisis of Time
Mariliis Rebane on dystopian narratives and how can curatorial practices contribute to imagining alternative futures and maintaining hope in the time of crisis.
A Journey to Kandahar
Two poems by Elyas Alavi
Blending Art, Friendship & Advocacy: A Conversation With Dr. Aiswarya Rao
Dr. Aiswarya Rao on navigating hostile spaces for people-particularly women- with disabilities through the organization ‘Better World Shelter for Women with Disabilities’.
Love Is for the Ones Who Love the Work: How Close Reading Interrupts Caste in the Classroom
In close reading, the body is also learning to pay attention to itself when it responds a certain way to a line, a sentence, or a paragraph. Something that can perhaps only come from leisure and the luxury to sit and have the free time to be available to the text. How many Dalit teachers can afford this?
Self-Portrait of An Emergency
Two poems by Jared Maxilom.
Open Wounds, Invisible Bodies: A Conversation with Liryc Dela Cruz
Helia Hamedani interviews Liryc Dela Cruz, an artist exploring bureaucracy, racial discrimination, and accountability in the Filipino diaspora’s context, particularly among domestic workers in Italy.
Questions of Funding
Crouched! Crouched Is My Position: A Review of the Adventures of Harriharri
Uzair Amjad articulates how a live game performance uncovers the overlapping of territories, the unsettling of institutions, the linking of languages and sites of exploitation.
Taidekirppis: What Happens When an Archive-Based Project Ends Prematurely?
Andrea Coyotzi Borja, Farbod Fakharzadeh on the perils of short-term funding and the cycles of affirmation, abandonment, despair, and continuation it propels.
Our Efforts to Show Solidarity for Palestine Are Tested at Kiasma
Why is Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a person who funds an influential pro-Israeli lobbying organization serves as a member of the Kiasma Support Foundation?
STOP Cutting Funds for Higher Education in the Arts!
Taina Rajanti breaks down Aalto University’s argument of necessity of cuts in response to the ARTS students’ protesting the cuts, reorganizations of the departments, and the inaccessibility of the school premises.
Intergenerational Dialogues
Tell Your Story, Though Your Voice May Shake: A Review of Third Culture Kids Suomi Finland
How is Finland’s shifting demographics influencing different ways of seeing, experiencing, and moving through life?
Magic, Intergenerational Trauma & Snail Shells: Conversation With KaffeochBulla
On creating art in a culture where vulnerability is discouraged, breaking intergenerational curses, and the importance of community.
A Long Line of Characters: Getting to Know the Life and Work of Kirsti Tuokko
Kirsti Tuokko on her life as a painter and person, navigating gender roles, prescribed pathways, uncertainty, pleasure, and guilt.
About My Mother: A Series of Open Letters to Chris Kraus — Part I
Carlota Mir on feminism as a contested space of power.
Worry and Play: A Conversation With Kristiina ‘Tikke’ Tuura
On storytelling, community engagement, and using a playful approach to express sociopolitical concerns.
Dreaming Utopias Into Existence: A Conversation With Sonia Boyce
On the simultaneous decentralizing and contextualising of the self, and lightening the burden of representation.
Mixing Everything With Everything in Everything — an Interview With Hertta Kiiski
On viewing care work as an expertise and embracing it as a significant part of artistic practice.
Representation of Disobedient Bodies: A Critical Reading of Shirin Neshat’s Visual Language
Shohreh Shakoory on the discrepancy between the representation of experiences of people’s protests in Iran, reflected in their own photographic and moving images, and the artworks of Shirin Neshat.
Many Moves but No Broken Bones: A Review of ‘Flip! Skate & Art’
FLIP! Skate & Art at the Vantaa Art Museum Artsi presents the work of artists who have produced art about skateboarding and/or learned from it artistically. Although lacking the ability to go beyond aesthetic impressions and bring out edge, depth, and paths for new thinking, the exhibition contains some great artworks and builds an archive of skateboarding art to learn from.
A Displacement, a Discomfort, a Translocation
The diversity of the Filipino diasporic experience is often left unaddressed and conveniently reduced to give way to a cohesive idea of identity. How do we go back? And should we do that at all?
There Are No Enfants Terribles Here: A Review of Generation 2023
In an art world obsessed with the urge to find the next new thing and benefit from it, can a sleek, high production value exhibition showcasing the work of 15 - 23 year old artists challenge the love-hate relationship with the youth? Generation 2023 is balanced and diverse, but its fixation on youth is double edged.
Open Wounds, Invisible Bodies: A Conversation with Liryc Dela Cruz
Helia Hamedani interviews Liryc Dela Cruz, an artist exploring bureaucracy, racial discrimination, and accountability in the Filipino diaspora’s context, particularly among domestic workers in Italy.
Black Utopias
Khadar Ahmed: The King of "No"
Sharron L. Todd in conversation with Khadar Ahmed on deciding his own future, despite the societal odds stacked against him.
Freedom Riders Persian Podcast: A Journey Through the South and the Civil Rights Landmarks
A read-through of a travel journal of interconnected solidarity, the differences, and the common grounds between the Iranian and African American communities.
Diaspora Mixtapes: Towards a Politics of Black Filmmaking
Analytical review of ‘Diaspora Mixtapes’ an art-house documentary reveals what it means to politicize the visual.
Dreaming Utopias Into Existence: A Conversation With Sonia Boyce
On the simultaneous decentralizing and contextualising of the self, and lightening the burden of representation.
African Cinema Takes Center Stage
Sharron L. Todd reviews African Express Short Films screened at the 34th Helsinki International Film Festival and why it has an elevated impact on the festival.
Why Are Community-Based Organisations Needed?
Ubuntu Film Club in conversation with Good Hair Day.
Privilege Is in the Eye of the Beholder
In reviewing the photography exhibition Blind Spot(s) Ndéla Faye asks, “how does one capture something like structural racism in images?”
Noise, Sound and the Ongoing Project of Black Cultural Production: An Essay Reflecting on Sonia Boyce’s Recent Visit to Finland
Milka Njoroge on the fraught dynamics that structure the relation between art institutions and black people.
Rewriting and Dreaming Afro Finnish History: A Conversation With Wisam Elfadl
Shadia Rask’s interview with curator Wisam Elfadl on the collective experience of being Afro Finnish and the process and power of seeing this experience at the Helsinki City Museum.
Internationalist Solidarities
Bad Idea
A poem by Aleena; with audio reading.
Wild Grass
Two recipes / poems by Rajyashri Goody; with audio reading.
Who Gets Love in Popular Culture? A Review of Pa Ranjith’s Film Natchathiram Nagargiradhu
How can a film reverse the language of cinema in its aesthetics, gaze, and culture formed by shared histories, collective experience, solidarity and a movement of assertion?
Stories of Resistance: A Conversation With Filmmakers Omey Anand and Jyoti Nisha
How to break through the caste-based gatekeeping and work towards building a Dalit and Bahujan discourse of filmmaking and documenting?
Winning the ‘Toss’: A Look at Who Gets a Sports Biopic in India
Anurag Minus Verma asks whose struggle gets a film in an unequal society such as India where caste can privilege as well as oppress.
To a Suburbia Called Ramallah
A poem by Adele Jarrar.
Intersectional Feminist
A Poem by Nina Mufleh; with audio-video-text reading.
Visit Palestine
A poem & artwork by Kihwa-Endale; with audio-video reading.
Editorial / September 2022
Elham Rahmati on understanding ‘desperation’ as a state of recuperation and not submission; and Vidha Saumya on how communities can trespass linguistic and cultural boundaries.
South Asian Women’s Cinema: Between Festivals & Streaming
On the questionable priorities of European and US film festivals in contributing to the global circulation of South Asian films, women’s films in particular.
Writing Tamilness: Perspectives From Tamil Futures and Tamil Guardian
Abinaya and Vanessa reflect on their experiences in the Tamil community and discuss the pressure to represent Tamilness for non-Tamil audiences.
A Journey to Kandahar
Two poems by Elyas Alavi
Love Is for the Ones Who Love the Work: How Close Reading Interrupts Caste in the Classroom
In close reading, the body is also learning to pay attention to itself when it responds a certain way to a line, a sentence, or a paragraph. Something that can perhaps only come from leisure and the luxury to sit and have the free time to be available to the text. How many Dalit teachers can afford this?
Open Wounds, Invisible Bodies: A Conversation with Liryc Dela Cruz
Helia Hamedani interviews Liryc Dela Cruz, an artist exploring bureaucracy, racial discrimination, and accountability in the Filipino diaspora’s context, particularly among domestic workers in Italy.
Taming Landscapes
Jumping Rope With Time
Sinthujan Varatharajah writes on how Europeans subdued and reorganized formerly distant natures, people, and cultures according to their own industrial needs with the help of different technical ‘innovations’, including the infamous clock.
Long Before Justice, Tourists Arrive
Sinthujan Varatharajah looks at life inside a new hotel in the former war zone and explores by way of it the intrinsic relationship of military-occupation with tourism in Eelam.
Where the Striped Hyenas Are, or, A Tale Is a Map and a Compass: Some Fragments on the Fantastical, Land and Remembrance
Shayma Nader on how can the fantastical embody the political; what if all fantastical creatures were to rise up against the dispossessions and alienations from the lands that sustain them, to which they belong?
Seeing My Self-Image in Dolls That Imitate the Sámi People
Helga West on the politics of souvenir dolls that exoticize the Sámi people.
The (Un)disputed Portrait of the Middle-Class
Fjolla Hoxha reviews ‘Sarajevo Roses and Clouds of June’ an exhibition about what photography exposes in terms of socio-political relationships within the hegemony of the power structures that reign us.
Between Being Political & Being Politicized: A Conversation With Ánnámáret
In an interview with Sophia Mitiku, Nuorgam based musician and yoiker, Ánnámáret reflects on the processes of yoiking and how, as a Sámi artist, being on stage is always a political act.
Approaches to Palestinian Liberation: Magical Realism as Resistance Literature
Can literary magical realism be considered a type of resistance literature in the Palestinian context?
Leaving Minimal Imprints on the Landscape: A Conversation with Joasia Krysa
In an interview with Dahlia El Broul, curator of the second Helsinki Biennale, Joasia Krysa talks about the importance of collaborations in organising large art events at the time of various environmental crises.
Beyond the Curriculum
Temporary Peace
Shahi Derky’s poignant text about leaving Syria, seeking refuge in different places, and the unending exile of figuring things out, remembering many pasts, and imagined futures.
Transdisciplinarity in Higher Education: Wicked Problems, Dreams, and Nightmares
On the ongoing processes at Aalto University in the last five years that led to the administrative decision to remove the University-Wide Art Studies (UWAS) program in 2021.
STOP Cutting Funds for Higher Education in the Arts!
Taina Rajanti breaks down Aalto University’s argument of necessity of cuts in response to the ARTS students’ protesting the cuts, reorganizations of the departments, and the inaccessibility of the school premises.
Nuori Taide: A Forum for Young Art Makers
Anni Rupponen brings together throyughst and artworks of Ansa Kurola, Karoliina Kuusisto, Tiia Tammi, Moona Rantanen, Jenny Idman who share their thoughts on their creative practices and what they wish for in art.
On (the lack of) Diversity in Academia: A Conversation With Vivetha Thambinathan
Naomi Shefali Joshi holds an intimate dialogue on the necessity of creating radical spaces for amplifying a plurality of voices that focus on counter-hegemonic perspectives in academia.
Towards Monstrous Pedagogies
Emma Hovi on why it is imprtnat to distinguish between processes of Othering and processes of monstering in the wake of school bullying.
Achievement ≠ Happiness
Hanna Järvinen makes a case on why to divorce happiness from achievement, how to take a deliberate vacation and schedule time for being bored.
The “I”s of Artistic Research
In this Research Paper, Rebecca Close writes about pleasure and the stakes of making and sharing knowledge through the “I”s of Artistic Research.
Ecologies & Topologies
I Versus Us Versus I
Yvonne Billimore reviews the exhibition ‘TICK ACTs’ as a reflections on encountering and thinking-with “other” bodies through art.
MATA: Not a Forest, but a Killer Field
Riina Rastas reviews ‘MATA’ a documentary film about industrial land use impact on climate change and the indigenous peoples’ attempt to protect their land.
Guest Editorial / November 2021
Hector Sanchez writes about the aggressive land use, and how to build radical care action on a damaged planet.
The Silent “Forest”
Ingrid Fadnes writes about the forced eucalyptus plantations in Brazil and its brutal aftermath on local habitat.
Between Being Political & Being Politicized: A Conversation With Ánnámáret
In an interview with Sophia Mitiku, Nuorgam based musician and yoiker, Ánnámáret reflects on the processes of yoiking and how, as a Sámi artist, being on stage is always a political act.
Sad, Sexy and Artist-Run
A Co-Artistic Director Speaking
Lin Chih Tung on the challenges and aspirations working for an artist-run association. How do you redefine slogans, identify problematics, contemplate contradictions, and convey the message correctly?
But Not Without a Few Battle Scars
Shubhangi Singh reviews Six Years in (the) Third Space publication analogically reviewing also Third Space as the artist-run gallery that harboured a complex place of hybridity.
Six Years
Marina Valle Noronha reviews ‘Sorbus — Wasted Years: sad, sexy, and artist-run’: “To nurture publishing infrastructures is a political action.”
E T A J Artist-Run Space, the ‘Make It’ Experience in the Art World
Ilina Schileru writes about a group of young artists in Bucharest and their endeavors to make it in an art world that offers no guarantees and is frequently a hostile environment for newcomers to the stage.
On Love? A Review of the Exhibition ‘Unity’ at SIC Space
Najia Fatima iterates how it is crucial to remain critical of spaces that claim universality without adequately centering marginalised voices.
Radical Sisterhoods
Aurat March: Reimagining Justice Through Sisterhood & Solidarity
Sheherazade Amin articulates the significance of a feminist movement envisioned with an inclusive perspective of justice.
Editorial / Autumn 2022
Elham emphasizes the importance of having patience in learning and growing together in a feminist revolution and Vidha draws attention to the inherent agency of ‘trouble’.
Ragesong
A poem by Golnoush Noor; with audio-video reading.
Editorial / June 2021
Elham Rahmati writes on the confounding list of adult problems that nobody prepared you for; and Vidha Saumya writes on the manifold meanings of ‘and love’ in NO NIIN.
About My Mother: A Series of Open Letters to Chris Kraus — Part I
Carlota Mir on feminism as a contested space of power.
Editorial / March 2021
On artistic exchange as an avenue for navigating immediate crises, precarious lifeworks, and unstable futures, and countering batekeeping by interchnaging roles of writer, artist, curator, and the reader.
Representation of Disobedient Bodies: A Critical Reading of Shirin Neshat’s Visual Language
Shohreh Shakoory on the discrepancy between the representation of experiences of people’s protests in Iran, reflected in their own photographic and moving images, and the artworks of Shirin Neshat.
Blending Art, Friendship & Advocacy: A Conversation With Dr. Aiswarya Rao
Dr. Aiswarya Rao on navigating hostile spaces for people-particularly women- with disabilities through the organization ‘Better World Shelter for Women with Disabilities’.