Essays
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
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.
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?
Hira Azmat on the meaning, losses, achievements, external threats, and internal conflicts of Pakistan’s young feminist movement, Aurat March.
Nuori Taide and other cultural youth work organisations need funding from the state to guarantee that art and culture services are accessible for all young people, regardless of their living situation. What worries me is how the changes in the government may change youth policy and its funding. We hope that future criteria for youth work funding will better take into account digital youth work as well as the nature of artistic hobbies.
READNuori 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.
Formal modes of engineering the well-being of the population are oppressive and exclusionary. Activists, scholars and citizens of the world have to find compassionate and strategic ways to enact their power of adaptability. Memes allow us to challenge conventional and restrictive forms of education, policy and collective action, fostering effective solutions for a broken system. Memes, as the new toolkit adopted by Internet users of India, has the potential to nurture democracy and pluralism, with the hope to preserve freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom to resist.
READPOOJA, 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.
I wish the nurses, doctors, therapists, and psychologists in Transpoli would see all the art Finland’s trans community produces. Would it make them drop their blinders and see us beyond their questionnaire? As deep-sea creatures? As the deep time-travelling bodies? As the air seeping through the saxophone player’s lips? As the space, that is quite a lot of things and can become even more.
READSome 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?
Club Dia is a ‘daytime haven born out of a need for a safe and well-thought-out regular open-air venue and hangout in Helsinki’. Surrounded by a wall of shipping containers and nestled against the Swerock cement factory in Verkkosaari, it comprises a dancefloor, bar, food truck and community radio studio. Decorated with disco balls that sit atop towers of wooden cable reels, its aesthetic speaks of its industrial setting, but the colour scheme and clientele are reminiscent of hip, gentrifying areas such as Kallio.
READThe Value(s) of Verkkosaari: Urban Safety and Subculture in Gentrifying Helsinki
Unpicking the ‘problem’ of safety in Helsinki’s underground music scene and what it ‘can and does do’ in processes of urban change.
The Freedom Riders Persian podcast follows the story and route of the Freedom Riders. They were African American and white Civil Rights activists who took bus trips through the American South in 1961. The 12-episode podcast is like an audio tour of some of the most iconic Civil Rights landmarks. Through this tour and the making of this podcast, we wanted to learn more and raise awareness among the Persian Speaking Communities about the history of racism and the Civil Rights movement in the US.
READFreedom 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.
Ahhh, collective work! It’s definitely not for everyone, but I firmly believe that combining our forces is the only way to make change happen. There are many particularities in this type of work, and as a legal worker, I often get questions from working groups who have received a collective grant for a project. The NO NIIN crew and I figured it could be helpful to talk a little about two of the most commonly asked questions: the legal status of a working group and making payments to people not part of the core group. Read on!
READSome 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.
With the end of the war-genocide, a new type of tourism started emerging in Jaffna: war tourism. In this essay, சிந்துஜன் வரதராஜா looks at life inside of a new hotel in the former war zone and explores by way of it the intrinsic relationship of military-occupation with tourism in Eelam.
READLong 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.
Working together under the name K-oh-llective, we are a group of five artists currently based in Cairo, London, Rabat and Sierre. Ever since we met in 2018, we continued to foster a support system to nurture each other’s practices as we frequently engaged in ongoing and critical conversations. The brainchild of our coming together is an online platform with the same name, where we create a space for resource-sharing, writing about and discussing urgent topics amongst art practitioners in Egypt and the Arab world.
READK-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.
One is reminded of the famous ghost of the Communist Manifesto: students in the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture have taken to occupy the ARTS building Väre, organising demonstrations and negotiations with the university representatives. Not bad!
READSTOP 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.
How long can an art association operate under short-term funding? How many fellow organizations suffer from the same problem as Catalysti? Have they found solutions? How does Catalysti stay true to its mission of granting more opportunities as an association under such restrictions?
READA 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?
