Essays
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READEducational institutions, just like all other institutions, can be considered microcosms of society, where prevailing attitudes and values manifest. Consequently, as racism permeates Finnish society, it also seeps into Finnish daycares.
Microaggressions & Everyday Racism in Finland’s Daycare System
Finland is often celebrated for its world-renowned daycare system and commitment to social equality. However, beneath the surface, many non-white families face a disquieting reality: a barrage of microaggressions and everyday racism that challenges the nation’s ideals of equity.
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READThis gives a more exhaustive picture of the Italian context; indeed, if, on the one hand, there is a total lack of rules and government measures to protect cultural work, on the other, many art workers themselves do not have the critical thinking attitude to analyze their own conditions and to claim their rights. The rise of neoliberal logic does not help this lack of political awareness, inasmuch as it fosters competition rather than solidarity and makes people more isolated and vulnerable.
No Country for Art Workers
On political imagination and activism as care, according to AWI – Art Workers Italia. How to hack the precariat-based neoliberal system and its ideology of individualisation by embracing an intersectional approach to civil rights and precarious lives.
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READWhile azerbaijan was bombing Armenians with israeli and turkish UAVs and paying bonuses to turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries for beheading Armenians, the “international community,” whatever that’s supposed to mean at this point, expressed lousy words of “concern,” and displayed a nauseous stance of both-sideism, devoid of any tangible action. The existence of this unrecognised republic and its indigenous population wasn’t legitimate enough for world powers to lift a finger.
Violent Septembers: An Armenian Perspective Amid the Ongoing Occupation
In the shadow of a devastating ethnic cleansing campaign by azerbaijan1, this essay paints a narrative of Armenians grappling with cultural erasure and ongoing threats.
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READCultural appropriation is not a new phenomenon in the Sámi context. Sámi handicrafts, duodji, have been and are still the subject of cultural appropriation. One of the central issues of cultural appropriation is that it gives the power to determine and decide on cultural objects to an actor outside the community, which weakens the self-determination of the community to manage the design themselves.
Colonial Continuity in Finland: Cultural Appropriation of Sámi Design
On the exploitation of Sámi design in Finland and how it reflects colonial continuity and power relations.
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READIn the dimension of equity-realism, it is necessary to break the trend leading towards a further entrenching of elitism or exclusivity. In a time of profound recession and social inequality, it seems economically and socially urgent that organisations and institutes, those that use their association with the state and those who choose a path less oriented towards national promotion, learn from the actual experimentation on financial models and choose to distribute and support the diverse economic ecologies of grassroots art organisations and independent artists.
Selling the Nordic Miracle
The Board of Directors of Frame Contemporary Art Finland1, has made an apparently uneventful change to their guidelines: “As a general rule, the grant will be paid to foreign beneficiaries only on presentation of a report on the use of the grant in accordance with the grant guidelines after the implementation of the supported project.” How does this decision align with the current trend of financial cuts underway in the arts sector in Finland, and what does it say about the ever-rising classism, social discrimination, racism, and the exclusion of non-Finnish workers?
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READI am terrified, devastated, and drained. Every massacre makes me believe that this world does not deserve our dreams. Israel kills us in full view of the world, yet no one is doing anything to stop this genocide. The West’s presidents supported Israel and funded them to kill us. This war was not going to continue without the West and Arab leader’s consent.
Where Should We Go? No Place Is Safe in Gaza
Noura Selmi, a writer and translator from Gaza, has written us an account of her experience living in the south of Gaza amid Israel’s unfolding genocide of Palestinians.
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READWhat do a fashion designer, a youth empowerment YouTuber, and a right-wing politician have in common? In Pakistan, the answer is hatred of transgender people, and their battleground of choice is the internet. Historically, the South Asia region has been home to a visible, though marginalized, transgender/khawajasira community, and Pakistan has been one of the leading countries with the most progressive legislation on transgender rights. However, 2021 saw a surge in religious right-wing discourse against transgender rights in the country.
Digital Hate and the Othering of Pakistan’s Transgender Community
The internet and religion have combined to create a potent cocktail of extreme transphobia in Pakistan in recent years, resulting in creative censorship, the upending of civic protections, and an uptick in violence. And yet the beleaguered khawajasiras of Pakistan fight on.
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READCineholic, in other words, is a film about cinema in a context in which the role of the medium has been to mediate between the Iraqi population and an almost constant state of conflict—first during the Iran-Iraq war, then the First Gulf War, then the Second, and finally the past twenty years of simmering civil unrest in the wake of the regime’s forced dismantlement by the US.
Cinema and the Political Imaginary in Kirkuk
A close reading of Cineholic, a short film that interrogates the role of the medium in Kirkuk, which is characterized by conflict —first during the Iran-Iraq war, then the First Gulf War, then the Second, and finally the past twenty years of simmering civil unrest in the wake of the regime’s forced dismantlement by the US.
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READThe desire and urgency for them to be shared with a larger public remained a motivating factor in curating The Unforgotten Moon. Seeing Ahmed’s work in person, I was struck by the complexity and the capricious visual vocabulary of his paintings. With political currents and personal commentary running through symbolic landscapes, his work is a powerful insight into the conditions of the prison system and the psychological price of living inside it indefinitely.
The Unforgotten Moon: Liberating Art from Guantánamo Bay
How can political, legal, and creative processes challenge established systems of the “art world”? A recounting of a project presented in Pakistan—a country with a complicated history of security cooperation with the USA—contexted around the works of Ahmed Rabbani, a resident of Pakistan who was held without charge at Guantánamo Bay between 2002-2023 and whose artworks depicting imprisonment and torture were confiscated by the U.S. military.
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READEuropean modes of living and cultures have become globalised and naturalised, so much so that critical conversations around European traditions today focus more on questions of racial diversity in, say, orchestras, ensembles, and European music and dance schools rather than why and how European cultural productions have become such a global commodity and signifier for class and and “civilisational” ascend to begin with.
The Innocence of (European) Instruments
European modes of living and cultures have become globalised and naturalised, so much so that critical conversations around European traditions today focus more on questions of racial diversity in, say, orchestras, ensembles, and European music and dance schools rather than why and how European cultural productions have become such a global commodity and signifier for class and and “civilisational” ascend to begin with.
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READHow can we facilitate collective transfers of knowledge and support peer feedback practices in a transdisciplinary cohort? How can we cultivate learning communities where sites of authority are multiple and distributed? How to expand this learning in a microcosm to exist critically and together in the world?
Feedback in Relation: On Friendship, Microcosms & Constructive Criticism
How can we facilitate collective transfers of knowledge and support peer feedback practices in a transdisciplinary cohort? How can we cultivate learning communities where sites of authority are multiple and distributed? How to expand this learning in a microcosm to exist critically and together in the world?
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READOur solidarity against Prime Minister Orpo’s far-right government doesn’t need to stop with other ethnic minorities but can act as a tool to bring everyone together, irrespective of background, who is set to suffer under the new regime—from the exploited worker to the overworked parent, from the retiree dependent on housing support to the employee looking for a career change—a number easily far higher than the votes the ruling coalition managed to rake in.
Only Solidarity, Not Respectability, Can Topple Finland’s Dangerous Far-Right Government
Our solidarity against Prime Minister Orpo’s far-right government doesn’t need to stop with other ethnic minorities but can act as a tool to bring everyone together, irrespective of background, who is set to suffer under the new regime—from the exploited worker to the overworked parent, from the retiree dependent on housing support to the employee looking for a career change—a number easily far higher than the votes the ruling coalition managed to rake in.