This issue asks, “Why is Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a person who funds an influential pro-Israeli lobbying organization serves as a member of the Kiasma Support Foundation?” ; How does one capture something like structural racism in images?; What would happen to storytelling, urban planning, and decision-making if we shifted the perspective on Kontula and other similar neighborhoods and started to ask what they need?; explores the institutional framework that guided the Mänttä Art Festival 2021; reflects on the role of facilitator, its possibilities, and outcomes in retrospect; etc. Julian Owusu, Pietari Kylmälä, Eero Yli-Vakkuri, Ndéla Faye, Raine Aiava, Elina Nissinen, Nimco Kulmiye Hussein, Femma Planning, and Golnoosh Nour are among the contributors to this issue.
Both catastrophe, and ‘comfortable’ routine, bring impatience. While our catastrophic impatience stems in part from repeated accounts of our trust being mishandled, it also stems from a desire for some form of express speed justice – so that we can do what we can and move on to what we want to do. However, this approach usually leaves little room for dialogue and understanding of each other’s points of view.
READEditorial / September 2021
Sometimes, the role of the facilitator is to take a step back and just let things happen. Sometimes, the role is to steer the subject to where they need to be. And, sometimes, the role can only be defined in retrospect. Hindsight, once again, is a gift. There is a point in our timeline where the potential for all possible outcomes exists. Being mindful of the fact that I, as facilitator, cannot in that moment know for sure which outcome is the best and respecting that potential, I believe, is the key to successful facilitation.
READShrödinger’s backflip
Julian Owusu’s reflective essay on the role of facilitator, its possibilities and outcomes in retrospect.
With this text, we hope to renew a sincere belief that united art workers can do good by calling for candid public discussion on difficult matters. We wish to make clear some of the political affiliations held by the Kiasma Support Foundation, especially in relation to the colonial politics by the State of Israel and hope that this text will open a dialogue with workers of the National Gallery, who despite prevailing uncertainty, remain motivated to better their organization. We hope that art administrators in Finland will usher forward programs, which manifest their political desires and illustrate how they imagine the institutions they lead serving the public.
READOur 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?
Can a child be a monster? asks journalist Päivi Happonen in an opinion piece published by YLE last year, responding to a case of violent abuse in which four students physically harassed a younger student in their schoolyard in Vantaa during breaktime. The injuries were severe enough for school staff to call an ambulance. In past decades, Finnish society has witnessed several cases of major physical abuse on school premises and violence against teaching staff. Add to this, three school shootings and two other deadly uses of weapons in school facilities between 1981 and 2019.
READTowards 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.
Iduozee believes that especially in the United States, the political climate has been operating by pitting mostly poor white people against minorities. However, Iduozee finds this narrative narrow, as it overlooks the middle-class and upper-middle-class people who benefit from racist and unequal structures. Racism is not just perpetuated by poor white people. The narrative that suggests this, is classicist and allows the middle-classes to feel superior and to distance themselves from far-right rhetoric and ideology.
READPrivilege 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?”
It was a sensation that returned to me again this summer, when I found myself approaching the Mänttä Fine Arts exhibition space, Pekilo: A feeling of warmth, comfort, familiarity. A feeling of homecoming. I mark that this too came on the heels of enduring isolation.
READMèconnaissance in Mänttä
Raine Aiava explores the institutional framework that guided Mänttä Art Festival 2021.
I leave my bike on the side of the market square next to the pier where the ferry to Suomenlinna island goes. I look around, trying to spot Corinna; we have never met before. My first impressions of her base on our exchange of emails, a delicate mind-map she shared with me, and on what I know of her work. Corinna arrives with a light pushchair and a lively child in a baby carrier against her chest. They have come to Helsinki before heading to the archipelago, and we have decided to take a walk in Suomenlinna. It would be easier to talk while moving since the young, involuntary participant might get restless with no action around.
READOn 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.
Craftsmanship that leaves a polished finishing and evocative historical notions hidden underneath the fine details. Man Yau’s work with ceramic installations arrests the viewer, while encouraging to revisit and contemplate the uncanny contemporaneity that the artworks embody. In this interview, we discuss artistic processes, practices and labour as well as the intertwining of the personal and the thematic in Yau’s two exhibitions from the spring 2021: M.Y. Chinoiserie at Kuvan Kevät, Exhibition Laboratory, and Dried flowers last forever at Boy Konsthall.
READOn “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.
Sister! We are dripping with rage
READ
a diamond in the shape of a tongue
it blinds, gives life, so sharp it cutsRagesong
A poem by Golnoush Noor; with audio-video reading.
I did the work improvising it along the way during spring and summer 2021. The picture resembles a message or a notice board. There are small bits of drawing/painting/text done on a piece of paper that I had with me for some months in my backpack. I liked the idea that the image and the paper have aged - that the passing of time has left its marks on the work.
READIt is Only the End of the World
What would happen to storytelling, urban planning, and decision-making if we shifted the perspective on Kontula and other similar neighbourhoods and started to ask what they need?
READWe should change the way we talk about the suburbs in Finland
I listen to my own heartbeat and the fluids stream in my gut system. There is a pace in the body that resembles musical elements; there’s loops, rhythmic patterns, melodic streams, there’s ambience. There is constant rhythm and movement inside the body as there is outside of it, in the earth, in the stars, in the wind, in the waters.
READA point of return
