Each issue of RUUKKU has one or several editors-in-chief. All activities are supervised by an editorial board comprising representatives of institutions interested in the development of artistic research as well as experts in various fields of artistic research. The subeditor can be reached at: ruukku-journal@uniarts.fi
KAS - Monimuotoisempaa kaupunkitilaa maalaamassa!
Tässä ekspositiossa pohdin sitä, kuinka yhteisötaiteellisessa praktiikassani ja osana taiteellista tutkimustani KAS! Kontula Art School -hankkeen kontekstissa yhteisöllisesti toteutetut seinämaalaukset ovat toisaalta ”monumentaalisia” julkisia taideteoksia, samalla kun ne ovat taiteellisia interventioita, jotka kaupunkiaktivistisesti rakentavat sosiaalisesti kestävämpää ja moniäänistä kaupunkia edistäen kulttuurista demokratiaa. Tarkastelen sitä, kuinka nämä yhteisötaiteelliset interventiot onnistuvat avaamaan kaupunkitilaa monimuotoisempaan suuntaan. Käytän esimerkkinä elokuussa 2024 KAS:n tuottamaa Taking Some Space -teoskokonaisuutta , jonka toteutimme Emännänpolun alikulkutunneliin Kontulan ostoskeskuksen välittömään läheisyyteen. Kerron vuonna 2019 perustamani KAS! Kontula Art Schoolin taustoista ja toiminnasta, sekä siitä, millainen paikka Kontula on asua ja tehdä (yhteisö)taidetta. Avaan myös paikallista näkökulmaa kaupunkitilaan. KAS-kuvagalleriasta löytyy kuvamateriaalia Emännänpolun allikulkutunneliin toteuttamistamme valmiista maalauksista ja työskentelyprosessista. Maalaamme paikkaa, jonka ympärille alkaa toiminnan myötä kokoontua joukko monenlaisia ihmisiä, jotka tekevät erilaisia taideteoksia. Nämä ihmiset tekevät samalla paikan: ottavat sen haltuun, vaikuttavat sen tunnelmaan ja määrittelevät sen käyttöä sekä visuaalisuutta. Eri ihmisten kokemukset paikasta voivat vaihdella ja olla myös ristiriidassa keskenään, jolloin paikkaan kohdistuu erilaisia taiteellisia ja sosiaalisia neuvotteluja. Mitä syvemmälle paikkaan sukeltaa, löytyy sieltä kaikki se hiljainen tieto, joka näkyvien teosten pinnan takana on olemassa. Kenties se onkin yhteisöllisen julkisen taiteen interventio itsessään, joka on kokonaisuudessaan ja vaikutuksiltaan "monumentaalista". Maalausprosessiimme ja valmiisiin teoksiin tunnelissa voi tutustua täällä (KAS-kuvagalleria): https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3043993/3043994
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
How to dream for real a city, in which the intersecting and often incompatible desires, hopes and interests of those inhabiting it, including the innumerable more-than-human others, can coexist, cross and collide in ways that enable living space for all? What kinds of concrete dreams this ideal presupposes and what horizons might already be within reach? And what kinds of constraints and tensions do they face?
Rakeinen utopia ⁠– Tutkimusta sähköpotkulaudalla
Tässä ekspositiossa pohdin puutarhakaupunkiutopian kokemusavaruutta ja tarkastelen sitä omakohtaisen, liikkumisen ideaalista ammentavan praktiikan kautta. Hahmottelen utooppista ulottuvuutta liikkumisen ja sen teknistyneiden piirteiden kautta, käyttämällä sähköpotkulautaa tutkimusvälineenä. Aloin käyttää sähköpotkulautoja vuoden 2021 kesästä lähtien. Olen taltioinut omaa liikkumistani ja tehnyt muistiinpanoja ajamistani matkoista. Samalla olen ottanut valokuvia ympäristöstä ja sähköpotkulaudoista. Tutkimukseni tarkoitus on tuoda yksi näkökulma lisää urbaanin, yhteisen tilan tarkasteluun ja taiteellisen tutkimuksen keinoihin.
City as a stream of sense. An exploration through aesthetic research practices
This exposition presents an approach to urban research whose main features consist in addressing the city as a not yet objectified process of the emergence of sense, and in inquiring into this flow through particular aesthetic research practices. It has been realized in two iterations: City as a thin line by the sea_Merihaka / Sompasaari and Exploring signlessness: an essay on the proto-phenomenal city. This exposition presents the conceptual framework of this approach, short descriptions and the scores of the aesthetic research practices that were activated in these iterations, and the artifacts they generated. I believe that this approach addresses a fundamental dimension of the city—its most intimate enactment through the silent interaction between bodies and their urban surroundings—and as such is complementary to all other varieties of urban research. In this sense, the exposition aims to facilitate the incorporation of this approach into an ecology of urban research. The research presented through this exposition results from the convergence of my current research project—The Sense of Common Self—and the project within which this Special Issue has been generated.
[shut] for business: Performing Transience in a Bankrupt City
This paper will explore how performance and the arts can respond to the lost spaces, cultures and businesses of urban environments. It will do this by discussing the recent short operatic work [shut], which seeks to combine social, historical and geographical experience of a neighbourhood in flux, to expose hidden narratives to audiences through a reflective metatheatrical approach. This paper will provide a contextual backdrop, exploring the dichotomous socio-economic status of the city and neighbourhood in which [shut] is based, as an exemplar of the empty utopia touted by speculative developers and journalists in western turbocapitalist (Luttwak, 1999) neoliberal urban centres. In particular we will explore the creation of this work as a response to the rising rate of small business bankruptcy in Birmingham since the COVID19 pandemic. The paper will then discuss the creation and performance of [shut] as part of Birmingham Opera Company's BRUM commissions 2024, which responds to the ongoing experience of small business bankruptcy in a bankrupt city. The 2024 performance of [shut] was presented in the same week as the exhibition Teach your business how to swim: Rise and Fall in Digtopia. This exhibition documented the life of the brewery Dig Brew Co. which closed down in January 2022. It served as both a documentation of the brewery’s creative outputs, an exposition of the incoming archive to Birmingham City University’s Arts, Design and Media Archive, and a space for positive reflection on the loss or death of this iconic business and space in the city. This work will be analysed through the lens of both metatheatre, and the metamodern movement, as a part of the ‘Age of Engagement’ as coined by Andy Lavender (2016). Whilst being ‘shut down’ marks and ending, it can also be experienced as an unfinishing. These half travelled journeys or unfulfilled dreams within harsh neoliberal urban capitalist zones present a series of ungrieved losses (Jenkins et al, 2014), as communities are uprooted, ‘undead’ businesses cast out, and artists displaced. We will explore how artists and creatives can go some way to unifying the communities who become adrift, and engage in a grieving process of lost lifestyles and workplaces, through performance, action and presentation.
In this exposition, I introduce my artistic research method Touching by describing how repeatedly passing through a pedestrian tunnel over the course of several months, afforded a series of performative and caring gestures to emerge over time. Using diverse audiovisual media, I explain how the tunnel evolved into an expanded scenographic research site. Its direct, pertinent impact on my daily rhythm prompted me to become still and receptive, evoking an awareness of my sensory and material engagement with more-than-human entities, objects and the environment. These diverse aesthetic encounters activated an ethical stance toward the world. Gradually, the tunnel was transformed into a ‘carescape’, an exploratory site of caring activities that raised questions of response-ability and illuminated the temporal and spatial dimensions of care.
A Head Massage Tool or a Crowbar? Toolbox for the Reflection of Art in Public Spaces
In this exposition, I present an open and accessible approach to analysing art in public space. It introduces a toolbox for evaluating both the artist’s ambition and the artwork’s impact. I use this exposition to pose a central question: can such a toolbox serve as a valuable resource for assessing the ambitions and effects of artworks in public space? Art often engages with overwhelmingly complex issues such as world peace, climate change, and inclusivity, making it essential to understand how ideology translates into tangible impact. To address this, I have filled the toolbox with various tools and utilities, the applicability of which I test through case studies that examine each artwork’s ambition and impact: does it function as a crowbar, a head massage tool, a noticeboard, or a workbench? In doing so, I attempt to find a constructive way to navigate the dilemmas surrounding public art, including the roles of commissioning, disengagement, and participation.
The exposition unpacks Vincent Roumagnac's "Third-Ikebana" series as an example of his theatre redirecting research practice. By staging traditional Ikebana arrangements using urban weeds, the project subverts conventional hierarchies of quality and value within scenographic, urban, and social contexts. The series thereby interrogates dominant aesthetic norms and their internalised distribution of agency, inviting a critical reevaluation of what constitutes value in both performance and urban environmental experience. Two modes of navigation are offered: a graphic version designed for computer screens, emphasizing the experiential dimension of the exposition, and a text-based format optimized for mobile reading, presented in a conventional article layout.
Picking Flowers in the City is exposing the City as a place of movement, colour, sound, temporalities, tautologies, dreameries and exchange. Moving image and sound assemblages attune and lead to attentive artistic research practices conducted in urban space that portrait the city beyond representation.
Neuvottelua tilasta - Esitys utooppisena prosessina kaupunkitilassa
Tässä ekspositiossa tarkastelen taiteellista projektia Sohva – keskusteluja utopioista osana taiteilijapedagogista tutkimusta, jossa esityksellinen toiminta julkisessa kaupunkitilassa toimii lähtökohtana utooppisen ajattelun ja yhteiskunnallisen muutoksen prosessien pohdinnalle. Sohva - keskusteluja utopioista toteutui neljässä eri paikassa eri puolilla Helsinkiä keväällä 2024. Jokaisessa paikassa sohvalle istui kaksi vierasta, joiden kanssa puhuin utopioista. Ekspositio kytkeytyy taiteen sosiaalisen käänteen, utooppisen pedagogiikan ja taiteilijapedagogiikan viitekehyksiin. Pohdin esitystä utooppisena praktiikkana, neuvotteluna kaupunkitilasta ja performatiivista pedagogiikkaa. Ehdotan, että taiteellinen esitys voi toimia paitsi pedagogisena myös yhteiskunnallisena ja kulttuurisena tapahtumana, jossa utopia ei ole päämäärä vaan prosessi.
City Dances: what the city reveals using dance as a method
This exposition shares findings from my ongoing research that explores cities through the spatial and somatic practices of dance and urban studies. I am interested in how we enrich our concepts for understanding and developing cities to include their sensory textures as political realities. As a choreographer artist-scholar, I offer insights from an embodied approach, engaging cities as responsive collaborators when encountered through movement. Here, I share reflections and findings drawn from using dance-based knowledges to engage cities as living archives, which include an ever-changing record of how people move, imagine, and enact what it is to be human. I have found that dancing with cities reveals interwoven environments shaped by the ideologies that govern how mobilities are fostered, constrained, and enacted. In this exposition, I temporarily gather these dynamics into three categories (connection, transformation, and learning) as a framework for analysis and discussion.
Wayshowing, wayfinding and waysharing: Designing multispecies encounters in urban landscapes
This exposition reports on two creative wayfinding projects, and a ‘waysharing’ walk, which all aim to understand cities as sites of coexistence between humans and other species. In the first section, we compare two projects that present wayfinding as a mode of storytelling, creating opportunities for noticing how we coexist with particular plants and animals in the city of Sydney. The first project, Type Trails, reveals the hidden logic of the way we find our way around inner Sydney by visualising three different memory lines: an Aboriginal trade pathway (now George Street), the original coastline of Sydney Cove, and the tank stream. The project layers multiple datasets – including distribution of tree and wildflower species – geospatially along these lines, using the mapping platform Mapbox. In the second project, Nearby Nature, guided walks through different parts of Sydney introduce participants to a range of observation, sketching and storytelling activities which aim to foster a sense of care for the multiple plant and animal species we share urban environments with. In the second section, we report on a shared walk undertaken by the authors to find intersecting narratives, approaches and values underpinning the two projects. We document the walk in the form of a journey map, which documents the multi-species encounters and insights we experienced. The walk and creation of the journey map led to a series of considerations for actively noticing entangled coexistence in urban landscapes. We name this method for collaborating on practice-based research projects ‘waysharing’. We conclude by advocating for the value of narrative approaches to wayfinding and waysharing in cities: such approaches provide opportunities for people to move through a familiar environment but see it anew, noticing coexistence with other species (here, plants or birds), as a kind of urban imaginary that might help people ‘become knowledgeable’ about the more than human aspects of their urban landscapes. In this paper, we are specifically imagining the city of Sydney as a landscape of multispecies coexistence, as a way to decentre humans as the primary ‘pedestrians’ of the city.
Uuden aaton katu: poeettis-poleeminen puheenvuoro kaupunkitilan kokemisesta vammaisnäkökulmasta
Hanna Vahvaselän ekspositio Uuden aaton katu: poeettis-poleeminen puheenvuoro kaupunkitilan kokemisesta vammaisnäkökulmasta, on syntynyt Markus Jalosen teoksen Uuden aaton katu ympärille. Teos on kuvia ja tekstiä sisältävä kurssitehtävä Näkövammaisten Kulttuuripalvelun järjestämältä Kuvataide NYT! verkkokurssilta, korona-ajalta syksyltä 2020. Vahvaselkä toimi kurssin opettajana. Tässä ekspositiossa Vahvaselkä taustoittaa Jalosen teosta ja tuo sen taiteellisen tutkimuksen kontekstiin.
This exposition explores whether we could consider pine trees as citizens of sorts. It is based on three conversations with a pine tree in Helsinki and an installation created for the City is sound, city is quicksand - voicing imaginaries and dissonances -event there in May 2024.
Toisin sanoen: taiteenteon ja taiteellisen tutkimuksen yhteisestä etiikasta
Tulen tässä puheenvuorossa puhumaan taiteen ja tutkimuksen välisestä eettisestä suhteesta, erityisesti koskien taiteellisen tutkimuksen haasteita. Siinä missä moraali määrittelee ihmisyksilöiden toiminnan motiiveja ja tavoitteita, etiikka moraalifilosofiana koskee noiden motiivien ja tavoitteiden perusteita. Etiikka puheenaiheena nousee taidetta ja taiteellista tutkimusta koskevassa julkisessa ja tieteellisessä keskustelussa esiin tavan takaa. Se voi koskea sitä, kuinka taiteilijat, taiteen tutkijat, opiskelijat tai opettajat kohtelevat toisiaan erilaisissa institutionaalisesti määritellyissä tai instituutioiden ulkopuolisissa työyhteisöissä. Se voi myös koskea tapoja, joilla tutkimuksen tulee suhtautua tutkimuskohteisiinsa tai joilla se täyttää hyvän tieteellisen käytännön normit. Lopulta se koskee sitä, mitä taiteen nimissä on sopivaa tehdä tai ilmaista tai mitä taiteen ja taiteilijoiden tulisi tehdä tai ilmaista. Mistä taiteen etiikka alkaa ja mihin se päättyy?
Lectio Praecursoria: Kävellen kuvailtu, kävellen koettu
Tämä ekspositio on mukaelma Kuvataiteen tohtorin opinnäytteeni Kävellen kuvailtu, kävellen koettu tarkastustilaisuudessa pitämästäni lectio praecursoriasta.
Nierika-työpaja yhteisöllisenä välittymisenä – mitä syntyy tai välittyy?
Taking back the museum -hankkeen tutkijoina tunnustelemme tässä vuorokeskustelukirjoituksessa, mitä olemme tulleet työpajojen aikana luoneeksi ja tutkineeksi yhdessä sekä mitä on kehkeytynyt tai kehkeytymässä. Kirjoitus lähtee epäilevistä ja itsekriittisistä kysymyksistä siitä, oliko yhteistyömme relevanttia/kyllin-hyvää/hedelmällistä/oikeutettua vai oliko kyse vain projektitapaistuneesta valtameriä ylittävästä matkustelusta. Tässä artikkelissa keskustellaan ja kosketellaan tai sivutaan erityisesti seuraavia teemoja: taiteellinen tutkimus, taiteen etiikka, yhteisötaide, alkuperäiskansojen taide, alkuperäiskansatutkimus, alkuperäiskansojen pedagogia, alkuperäiskansan itsemääräämisoikeus, tiedon omistajuus, yhteiskirjoittaminen ja silleen jättäminen.
Copyright (c) 2025 Hanna Ellen Guttorm, Lea Kantonen, Pekka Kantonen, Juan Carrillo Rios (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Taiteen pohjoista dekolonisaatiota: Kuvataidekasvatuksen taidetta Utsjoella
AMASS–AMAS–WEIRD oli Utsjoella vuonna 2021 toteutunut yhteisötaideprojekti osana Euroopan Union rahoittamaa Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture -tutkimushanketta (2020–2023). Euroopan reuna-alueiden vuorovaikutusta ja yhteistyötä lisäävä taideperustainen toimintatutkimus sisälsi yhteisötaiteen, sosiaalisesti sitoutuneen taiteen ja taidekasvatuksen kehittämistä paikallisyhteisöissä. AMASS–AMAS–WEIRD -toteutettiin Lapin yliopiston yhtenä vastuualueena ja osana delokolonisoivan arktisen taiteen viitekehystä, vaikkakin eurooppalaisessa hankejärjestelmässä, johon sisältyy Euroopan yhtenäisyyden taustatavoitteita. Tässä ekspositiossa tarkastelemme taidekäsityksen arktista dekolonisaatiota, yhteisötaidetta, kuvataidekasvatusta ja hankkeen tutkimusprosessia dekolonisaation näkökulmista. AMASS–AMAS–WEIRD vahvisti kulttuurisen moninaisuuden kunnioitusta ja tuki vuorovaikutusta saamelais- ja suomalaiskulttuurien sisällä ja niiden välillä. Jännitteitä ilmeni niin sanottuun tutkimusähkyyn, marginaalisuuden olettamaan sekä rahoitusinstrumenttiin liittyen. Johtopäätöksenä korostamme taiteen ja tutkimuksen kolonialististen rakenteiden ja eettisten periaatteiden kriittisen tarkastelun merkitystä kulttuurien dialogista kohtaamista tukevan ja yhteyksiä luovan toiminnan kehittämisessä.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mirja Liisa Hiltunen, Maria Huhmarniemi (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Drawing as a journey, nonhumans as teachers, learning as creation
The presentation focuses on inclusive sensory drawing as a way to observe, notice and interact with non-human species in local nature, imagine their perspectives and reflect on the experience. It is known that many people today feel alienated from nature while on the other hand connection to nature is linked to pro-environmental behaviour. As an artist and art educator I have been wondering how participatory artistic and educational practices can reinforce the emotional and physical connection with nature, how to create conditions for perceiving the intertwinedness and mutual dependence, moreover, what could be the role of art and art education in the post-growth conditions. Drawing is not a new method for observing nature, but I find the inclusive drawing activities to be relevant to facilitate creative nature experience in contemporary context. As an artist, I have been using sensory drawing and realised how using the pencil and brush as facilitators help me to concentrate, slow down, notice interactions and sense myself as a part of the ecosystem. I have used the embodied and situated artistic thinking as a source for drawing walks and workshops in gardens, forests and parks and introduce some of the simple exercises in this presentation, asking how and which drawing and painting approaches facilitate active engagement with the environment and what is the intersection between artistic practice, environmental and artist pedagogy. I describe the specifics of four methods. These kind of curated nature experiences offer possibilities to recognise other beings, their relationships and ourselves as related to them through actions and reflections.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
You, Me, the Lakes and the Storm Water Drain
This exposition charts a creative collaboration between two humans, two lakes and a stormwater drain. By thinking with water as archive and unknowability, making art with the water-bodies of significance to them, and drawing upon the thoughts of key scholars and Indigenous artists, the authors explore questions of ancestry, memory, belonging, and ecological recuperation. Throughout this process, they reflect upon and dialogue about the pedagogical implications of their creative collaboration, undertaken at the intersection of new-materialist arts and common worlds environmental education.
The exposition aims to meet the need for the aspiration of regenerative education from an artist pedagogical practice. The exposition is based on a place-specific intervention and outlines the artist pedagogical learning process. The exposition explores the relationship of artist pedagogy to ecological issues. Exploration happens at the intersection of artist practice committed to sustainability thinking and art pedagogy. Reflecting the concept of strong sustainability, the author assesses what kind of contradictions between sustainability thinking and one’s own practice emerge, and what kind of circumstances lead to conflicts. The exposition takes place with “innate” method, combining artistic, agroecological and posthumanist research in an interdisciplinary manner. The main finding is that the goals of regenerative education are entangled with the expectations, goals and moral concepts of society. This accompanies a negotiation of the values of artist practice committed to sustainability thinking. Negotiation takes place in relation to artist pedagogical activity. The author argues that there is no waiver to act in an ecologically unsustainable manner in art practice, because art is as dependent on ecological relationships as any other concept of life. She argues that by committing to a concept of strong sustainability, it is possible to establish new places of appreciation and develop innovative pedagogies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sara Ilveskorpi (Kirjoittaja) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
"On Becoming Sensitized - Practices and Orientations for Writing-with-water as Artist Pedagogy" In this exposition, we explore what we call 'writing-with-water', a practice of artistic research in writing, a "poetic search". While writing-with-water, we have explored our relationship(s) with water – including the waters within us – both individually and together, producing different texts. Here, we share our artistic explorations and reflect on the poetic, political, and pedagogical directions our artistic practice and research opens up. Our theoretical starting points are feminist posthumanism and new materialism, but we also discuss our method in the context of hydrofeminism (as part of the aforementioned theoretical frameworks), feminist pedagogy, artist pedagogy, and environmental pedagogy, as well as the literary meanings and uses of water. It is our belief that through poetic practices and explorations, it is possible to express experiences that are otherwise difficult to put into words. We claim that these experiences, and the ways they are expressed in poetic language, can lead to better understandings of human relationships with the more-than-human; including how to make art ethically with the more-than-human in our rapidly changing world.
Queer-identiteetti ja -tunteet lavalla, sen takana ja opetustyössä
Kuvataiteen tohtorin opinnäytetyössäni tutkin queer-kuuntelemisen merkitystä taiteellisena käytäntönä ja tutkimusmenetelmänä. Tässä ekspositiossa haastattelen drag alter egoani Maimu Brushwoodia, jonka kanssa keskustelen sukupuolesta, tunteista ja pedagogiikasta. Haastattelu perustuu tutkimukseni toiseen taiteelliseen osuuten, mikä oli drag-esitys, jonka esitin kahtena iltana Club Kiihko: Uuden toivon illassa Kulttuurikeskus Caisassa Helsingissä 27. ja 28.6.2024. Ekspositiossa on haastattelun lisäksi drag-esityksen videotallenne ja kirjoitustehtävä, jonka tarkoitus on syventää esitykseni teemoja.
‘Re-Imagining’ across the diverse fields of artistic research
Re-imagining addresses the various gestures of going back, returning to take another look, or starting anew. It suggests that research in the context of artistic and creative practice could have a special relation to time; simultaneously attaching itself to a prior moment in time and, from there, propelling imagination to unforeseen futures.
Copyright (c) 2025 Harri Laakso, Sofia Pantouvaki, Priska Falin (Kirjoittaja) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This exposition is invited as a 'Voice' for the RUUKKU Issue 'Re-Imagining'. This text is a slightly modified version of Mika Elo's keynote lecture given at the AeRaTe symposium, Aalto University, 5 May 2025.
Terrestrial Accountability and Art - Reimagining
An excerpt from the original abstract: "it has become utterly clear that we need new imaginaries and alternative scenarios. Should one of them be aimed at living and dying on this planet, following Donna Haraway’s description on ‘being terrestrial’, instead of pushing the idealistic proposal for leaving our planet. This could change our attitudes and the way we treat this planet with its multiplicity of life-forms. This would not mean that we would stop developments in the sciences, technology, and the arts. It would rather give us a direction and a filter for what and how to develop. This would potentially lead us to investigate the current conditions and environment in our localities; what kinds of artificial and (bio)technological entities would fit into the existing biological ecosystems? How to deal with difficult relations, which we have for example with parasites and viruses? One of the artistic research projects that I have produced question the negative definition of ticks as parasites and explores ways we can learn to live together with them. This project, together with a selection of works that includes other examples from my own artistic research as well as works by a range of other artists, will be used to illustrate old and new meta-level scenarios that point to the ways in which we act in, with and within the world in which we live and die."
Acts of Transfer: Documentation as Creative Reimagining
This exposition presents parts of a practice-based artistic research project, Acts of Transfer, a collaboration between artist Katy Beinart and writer Lizzie Lloyd (2020–2021). The project consists of a series of ‘chapters’ which revisit artworks from the recent past that involved social engagement or public participation, documenting both the process and outcomes of our returns. Acts of Transfer was interested in what the afterlife of such artworks might be and how they might be meaningfully represented in the future. Each return or ‘chapter’ generates new artwork, while retaining some sense of the original. They include a range of outcomes: excerpts (screenshots, photographs, readings, instructions etc.) from the original artworks made by our participants, as well as our own documentation through photography, drawings, and notes taken during our returns, alongside passages of experimental writing and films. In presenting parts of this project in Acts of Transfer: Documentation as Creative Reimagining, we further explore how documentation might serve as a means to reenact and reimagine the artworks to which we returned. In each case, we consider how aesthetic, emotional, physical, psychological or conceptual transfer might signify to those involved and to future audiences. We expose the complicated relationships that underlie practices that rely on participation, and highlight how meaning develops beyond the immediate duration of such projects. What follows renders these complications tangible, leading to new artworks that are intentionally emergent and fragmented. We look to evoke the effervescent experience of participating, remembering and communicating experiences of social, relational and durational artwork, to hold fast to what is lost and what might be reimagined.
Copyright (c) 2025 Katy Beinart, Lizzie Lloyd (Kirjoittaja) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Monimaailmaista taiteellista yhteistyötä: Uhri ihmisten, esivanhempien ja taideteosten verkostoissa
Meksikossa asuvat wirrarikat kehittivät 1950-luvulla perinteisten uhriesineiden pohjalta lankamaalauksen, nierikan, tekniikan: villalangasta muotoiltiin kuvioita mehiläisvahalla käsitellyille puulevyille. Nierika esittää usein uhraamisen tilannetta ikään kuin ajassa pysäytettynä ja näyttää tilanteen vapaaehtoisen uhrin näkökulmasta. Antropologit, taiteilijat, keräilijät ja valtiolliset turismin kehittäjät edistivät nierika-genreä innokkaasti, ja se tuotteistettiin yksilölähtöiseksi taidemuodoksi, jota alettiin luoda ja esittää useammin kaupunkikeskuksissa kuin wirrarikojen yhteisöissä. Tämän eksposition kirjoittajat ovat yhdessä toisten tutkijoiden ja wirrarikataiteilijoiden kanssa järjestäneet yhteisöllisiä nierika-maalauksen työpajoja, joissa wirrarikataiteilijat ohjaavat osallistujia tarkastelemaan ja ymmärtämään maailmaa wirrarikojen tavoin vastavuoroisuuden ja uhrin näkökulmasta. Nierika-maalaus otetaan näin takaisin yhteisöjen haltuun.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lea Kantonen (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This exposition comprises textual fragments (both written and voiced) produced through the act of returning to (in turn re-activating, re-configuring, even re-imagining) conversational transcripts generated within the artistic research project Dorsal Practices, a collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer-artist Emma Cocker. Initiated in January 2021, Dorsal Practices is an artistic collaboration for exploring how the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude might shape and inform our embodied, affective and relational experience of being-in-the-world. Conceived at the threshold between choreographic-movement practices and language-based artistic research, Dorsal Practices explores how the experiences of listening, languaging, even thinking, might be shaped differently through this embodied tilt of awareness and attention towards the back, moreover, through a practice of coming back, the act of (re)turning. The original transcript material that forms the basis of this exposition was produced through a practice of conversation undertaken within six interrelated blocks of exploration, taking place over 18 months between October 2022 and February 2024. Within this period of enquiry, we — Brown and Cocker — focused our attention on the act of returning within our shared practice, re-imagined as a "dorsal turn". Through the intermingling of two registers of language-based practice, that is, through the performativity of both the written and spoken texts themselves, within this exposition we attempt to make tangible how the dorsal gesture of the turn and the circling principle of re- become operative as a spinal thread within our shared enquiry. Deviating from the straightforwardness of a strictly linear text, we invite a form of dorsal listening-reading that might engage through loops and returns. We conceive the research artefacts generated through the practice itself as the central focus within this exposition, alongside a supporting text where we introduce the wider enquiry of Dorsal Practices, reflecting on how we conceive the act of turning and of re-turning therein.
Copyright (c) 2025 Emma Cocker, Katrina Brown (Kirjoittaja) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Approcreations - Weight of an Absent Ancestry
In the globalising world, our cultural influences have become more diversified than ever. At the same time, the code of good conduct on honouring intercultural sources of inspiration is still being written in the collective consciences of artists and audiences alike. The current mindset is being explored in an artistic research project, of which the concert this article focuses on was a component. “Approcreations”, an experimental solo concert, was atypical in terms of the conventions of the instruments played. The recital trialled the public’s receptiveness by developing pioneering uses for a tradition-oozing instrument while casting thoughts into the perception of artistic identity in the crossfire of preconceptions, aftermaths of colonialism and cultural appropriation disputes. Would the public’s sentiments differ from the performer’s expectations? The author, having developed a time-tested perspective after decades of international touring as a non-African player of the Mande diatonic balafon, now zeroes in on the factors influencing how we interpret and feel about culturally complex art practices. Sociocultural and symbolic connotations of musical instruments are analysed in light of the affordance theory, and the instruments’ evolution from cultural assets into universal vehicles for human creativity is pondered upon. Video samples from the concert stage concretise words into sounds and colours. The outcome of this artistic component is then inquired based on both self-reflection and audience feedback. Finally, as the controversy around cultural appropriation vs. inspiration extends beyond music to encompass a broader range of performing arts, the conclusion seeks to identify tendencies in the findings that might benefit art practitioners in other genres as well.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maarika Autio (Kirjoittaja) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0