Exercises in Togetherness at The Month of Books

Friday October 22, 2021
12-5pm
Afterwork discussion in the company of Zelda webzine at 4pm
at Publics, Sturenkatu 37-41 4b, Helsinki

In the fall of 2021, The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York is joining forces with art organizations in Helsinki and New York to organize gatherings as part of a program titled Exercises in Togetherness. The program addresses the situation most of us find ourselves in at this moment in time where gatherings with others have become faded nostalgic memories, and our skills in socializing and being with each other may need some polishing off. The program offers time and space for gentle exercises in relearning how to be together.

As part of Publics’ The Month of Books program, Publics and the FCINY are hosting commissioned contributions by DeForrest Brown, Jr. and James Hoff, and Asiya Wadud. In addition, the event includes a discussion with the webzine Zelda on their current issue focused on the notion of fantasy. As the society is slowly opening up after the COVID-19 pandemic, the event brings forth notions of collaboration, togetherness and friendship.

DeForrest Brown, Jr. and James Hoff talk on the phone every few weeks and these conversations last for hours. They decided to take this opportunity to take a walk and just continue their normal conversation. Instead of the controlled acoustics of zoom and podcast-type conversations, the outside world has a strong presence in the conversation as the speakers traverse across the city. They talk about all the regular things, such as politics, family life, music and books, including DeForrest’s upcoming book Assembling a Black Counter Culture, a general history of techno and adjacent electronic music with a focus on Black experiences in industrialized labor systems. DeForrest and James each recorded the walk with their phones. Hoff combined the recordings with hard pans left and right, creating a stereo mix with occasional phasing and an intriguing ambience. 

New York based artist and poet Asiya Wadud’s recent work has included research on the work of the artist Howard Smith (1928-2021). Smith, born in Philadelphia, first visited Finland in the 1960’s and later settled into Fiskars village outside Helsinki. Smith worked in a wide variety of media, including public sculptures, drawing, painting, silkscreen, and textile and paper collage. In Finland Smith is also widely known for his design work for Arabia and Valilla. As her contribution, Wadud has written a poem that takes its form as a dialogue between the poet and Smith’s piece Oracle / Hero (1989). The two-tone poem can be listened to on site at Publics, and also performed collectively by the visitors.

As part of the event, Zelda webzine is hosting a discussion in the frame of their 2021 yearly theme of ‘fantasy’, as well as their own feminist online publishing practice, which aims to create space for voices that remain unheard in mainstream media. The participants in the discussion focused on dreaming and working together are Eveliina Lempiäinen and Santtu Räisänen from Zelda, with contributors from the current issue Sophia Mitiku and Autuas Ukkonen.

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-born, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer and representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign. He produces digital audio and extended media as Speaker Music. His work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music. He has lectured at Spotify for Artists: Co.Lab, Brown University, Yale University, and has written for Artforum, NPR, Mixmag, and Afropunk. He is currently teaching a studio course titled (alt) reality at Parsons School of Design | The New School with Jazsalyn Nachelle of black beyond. He was also the inaugural Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow at Issue Project Room, and a resident at the Rauschenberg Residency. On Juneteenth of 2020, he released the album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry on Planet Mu, and Primary Information will publish his first book Assembling a Black Counter-Culture in 2021.

James Hoff is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, N.Y. His work encompasses a variety of media, including painting, sound, and performance, as well as a publishing practice with the organization Primary Information, which he co-founded and edits. In recent years, his work has focused on language and ambient media at the intersection of developing technologies, military/industrial technologies, and networked communication in relationship to social/political space. He has exhibited or performed at Artists Space, Bergen Kunsthall, Bielefelder Kunstverein, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts,  Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Hessel Museum of Art, ICA London, The Kitchen, Kunsthall Oslo, LAMPO (The Graham Foundation and Rebuild Foundation), La Monnaie/De Munt, MassMOCA, MoMA/PS1, Museum of Contemporary Art (Denver), and the Onassis Cultural Center, among others. 

Asiya Wadud is the author of Crosslight for Youngbird, day pulls down the sky/ a filament in gold leaf (written with Okwui Okpokwasili), Syncope and No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body. Her recent writing appears in e-flux journal, BOMB Magazine, Poem-a-Day, Chicago Review, Social Text, FENCE, and elsewhere. Asiya’s work has been supported by the Foundation Jan Michalski, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (River to River: Four Voices 2020; Governors Island Arts Center residency 2019-2020; Process Space 2017), Danspace Project, Brooklyn Poets, Dickinson House, Mount Tremper Arts, and the New York Public Library, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York where she teaches poetry at Saint Ann’s School, Columbia University, and Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Zelda is a webzine that publishes writing, images and art across genres from a personal and/or theoretical perspective. Zelda’s practice is based on intersectional feminism and care for the planet and each other. Their aim is to give a voice and space to ideas that may not be expressed in the mainstream media. Zelda is published on a thematic basis, and the coverage of the theme runs throughout the year. The theme for 2021 is fantasy.

Publics is a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space and reading room in Helsinki. Under the Artistic Direction on curator Paul O’Neill, together with program manager Eliisa Suvanto, and Curator of Learning Samantha Lippett, PUBLICS explores a “work together” institutional model with multiple overlapping objectives, thematic strands and collaborations.

Listen in on the conversation between DeForrest Brown, Jr. and James Hoff here: