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Looking Back: 2013–2020
All good things come to an end. Join us in bidding farewell to our Director of Programs Ilari Laamanen as he contemplates on the standstill placed by the global pandemic and looks back on some of the program highlights from the past years.
The world today looks quite different now than it did in January 2013 when I started at the FCINY. But in many ways also shockingly similar. The necessity to fight climate change is more urgent than ever; and racism and right-wing politics continue to maintain a foothold on both sides of the Atlantic. What is changing slowly, though, are the attitudes and awareness of individuals and organizations.
At the same time, we are dealing with great uncertainty and loss caused by COVID-19. While the worldwide pandemic has brought much of the everyday operations to halt, it has also enabled, if not forced, the actors in the field of visual arts to re-evaluate their agendas. It will be interesting to see how the solidarity statements will be put into action in the institutions' programming further down the road. Every narrative and representation counts.
As most of the international mobility is at a standstill, it is a fitting time to assess its pros and cons. I believe that the need for having firsthand experiences continues to be of importance. But it is equally important to estimate when flying is really necessary and whether shipping artworks is the most sensible thing to do. This relates to the broader question of perceiving space in the near future, as any experience will be more and more affected by and entangled with technology.
For six years, FCINY and the Finnish Institute in London organized MOBIUS, a fellowship program with customized work periods and special projects for independent curators and institutional professionals on both sides of the Atlantic. The program was launched as an antidote to biennial hopping and short-term curatorial visits. Instead, MOBIUS relied on mindful collaboration, experimentation, and slow processes, with collaborations continuing up to two years.
The program's methodology was a hybrid of onsite work between the fellow, their international partner organization and contributing artists, and working online. While the need for physical presence persists, perhaps there will be more hybrid models like this in the future. Models with restricted, but not completely debarred, travel and an openness to constantly test out and readily modify new methodologies in practice.
Current restrictions in travel and organizing have coerced organizations to rethink their outreach. In many cases this has meant pushing the programming online, most often in the form of seminars and workshops, or collection displays. This is a good start, but also just an introduction in treating the online environment as a testbed for new discourse, aesthetics, and modes of togetherness.
‘Crossroads – New Views on Art and Environment’ brought into dialogue the work of artists and thinkers such as Agnes Denes, Outi Pieski, Andrea Zittel, Honkasalo-Niemi-Virtanen, Rindon Johnson, Eero Yli-Vakkuri, and Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan. The book published in December 2019 by FCINY and the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Arts Helsinki.
Eckhaus Latta’s and Alexa Karolinski’s COCO featured Juliana Huxtable, among others, pondering upon personal questions in a bathroom setting. The video was one of the six commissioned pieces realized as part of the ‘fashion after Fashion’ exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York in 2017, organized in collaboration with FCINY and The New School. Co-curated by Hazel Clark and Ilari Laamanen.
In 2015 FCINY collaborated with the Center for Genomic Gastronomy and Edible Geography, to present Smog Tasting as a part of the New Museum's IDEAS CITY Festival . The custom Smog Tasting cart features a portable smog chamber and serves free, edible smog meringues from different cities and eras.
FCINY’s ‘The Pleasure Principle’ exhibition at Sinne, Helsinki in 2016 marked as the first presentation of New York-based artist Camille Henrot’s work in Finland. The cross-generational exhibition also featured pieces by Armi Ratia, Maija Luutonen, and John Divola. Photo: Camille Henrot, The Strife of Love in a Dream, 2011. Video, 11’37. Courtesy the artist, kamel mennour Paris, Metro Pictures New York and Centre Pompidou Paris. Installation view by Juuso Noronkoski.
FCINY continues to create and strengthen dialogue between Finnish and North American visual arts practitioners. The dialogue has taken myriad of forms: exhibitions, publications, symposia, participatory work, performances, commissioned online work... At times the context has been all-encompassing, while other times the focus has been intentionally fringe.
It is important to encourage complexity, which is a different thing than confusion. The world we live in is not simple, so why try to act otherwise? FCINY emphasizes interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches, and addresses timely topics that evaporate outside the context of visual arts, too.
I have persevered to exercise this outlook with artist duo Niskanen & Salo during the pandemic-era. The result of our collaboration is Murmurations, a newly commissioned sound installation based on local stories in changing habitat. The site-sensitive work can be experienced safely in Brooklyn Bridge Park in October 2020 with social distancing requirements in mind.
I am grateful for all the years with the Institute. I have been able to collaborate, question, experiment, and grow in a highly supportive environment. I want to thank all the colleagues and contributors for the life-changing projects, encounters, and experiences. I wish you a lot of creativity and courage for the unforeseen future as well.
As I'm about to start my next chapter, that one question remains: what's next? After all these years in New York, and especially during times like these, it is clear to me that the question should not be what but how. How we decide to work together and treat each other? How are we holding space? How well do we really listen to each other?
Text by Ilari Laamanen, portraits by Mark Niskanen