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Looking Back: 2019
What a ride it has been! In 2019, the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York continued to support and collaborate with visual arts practitioners across disciplines through residencies, fellowships, artwork commissions, publications, and other original and timely projects on both sides of the Atlantic. Join us in looking back at some of the key moments of this eventful year.
PROJECTS: rethinking authenticity and environment
This year the FCINY shifted focus on the printed matter by co-publishing two books: Bastard Cookbook with Garret Publications and Crossroads – New Views on Art and Environment with the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts Helsinki.
Bastard Cookbook by Antto Melasniemi and Rirkrit Tiravanija is part cookbook and part culinary misadventure. Originating from a shared appreciation for breaking the rules, the cookbook is a collection of texts, photo essays, and culinary scenarios – questioning the meaning of authenticity. Tiravanija and Melasniemi offer what one could refer to as an “adulterated” fare to its purist counterpart. This collaborative exploration into the realms of food and culture proposes that perhaps, the key to appreciating the idiosyncrasies of an unfamiliar culture, is through the hybridized form.
Published in December 2019, Crossroads is a kaleidoscopic view of artistic practices that respond to the complex, at times contradictory entity we choose to call “environment” and sheds light on artistic work in an era of ecological crisis. The book features newly commissioned or recontextualized texts and generously illustrated project sections with work by artists like Agnes Denes, Outi Pieski, Rindon Johnson, Jussi Kivi, and Andrea Zittel. It includes contributions by Eero Yli-Vakkuri and artist collective Honkasalo-Niemi-Virtanen who both were residents at the ISCP – International Studio & Curatorial Program in 2018 and 2019, with the support from the FCINY and Alfred Kordelin Foundation.
MOBIUS: gazing into the future
MOBIUS Fellowship Program, a joint initiative of FCINY and the Finnish Institute in London, was launched in 2014 to bring together visual arts professionals, organizations and audiences through customized work periods and experimental projects. This year we continued to collaborate with MOBIUS Fellows Shannon Mattern, Jussi Parikka, Amanda Schmitt and Caitlin Murray to present culminating projects of their fellowships – both in Helsinki and New York. MOBIUS is generously supported by the KONE Foundation.
The Library's Other Intelligences, a transdisciplinary project curated by Shannon Mattern and Jussi Parikka, was on view at the newly opened Central Library Oodi in Helsinki from January to March, 2019. The two media scholars commissioned artists Samir Bhowmik, Tuomas A. Laitinen, and Jenna Sutela to create works that examine the new intelligences represented in our evolving knowledge institutions. These site-sensitive artworks revealed the alien logics of neural nets, gave voice to machinic and speculative languages, and made visible the material infrastructures that allow intelligence to circulate. Jenna Sutela's publication nimiia ïzinibimi remains as part of the library's permanent collections.
In continuation to The Library's Other Intelligences, we joined forces with Metropolitan New York Library Council and The New School to present Code, Craft & Catalogues: Arts in the Libraries in New York in March. Through this symposium we gathered librarians, artists, designers, and representatives from allied fields to examine recent examples of library-centered creative practice, discuss the mutual benefits of such collaborations, and propose new models for growing and sustaining these partnerships.
Future Delay, an exhibition curated by Amanda Schmitt featured newly commissioned works by Madeline Hollander, Pearla Pigao, and Hans Rosenström. The exhibition, on view at the Helsinki Contemporary gallery in June-July 2019, departed from the work of media pioneers and theoreticians Paul Ryan and Erkki Kurenniemi who dedicated their careers to exploring cybernetics and positing the future potential of technological immortality. The exhibition —featuring sonic sculpture, performance, and site-specific installations — was interactive in nature, inviting the visitor’s participation and even causing them to question whether they are responding to the new media-based work, or if the work is responding to them.
As a closure to her MOBIUS Fellowship, Amanda Schmitt organized Feedback to the Future, an experiential screening/discussion event at the Anthology Film Archives in November 2019. The event put focus on the work of Paul Ryan and Erkki Kurenniemi and included in the conversation art historian Ina Blom and curator Giampaolo Bianconi. Feedback to the Future presented a rare screening of a selection of clips from Kurenniemi’s video archive from the 1980s, as well as an excerpt of Paul Ryan’s Video Wake for My Father (1971). This event was the first time the work of the two artists were presented in dialogue.
Caitlin Murray’s MOBIUS project will take place in New York City in January, in conjunction with the JUDD Foundation’s Aalto + Chamberlain exhibition.
RESIDENCIES: collaborations beyond categories
In 2019 the FCINY continued to organize residencies for Finnish visual artists, designers and architects. This happened through our own residency program – which was established in 1990 – and in collaboration with local residency organizations ISCP – International Studio & Curatorial Program in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Triangle Arts Association in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The residencies are meant to provide time for professional development through research, meaningful networking, and projects.
In collaboration with Frame Contemporary Art Finland and with support from the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, the FCINY realized a curatorial residency in Helsinki in two parts for the New York-based curator, writer and artist Eileen Isagon Skyers. During her second residency trip to Helsinki in August, Skyers gave a talk as part of Frame's Rehearsing Hospitality program. Later in the Fall she published an online exhibition and an article pondering on the complex nature of hospitality. The project, titled Warmth is not Simple, features work by Militza Monteverde, André Filipek Magaña, and Jennifer Chan.
Architect Taru Niskanen organized two multisensory walking tours in Harlem as part of New York's architectural month: Archtober. In her professional practice, Niskanen ponders the challenges of rapid urbanization and public life in developing cities. Instead of approaching the urban habitat as a given, or merely and environment for passing by, she encouraged the participants of the tours to explore and experience the overlooked nuances of the public spaces around us.
Our designer-in-residence in Nov-Dec 2019, Pirjo Kääriäinen specializes in new materials and sustainability, and encourages us to both revitalize and question our connection with both nature and belongings. For years she has been researching the potential uses of nanocellulose. During her residency, Kääriäinen shared some of these insights, together with Aalto University colleague Tapani Vuorinen, to peers and design enthusiasts at The New School's Material Health: Design Frontiers symposium, organized by the Healthy Materials Lab. As an afterword to the symposium, the FCINY hosted a multisensory workshop with Kääriäinen and Vuorinen, with the kind support from the Healthy Materials Lab.
The residencies are made possible by the generous support from the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland (FCINY residencies), Alfred Kordelin Foundation (ISCP residencies), Saastamoinen Foundation (ISCP residencies for Academy of Fine Arts alumni), and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Triangle Arts Association residencies).
Find full list of residents here.
LOOKING FORWARD TO 2020 – OUR 30th BIRTHDAY!
The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York wants to warmly thank all our supporters, collaborators, partners, and audiences for an excellent year. We are very much looking forward to seeing, and working with, you in the next decade. We are especially excited about 2020, as it marks as the 30th Anniversary of our Institute.
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