The Helsinki Biennial Art Mediation Forum 2023
Helsinki, 2023
The Helsinki Biennial Art Mediation Forum 2023 is a collaboration between ViCCA (Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art) at Aalto University’s School of ARTS and the Helsinki Biennial 2023. Helsinki Biennial 2023 Head Curator Joasia Krysa initiated the collaboration and invited ViCCA faculty Bassam El Baroni and Patrizia Costantin to develop and lead it. The project focuses on mediation as an articulation space for the biennial’s themes and artistic contributions. It consists of three components: the Helsinki Biennial 2023 Symposium, which took place on December 9, 2022, The Curatorial School of May, a project involving eight students from Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art students from Aalto ARTS, and The Helsinki Biennial Art Mediation Forum 2023: An Anthology. The symposium served as a launchpad for the biennial, highlighting its central themes of contamination, regeneration, and agency. It addressed the effects of the climate crisis and the role of contemporary media in curatorial practices. Unlike older forms of media, 21st century media emphasise prediction and anticipation of the future as opposed to recording the current moment. The first part of the anthology features newly commissioned essays by Filipa Ramos, Adeena Mey, and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás based on their public talks at the HB23 Symposium. The second section is dedicated to five new essays by ViCCA students. The essays are one of the outcomes of The Curatorial School of May a yearlong workshop that took the seemingly humble word ‘may’ in the biennial’s title – New Directions May Emerge – as its point of departure. ‘May’ and ‘might’ are indicators of probability, possibility, or permission. They are words that we take for granted because of their supplementary function in sentences. The ‘may’ in the biennial’s title produces fertile ground for possibilities to arise while indicating that the uncertainty of eventual outcomes should be acknowledged in today’s inventive modes of research and practice. The Curatorial School of May nurtured speculative encounters with the biennial's themes, methodologies, and inquiries. The School’s participants have engaged with interpretation and mediation through diverse lenses such as geological methodologies, poetry, hauntology, ancestral knowledges, healing practices, zoology, media studies, psychogeography, and research into human and posthuman agencies. This multifaceted approach highlights a continuously evolving and dynamic understanding of interdisciplinarity, one that serves not as an end unto itself but as the foundation for achieving meaningful mediation from the vantage point of an open future.
>>> The Helsinki Biennial Art Mediation Forum 2023: An Anthology
Curated and facilitated by Micol Curatolo.
During “How to move and where to look? Stories of making life for each other” participants will test together different forms of movement and looking suggested by the island itself and by the artworks shown in Vallisaari.
No one person moves and sees in the same way. With these everyday actions, people create cultural and political relations through which we understand, navigate and participate in the world. Using stories and conviviality, this event will follow different directions and perspectives, with the aim of noticing how they shape and impact our communal living.
Curated and facilitated by Clément Beraud
Mapping the belonging is an exercise in psychogeography – an investigation on how a specific location, in this case the Island of Vallisaari, can affect the emotions and behaviour of a person. As participants, our point of departure will be the ‘utility maps‘ drawn by Helsinki Biennial 2023 art technicians. These are maps that represent the different experiences they had during the installation of some of the artworks of this biennial. During this event, while we build on their mapped perceptions and walk through their experiences, we will also depart (or dérive and wander across multiple artworks and installations on the island) to create our own mapped journey of our individual experiences during the visit
Curated and facilitated by Cyane Findji and Myriam Gras
Navigating Turbulence – towards the making of place focuses on how site-specific artworks both affect and are affected by the space they are situated in, and it proposes a collective reflection on processes of place-making. We, the participants, will make our way from mainland Helsinki to Vallisaari across the archipelago, becoming aware of the sea, its surface, mass and other forces at play. While we follow a permeable trajectory between the waters and the spaces of art, we identify certain landmarks that help us navigate our surroundings. Thinking with the ocean offers us a new perception and understanding of a place as it allows space for movement, complexity and coexistence. The event is held partially on the ferry and partially at Vallisaari island. This event involves an active listening exercise, telling and sharing of viewpoints. We will be visiting different sites and artworks on the island.