The Cultural Foundation’s residency programme currently includes eight destinations in seven countries, but due to Covid-related exceptional circumstances, not all the residencies were available for application.
The Triangle residence in New York has been receiving artists via the Finnish Cultural Foundation since 2019.In 2023, it will host Sari Palosaari, whose residency was delayed from 2020, and this autumn’s successful applicant, Sauli Sirviö.
Artist Liinu Grönlund.
“During the residency, I will be focusing on field work, recording the deterioration of infrastructure and the ghosts arising from lost locations and spaces.I gather discarded materials from the edges of the city and turn them into sculptures, which will be documented for a future publication,” Sirviö says.
Artist Liinu Grönlund will be going to Denmark, to the Fabrikken residency, to find some peace and quiet in which to ponder her work and activities.
Literary Translator Anna-Leea Häkli. Photo: Anna Lannemo
“During the residency period I plan to look at photographic materials I have previously amassed together with natural scientists, as well as taking more nature photographs in Denmark, while developing a new essayistic work. I may collaborate with local researchers. I am particularly interested in visiting the Vaddensee tidal shore,” Grönlund states, excitedly.
Fabrikken will also be visited by visual artist Jonna Kina, while comic artist Ivande Jansone and photographer Saara Tuominen will have stays at NART in Narva, Estonia. Visual artist Felicia Honkasalo will undertake a residency at SeMA Nanji in Seoul, South Korea, and filmmaker and photographer Marko Vuorinen in Tokyo Arts and Space residency in Japan.
This time, the longest distance for a residency will be travelled by literary translator Anna-Leea Häkli, who will go to Argentina to translate a novel set in Buenos Aires, due for publication in spring 2024.
“During my residency period I plan to read as much Argentinian contemporary literature as I can, and I also hope to meet local authors. I am interested in the colourful history of Buenos Aires as well as in the local spoken language, which features prominently in the book I am translating.”
The artists for the residency programme are selected through a two-stage evaluation process, in which the residencymakes the final choice based on a shortlist curated by the Cultural Foundation.The programme is being developed in collaboration with HIAP(the Helsinki International Artist Programme).
The working grant for the Cultural Foundation’s residencies is EUR 7,000 per three-month period.Additionally, the grantee receives EUR 500–1,000 in travel aid.The Cultural Foundation encourages its residency artists to choose the most climate-friendly forms of travel.
Human relations, familiarity versus strangeness, localness, and everyday culture are themes that turn into immersive sound installations in the hands of Jaakko Autio. He wants to take his art among people, which is where it originates from.
Autio spent a big part of his childhood in Senegal, Africa, where his family moved to because of his parents’ work. That’s where Autio learned what the local saying “I am because you are” means.
– In Senegal everything is about mutual relations, and the idea of privacy differs from the western one. I got to know local music and culture that has been refined throughout centuries, and which brings people together. I witnessed how important it is to throw oneself out there and to become visible, he says.
When Autio was 11 years old, the family moved to Ylivieska, a town of about 15 000 inhabitants in the Northern Ostrobothnia region in Finland. Autio found it hard to adapt. He had never worn socks or brushed his hair and spoke Finnish with a French accent. Now Autio thinks that his sense of foreignness has turned into a strength, which he taps into when making art.
– If you move from Senegal to Yliveiska when you are eleven years old, you have no other option but to try and figure out how you can discover a meaningful life. My destiny was to become a citizen of two countries, and because of it I now find it easy to travel. I have learned to recognise when the fear comes from within, when to let go and when not, he says.
Art maker and social anthropologist
Autio worked in theatre before he started to make art on his own terms. As a sound artist he considers himself to be a storyteller and a people gatherer. Autio rarely makes himself seen but prefers using other people’s voices in his installations.
– I’m like a social anthropologist who spots something precious in the existing culture and makes it visible. It was my parents’ job to solve everyday problems; I’m interested in what happens when the basic needs are met. I’m feel better and drift less when I take this opportunity, he says.
While sound is Autio’s preferred art form, he likes to include visual elements in his installations. In the As Time Sounds II installation, which was exhibited at the Mikkeli Art Museum during the summer of 2021, sounds created by Autio made geometric shapes on the surface of water. The speakers, which almost resemble human figures, bring a humane touch to whatever space he uses.
Reflecting his identity in Narva
Autio is currently in Estonia at the Narva Art Residency for three months, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s artist in residence programme. It came to him as a surprise that up to 96 % of the locals speak Russian as their mother tongue. The Baroque style Narva was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War bombings, and the new, Soviet style city was built in place. The Estonian population was substituted with Russians.
Autio has plans for at least five new artworks this year. In Narva he is preparing a sound installation titled Where we are, which he will create together with local choirs. It will be exhibited at the Narva Art Residency this summer, and at the Kogo gallery in Tartu during the autumn of 2022.
– Here I’ve been able to reflect my identity with the local people who find the question of homeland difficult. The new installation is loosely based on the Finnish national anthem, which is melodically almost identical with the Estonian one. I intend to create an aesthetic experience, which for just a moment allows us to recognize and remember a world not marked by hostility and conflicts, Autio says.
Visual artist Essi Orpana is just starting off her career, which has already entailed many new realisations and turning points. The camera has always been an essential tool for her but in the past year or so Orpana has expanded her work from photographs and videos to new materials and ways of working.
Orpana’s artistic thesis for the master’s programme in photography at Aalto University, Such is the Silence, spreads to the surrounding space through wallpaper, garments, and old objects. Photographs taken in abandoned houses feature Miss Silence, Orpana wearing an old dress.
The artworks were exhibited in the Kunsthalle Turku at the end of the year 2020, and they were part of the Copenhagen Photo Festival programme during the summer of 2021. The Finnish State Art Commission acquired three pieces for its collections.
– When I was putting together Such is the Silence, I realised for the first time how I can combine different elements with photography and video. Since then I’ve been even more interested in creating spatial ambiances, and in the dialogue between the objects, Orpana says.
Residency provides an opportunity to experiment
Orpana is currently finalising her master’s thesis, which is based on her her artistic work, and the house it features. She says it was only during the writing process that she understood how much her childhood, and her grandparents’ country home have influenced the creation of the Such is the Silence artworks.
– When my sister and I were kids, we used to dress up in my grandmother’s clothes, and she told us about the various characters that were living on the farm. I have just now recognised how much my childhood, and the forming of an identity – and finding where I belong – relate to the way I work. I have been processing these subjects without realising it.
“If I can provoke thoughts, questions, or feelings in the observer, then I have achieved something.”
Orpana believes that art is always personal, yet themes such as identity and mortality as an inseparable part of living are part of the human existence. That’s why they are so easy to relate to.
– It feels like current society and social media culture alienate us from real life and nature, where the biological cycle is beautiful and more present. I think about these things a lot. If I can provoke thoughts, questions, or feelings in the observer, then I have achieved something, she says.
In December next year Orpana will spend three months in Fabrikken in Copenhagen as part of an artist in residence programme funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The main objective of the work residency is the opportunity to experiment, which will hopefully evolve into new artworks. Orpana would like to exhibit those in Helsinki, where she hasn’t had a solo show so far.
– I want to test new ways of combining digital photographs and videos with different materials. The artist residency is a perfect opportunity to develop my work further and to immerse in new ideas, she says.
Visual artist Essi Maaria Orpana received a grant which allows her to work for three months at the Fabrikken residency in Denmark in 2022.
Noora has been an admirer of the Japanese aesthetic and lifestyle ever since she was a student in England in 2009. During that time, she was especially interested in Japanese design, and her dissertation investigated clothes through a Japanese understanding of space. Years later, she was further pursuing studies, this time at the Valand Academy in Göteborg, Sweden. She realised that the Japanese aesthetic, and especially the concept of wabi-sabi, kept popping up in her thoughts and in her work. However, despite the appeal and allure, the concepts were not too clear to her at that point, and she felt a strong need to travel to Japan to investigate them further.
The opportunity arrived in 2019, when Noora was able to travel to the Tokyo Art and Space residency through a Finnish Cultural Foundation scholarship. She found in Japan a curiosity towards her research on boredom as well as an encouragement to explore the concepts of wabi-sabi through her own practice. A dialogue with the very helpful employees of the residency helped Noora understand a very important aspect of Japanese culture: the idea that in order to understand something, one must practice and experience, try and sometimes fail, yet always learn.
While Noora had initially planned to meet researchers and experts to discuss her subjects of interest, she was encouraged to experience them instead. So, she found herself participating in tea ceremonies and butoh dance theatre classes. She also purchased a rail card and visited Sapporo and Hiroshima, among other places. She visited the Setouchi Triennale and met up with local artists and artisans. She was made to feel welcome, with everyone happily giving her their time and sharing their knowledge. The other residency artists, both Japanese and international, were also eager to discuss, share, and work together.
In order to understand something, one must practice and experience, try and sometimes fail, yet always learn.
Kaori Endo, from the photographic series Sensei, 2020.
An exhibition at the end of the residency period showcased a map of Noora’s research, complete with a projected video work that combined locality with further travel. Noora’s three months in Japan were extremely busy and vivacious, and full of adventures, thus perfectly reflecting the Japanese learning experience. Did she figure out what the wabi-sabi is, in the end? “It is an eternal process,” Noora laughs. She definitely understood it better through her exploration, her participation, and confluence of events. She realised that while she can immerse herself in the Japanese culture, she will always be looking at it from the outside, from her own culture and life experience. Noora mentions discovering the writings of Minna Eväsoja after her trip to Tokyo, and especially the book Teetaide ja runous – Wabi ja sabi japanilaisessa estetiikassa (which translates as “Tea art and poetry – wabi and sabi in Japanese aesthetics”). In the book Eväsoja points out that while the wabi-sabi is often looked at as one concept in the Western world, it should, actually, be viewed as two separate notions: wabi and sabi.
While the understanding of wabi and sabi will continue throughout Noora’s life, she understands it at this point in time to mean beauty that approaches perfection through imperfection and accepting life as it comes.
Boredom
Life is Boring exhibition at Kanneltalo gallery, installation view, 2020. Macrame sculpture by Noora Lehtovuori.
After her graduation from the Valand Academy in 2018, Noora has widely explored the topic of boredom. Prior to her trip to Japan, she spent some time working at an artists’ residency in Iceland. The research Noora undertook during that residency period formed the foundations of a touring exhibition titled Life is dangerous. In its 2020 twin exhibition, titled Life is boring, Noora and her collaborators investigate boredom and being bored in contemporary society in a series of events. In the exhibition Lehtovuori is looking for and reflecting on boredom in collaboration with various artists and creators: in Kannelmäki with Anne Törnroos, in Oulu with Lin Chih Tung, in Kauhava with Oula Rytkönen, and in Berlin with Hannah Bohnen. Each artist has a different approach to the theme, with different strengths, but they all have one thing in common: they see much potential in feeling bored.
The touring exhibition Life is boring was initialised immediately after Noora’s Tokyo residency, and some of the themes investigated are a direct response to the Japanese lifestyle that she experienced. For example, they practice together with curator Lin Chih Tung slow walking in the gallery setting which was inspired by Japanese butoh performance. The exhibition toured in Finland (with one event in Berlin), but there is definitely enough research material for further installations to an even wider audience. Noora recently presented the work at the Royal College of Art in London, and there is a publication planned.
Two years have now passed since her residency trip to Tokyo Art and Space, and while some of the experiences resulted in immediate reactions that became evident in her work upon her return, some others curled up like a ball of yarn that she has only recently begun to unravel. Currently, Noora is finalising her curatorial studies at the Praxis master’s programme at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Her master’s thesis deals with dialogue in curating, and it has also been influenced by Japanese culture and thinking. Therefore, the time is perfect for going through the photos taken during those intense and lively three months two years ago.
Finnish Cultural Foundation’s residency programme is maintained and developed in collaboration with HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme. Photos provided by the artist.
The purpose of the mobility grant is to enable artists and critics to spend time abroad to discover new tools and networks that support their art practise. Individual artist, critics, working groups as well as registered organisations such as associations from any field of art are eligible to apply for a Mobility grant.
Mobility grants may be sought for expenses ranging from EUR 2,000 to EUR 10,000. Acceptable uses of the grant include e.g. residency costs, participation in a festival, exhibition project or international collaboration. It is not possible to apply for both a working grant and an expenditure grant in the same application; working must be funded by other means. Even though travelling is still restricted in many ways, grants are worth applying for, as the rules for using the grants are flexible.
The Cultural Foundation is favourably disposed towards higher travel costs due to the journey taking place in a way that pollutes the climate and the environment as little as possible. In addition to direct travel costs, the grant may also be used to offset emissions that your form of travel produces.
The COVID-19 situation presents some changes to the residency program of the Foundation. There are two brand new residencies open for application, Fabrikken Art Center in Copenhagen and NART in Estonia. They both offer two three-month working grants. For Triangle residency in New York the Finnish Cultural Foundation offers one working grant for three months. All three programs are targeted at visual artists.
In the August Round of Applications, you may apply either for a residency offered by the Finnish Cultural Foundation or for a mobility grant, not both.
Eeva-Liisa Puhakka: Seoul, smell, and sensory memories
An interview by Athanasía Aarniosuo
Eeva-Liisa Puhakka currently lives and works in Ruotila, near Kouvola in Finland. She moved into an old family house during spring 2020, as the world was getting used to what was to become an extraordinary year. She is currently working at art center Taidekeskus Antares where she is experimenting on creating her own bioplastics. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has somehow forced her to change her rhythm of working, it has, nevertheless, been a busy couple of years. In 2019, she spent three months in Seoul on a residency funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. 2020 found her in Spain; after traveling back to Finland, she has taken part in an environmental exhibition during summer 2020, creating a large-scale public sculpture made from metal tubes and, also, spent nearly three months in ARE residency in the Netherlands during autumn.
Seoul
Seoul was an interesting and inspiring city, Eeva-Liisa says, where everything worked well and on schedule, moving around was easy, and people were friendly. Eeva-Liisa had not been to Seoul before and did not know what to expect. What she found was a big city with massive buildings and a perfectly organised residency area near a big park, contemporary art of the highest level, and stimulating conversation. Eeva-Liisa found that Seoul activated her, motivated her to find exhibitions and openings to attend, as the recently appointed residency staff, albeit friendly, did not provide a set schedule of things to do and places to visit.
What was indeed pleasant was the social aspect of the residency. Six international and twenty local artists got along well and became friends. The residency period ended with a group exhibition. Eeva-Liisa participated with an installation investigating smell, the smell of death. The installation consisted of a space within which the audience had to step, to be confronted with four levels of the smell of a decomposing dead animal. The four smells ranged from the pleasant smell of a rose through the very unpleasant, ending with a very mild smell of just bones, investigating concepts of the afterlife. Although Eeva-Liisa has been interested in smells for many years, this particular residency gave her research a certain taboo twist. In South Korea, smells are generally frowned upon.
Smell
Eeva-Liisa’s interest in smell goes back several years. For five to six years, while living in Berlin, she was working with an artist collective called Scent Club Berlin. All the members of the collective were interested in smells in various ways. The sense of smell is such a strong, primitive sense which brings on sensory memories from as far back as one’s childhood. Together with the collective, Eeva-Liisa initiated smell dating workshops during which the audience were assigned dates based on the smell of their sweat after a 15-minute aerobics class. The projects of the collective were mostly playful, whereas Eeva-Liisa’s personal work around smell researched, for example, the smells of death and fear.
Ecology and bioplastics
One of the interests that have followed Eeva-Liisa’s art for years is the desire to make art that respects the environment. During her ARE residency in the Netherlands, Eeva-Liisa got acquainted with a local artist who inspired her to make her own bioplastics and kombucha leather. In her current experimentations, Eeva-Liisa is making bioplastics using seaweed from Asia, coloured with various local organic ingredients such as tomato, raspberry, beetroot, blueberry, and clove. In the future, Eeva-Liisa would like to experiment with local seaweed andother plant-based materials.
Milky Way, Kouvola Art Museum, 2020.
Nature and locality
The relationship between humans and other animals is of interest to Eeva-Liisa as well as the relationship between humans and their surrounding environment. Some of Eeva-Liisa’s work deals with the rural population decreasing. For example, some of her works use imagery of empty barns and abandoned milking machines. She often contrasts and compares nature and rural communities with technology.
Since she moved to rural Kouvola, she has also been interested in the local community and history, especially some of the local religious cults that she has been hearing and reading about.
Future plans
Aspects of these long-term interests are bound to make an appearance in Eeva-Liisa’s future exhibitions. In May 2021, she is looking to open a solo exhibition at Kouvola Art Museum, marking her three-year position as appointed artist of the city of Kouvola. The exhibition will feature works about farms, a sound installation of grey crows, kinetic sculptures of bird wings and tails, photographs of cows, and a video installation about a local Christian-influenced cult active between the 20s and the 60s. Also, the installation from Seoul investigating the smell of death will be reinstalled in Kouvola. The works of the exhibition will deal with Kouvola and the larger area, yet they have been inspired by Eeva-Liisa’s time in South Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany.
AA: Investigating death through the sense of smell is somewhat unexpected. Does this make the uncomfortable topic easier to approach?
E-LP: I do hope so. While working with this topic I try myself to accept death as a normal process and event of our life – to put it into the big context of the ecosystem and cycle of life. Death is one of the last taboos in our society and a difficult topic to talk about. We don’t know how to deal with it. Although death should be dealt with the same care as birth.
AA: What materials are you currently using for your bioplastics? Are you trying to increase sustainability by exploring more local options?
E-LP: I have grown kombucha scoby to make leather from it, but mainly I am into making bioplastics out of different kinds of seaweeds. After the first few experiments, I decided to limit my experiments to plant-based materials. The next step would be to source more local materials, as I think the locality is an important factor.
When Monika Czyżyk built a rocket: on bamboo, synchronicity, and subconscious memories
An interview by Athanasía Aarniosuo
As soon as Monika arrived in Beijing she met Hu Wenna, an urban planner who works with revitalisation of villages at China Academy of Urban Planning and Design – CAUPD. She invited Monika to visit Anhui province in order to experience life in traditional Chinese villages. Monika was welcomed by social worker Wang Zheng, who introduced her to local people in Shangcun and Wanjian villages. It was a busy time with many revitalisation projects taking place. Monika witnessed coffee workshops and was welcomed to document them. Filming was a means of communication between Monika and the local people, with the camera acting as a very natural, kind communication tool.
As CAUPD was interested in the presence of artists in the village, Monika proposed a process of building an outdoor bamboo rocket sculpture together with the local community, which initiated a process of performances, workshops, sharing knowledge and learning from one another.
Installation view Bamboocene Memories of Synchronicity 2020. Photo: Laura Mainiemi
While working with bamboo, Monika discovered that bamboo plants flower at the same time all over the world if they are derived from the same mother plant, regardless of geographical location or climate. It was a magical thought, Monika found, that showed her how amazing the bamboo plant really is. The unique flowering impressed her so much that this moment of synchronicity is also featured in the documentary film about rocket-building.
The resulting documentary film, I Want to Build a Rocket, has been displayed together with various mixed-media sculptures such as bamboo root masks which hang on a metal globe made by Monika’s father, clusters of wood that were used to build the rockets (with the help of the Finnish Astronautical Society), red Finnish thermoses that were referenced during filming, sculptures of dragonflies, green mesh, and led lights.
Currently, Monika is showing the work in an exhibition curated by Kathryn Zazenski for Stroboskop Art Space in Warsaw, Poland, until the end of November. The work is a variation of an exhibition she put on at Myymälä2 gallery in Helsinki. In Poland, Monika is showing one additional work: a banner featuring a composition of a print of two condiments, Majonez Kielecki from her hometown in Poland and a well-recognized condiment from China. The banner combines memories with local products, while the composition has been arranged to represent the Polish flag. Patterns of behaviour come from subconscious memories, for people just like bamboo plants. The banner contextualises and introduces the objects – in this case the condiment jars – while touching on another similarity between Poland and China: in both countries the communist and post-communist times are visible, with different eras and different styles being present in the architecture of the cities.
Monika very much enjoyed putting on an exhibition in Poland and felt very inspired. She feels the artistic community is very strong, with artists all helping each other, arranging things on their own, and communicating. Working in Poland for some time is something Monika feels could be on the cards in the future.
Memories of Synchronicity (Polish Flag), 2020, banner print, 432 x 220 x 0,5 cm. Stroboskop Art Space. Photo: Bartosz Zalewski.
In the nearby future, Monika would like to continue working on the film, making a condensed screening version of it. She is also going to continue working on a finalized version of a collaborative catalogue, the prototype for which was exhibited alongside her film and sculptural works in Myymälä2 gallery in September 2020. In addition, she will return to an ongoing project from 2016, in which she addresses issues of body, gender, and learning, through Barbie-dolls and videos of her female friends telling stories about their lives. She is also planning a new documentary film situated in various allotment gardens in Poland and Finland.
But first, she will take a much-needed break.
(The interview continues after the image.)
Monika Czyżyk, Geographies of a lonely Pole, 2020, bamboo poles with carved drawings by Torsten Zenas. Photo: Laura Mainiemi
AA: You have recently been traveling around the world, getting to know the area and the local people, and documenting stories. Is your work fiction, travelogue, or documentary?
MC: I often mix documentary interviews with staged scenes. A kind of participatory docu-fiction is often created blurring the research and adding new elements the meaning of which is not entirely clear until the final montage. I think this genre relates to my understanding of the world and creation of art works in general.
Every project I have participated in or activated is very different and based on a specific context and collaboration. There is a notion of a documentary filmmaker in my practice, I react to my surroundings, situations and people I am in contact with. I am always capturing moving image files with a digital camera. I mostly work in local contexts, creating collaborative situations with others to develop community-based performances, stories and acts with co-created fictional elements that combine the shared documented experiences of the participants.
Over the years I have participated in different global residency programs. Usually I enter the new space with some initial thoughts and ideas, often looking for collaborators or participants involved in a local workshop, screening, or other similar situation. I have been lucky to meet really fantastic people during these encounters. Once the energy and motivations are right, I dedicate my time to focus on work in a very specific place and community and often these projects are developed over many years. That’s how I began to work on projects with Footprints of David, a performance group based in the Bariga area of Lagos, Nigeria and with local residents located in Anhui province, China.
AA: What interests you most in experiencing a new culture, and what have you gained the most from past travels?
MC: I sense the romantic image of a traveler in this question.
I am actually not sure how to answer this question. What interests me is the unknown, the unpredictable, thecoincidental, the intuitive, the hospitable, the risk, the trust, the sharable, the memorable, the smiles, the smells. There are so many different styles of travel.
I think I have been always questioning my identity and my belonging to a certain place. The necessity of the escape is my inner drive. All experiences are shaping who we are. I have gained knowledge, experiences, memories, friends, proof that the Earth is not flat.
Being born in 1989 and raised in Poland during some very politically transformative years I think my father implemented the ideas of adventure and exploration in me. I have a genuine interest in meeting people with different backgrounds than myself.
AA: Some of your films and installations evoke images of science fiction and awe. What inspires you?
MC: I would actually say that my main interests are in the realm of docu-fiction and experimental video art. I have been truly inspired by Leslie Thornton’s media works, especially her ongoing Peggy and Fred series, and artist and filmmaker Melanie Bonajo. I also have had the opportunity of seeing in person several films and installations by the outstanding Michel Auder. As far as inspiring and thought provoking conversations goes, I have had the fortune of conversing with the visual artist and theorist Thomas Zummer. Other important filmmakers that continue to inspire me over the years are the films of Agnes Varda and Jean Luc Godard. Another area of inspiration for me exists in global techno culture and dancing.
AA: There’s a sense of optimism and beauty to a lot of your sci-fi work. How do you see the future?
MC: Science fiction for me is a tool to engage the present. Speculative themes are explored in many of the video pieces and often shown through ambiguous performance rituals or through animations that explore new states of being. I enjoy working with technical collaborators coming up with both virtual and physical places, costumes and scenes that may or may not exist in some new reality. I am cautiouslly optimistic about the future transforming through culture. Although observing recent global events, I would need to find some special powers to keep that optimism going.
Still from the documentary film I Want to Build a Rocket, 2020.
AA: You are interested in events that occur simultaneously. Do you have any personal theory about how these coincidences occur?
MC: I guess I would like to believe in some kind of connectivity between humans, time and places we have lived in. It’s a desire to be in multiple places simultaneously. Adesire of sharing a level of understanding that goes beyond national, historical, cultural and spiritual contexts and differences. I would like to think that synchronicity and serendipity are embedded in a cosmic blueprint. Being lost in any artistic project is one way to enter. Stay open! Don’t always have a plan! Open perfect.
AA: You touch upon the subject of “the unique bamboo flowering which happens at the same time all over the world irrespective of their geographical location and climate as long as they were derived from the same mother plant”. Did you purposefully want to address issues of cultural identity and belonging?
MC: I definitely question issues related to identity and belonging. As our subjectivity is built up on certain grounds, we have the necessity to question, destroy, reinvent and destabilise, now more than ever. In my film, while recording scenes of Chinese revitalization I was sensitive to the saying ‘przepis na zachod’ (recipe for Westernization) taking root. I was also thinking about this in the context of my family and Poland in the 1980’s.
AA: You collaborate often with Torsten Zenas Burns. How did your paths and intentions cross?
MC: In 2015, we met at UnionDocs in Brooklyn, NY. while I was participating in a video screening. Over the next few months we started our ongoing series of video and performance works called Monstersweet in New York City, Helsinki and at a residency program called Signal Culture. We actually just finished the latest version which was recently shown in MUU gallery in September. It’s very exciting to collaborate with Torsten. We naturally combine our skills and research interests. Torsten’s usage of performance art and playfulness with analog transformations of the moving image goes in pair and enriches my documentarian and archival moving image working process. As a result, we often produce media works in a genre of docu-fiction with influences from global speculative fictions. Currently we are collaborating on electronic publishing projects related to my residency experience in China.
AA: Can you offer us a glimpse into what’s coming next?
MC: Like everybody on the planet, I am hoping a vaccine is developed and travel opportunities can resume. I am really looking forward one day to returning to China’s Anhui province and visiting all the amazing participants and collaborators that helped make my new film. They have not seen it yet and I would like to screen it for them. I also had a connection with a Chinese art publishing group based in Beijing, in the same building as the IFP residency program I went to. I am really excited to collaborate with them creating new exhibition, film and graphic novel catalogues for distribution in art international book fairs in the coming years.
Monika Czyżyk and Torsten Zenas Burns, Geographies of a lonely Pole, 2020, 24 bamboo poles. Photo: Batosz Zalewski
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Finnish Cultural Foundation has been forced to postpone almost all confirmed 2020 residencies and it is still uncertain when a part of these will be realized.Therefore, the situation will also affect the implementation of residencies in 2021.
– It has been challenging to plan international residencies amid the uncertainties of recent months, to say the least, and it is still impossible to predict any timetable for when residencies might start accepting artists, explains Senior Advisor Johanna Ruohonen, who is in charge of the Foundation’s residency programme.
The residencies opening for applications in 2021 can only be confirmed at the beginning of August, but the application period, in its adjusted scope, will open as usual on 10 August 2020.At the moment, the residencies opening for applications will include at least Filba in Buenos Aires, aimed for writers, the Sydney Artspace for visual artists, and the Tokyo Arts and Space for artists in creative fields.The Tokyo-based AIT residency will exceptionally feature a two-month residency period, and successful applicants will be encouraged to travel by land and/or sea.
As for New York Triangle and Seoul SeMA Nanji, the residencies postponed from 2020 will fill up the quota of the Foundation in 2021, so these locations will not be open for applications this year.Instead, in July, the Triangle, in cooperation with the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, will open for application the residency periods postponed from fall 2020 for Finnish artists residing in North America – who are not under travel restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
– The situation is difficult for artists, whose timetables the coronavirus has played havoc on, as well as for our residency programme partners, whose facilities have become empty and all activities would be preferred to be postponed to 2021.This will also lead to financial difficulties, especially for the smaller institutions.The Foundation aims to carry out all residencies already agreed upon, and new residencies will open according to the receiving capacities of our partner institutions, Ruohonen says.
Slow travel by train or by ship
The Finnish Cultural Foundation encourages artists leaving for their residencies to travel in as climate-friendly way as possible. Artists travelling to destinations reachable by rail and ferry traffic are awarded raised travel grants if they agree to travel to their destination without flying. In these cases, the grants for destinations in Asia are EUR 5,000, which compensates both the higher ticket prices as well as time spent on travelling as working time (2 weeks/direction).
A working grant in the Foundation residencies is EUR 7,000 for a period of three months. Additional information on the residencies can be found on the Cultural Foundation’s homepage under the individual locations.The residencies to be included in the August round of applications will be listed on the Foundation’s homepages in the first week of August.
In June 2019, we spent two weeks in the Shawbrook Dance Residency in Ireland working on a piece called Flesh Thing, an intertwinement of a performance piece and a fleshy painting.
Our working group consisted of four dancers and a choreographer. The aims of the residency period were to delve into the question of intertwining the sensuousness of a painting and a performance and to develop the corporeality and the bodily practice of the work. We immersed ourselves e.g. into questions of carnal being-in-the-world: How does our flesh resonate with each other and with the world? How can we practice carnal thinking? We already had two short working periods in Helsinki, so we were able to sink into the work and sketch different possible scores/compositions for the piece easily.
Flesh Thing by Heli Keskikallio and working group
When we arrived at the residency, we were genuinely amazed by the beauty of the place which was surrounded by green fields and forests. We were provided with two studio spaces plus an outdoor forest studio. Our work consists of materials that are slow and difficult to clean and move. Having our own working space where we could leave everything at the end of the working day and then pick back up in the morning was a really nice experience that also gave us more time for creative pursuits.The environment was inspirational to us and working outside in the midst of the forest also affected us because of all the different colours and textures we encountered. We were left wondering how many different shades of green there can be.
Our days consisted of developing the bodily practices in the mornings, working on painting-performance and different scores/compositions in the afternoons and reading related philosophical and theoretical texts together in the evenings after dinner. It was wonderful to be able to live and work in the same place. It gave us the opportunity to immerse ourselves into our work with time and calmness. Additionally, the time spent together outside of the studio gave us the opportunity to get to know each other better which in turn, allowed us to discuss the evolving work more deeply.
The atmosphere was open and supportive. We were free to arrange our working time and spaces in a way that suited us best. Everything needed was at hand and the hosts of the residency were warm and helpful. They also organized dinners and get-togethers for us. On the last day of the residency, we held a performance of our work for the hosts. This was a very rewarding experience for our process as it provided valuable information about how the work could be in dialogue with its audience.
We are very thankful to the Finnish Cultural Foundation for giving us the possibility and support to attend this residency. We would also like to give a warm thank you to the residency hosts; Anica and Philip.
The working group in the residency: Heli Keskikallio, Krista-Julia Arppo, Johanna Karlberg, Karoliina Kauhanen and Elisa Tuovila Other working group: Miki Brunou, Kristian Palmu, Bea Tornberg and Laura Valkama
