YKON / PRACTICAL UTOPIAS IN LONDON

After facilitating YKON game for wonderful participants at Communikey -festival of electronic arts in Boulder and at Shedhalle in Zürich, YKON has landed to London.

YKON is the first international artist group of SPACE PREMACULTURES residency program.  We use this wonderful opportunity by working on YKON game as well as our project Practical Utopias – the long term collaboration of YKON, Electra and Drugo More.

We are heading towards an event 23rd-24th June at The White Building, Hackney Wick, London. That will be the first one of the Practical Utopias -series. Find more info here http://spacestudios.org.uk/whats-on/events-projects/practical-utopias-midsummer-weekend-with-ykon

JOKAKLUBI AND SHEDHALLE LAUNCHES OPEN CALL

Friday, February 3, 9.30 pm
Restaurant Ziegel oh Lac (Rote Fabrik), Seestrasse 407, 8038 ZüricH, Free Entrance

Join with your performance of any kind, any genre, any attitude.
Duration until 5 min. The off art jury from Finland reveals what is OFF and
what is ON in Zürich in 2012. Step on our friendly stage or just come and
support the performers as audience member.

Questions & Registrations: mail@mirkaraito.com

www.jokaklubi.blogspot.com & www.shedhalle.ch

JOKAklubi

Another form of participation is articulated with the group JOKAklubi (in English “everybody’s club”, with the Finnish artists Mirka Raito, Niina Lehtonen-Braun and Tellervo Kalleinen). They are combining music, arts, and performance. Their surrealistic projects are breaking out from their interest to create surprising visuals into even more surprising situations. Their sharp humour is playing a big part in the shows – touching absurd sides of human life. The interactive JOKAklubi shows build a sense of community here and now. Local people (not only artists) who like to be on stage and play, are addressed and influence the course the evening takes. For Zurich, “The Off Art Talent Show“ will be staged. It invites people to present a short performance, which will then be discussed by a jury using absurd methods like the oracle, and so on.

FORMEN DER BETEILIGUNG / FORMS OF PARTICIPATION

Formen der Beteiligung / Forms of Participation
4th of February – 15th of April 2012

Verein Shedhalle, Rote Fabrik, Seestrasse 395, Postfach 771, CH-8038 Zürich

In this show, the artist couple Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen is invited to present its projects and collaborations.  In the centre of the show are four video installations, “I love my job“,  “People in White“, “Dreamland“ and “Archipelago Science Fiction“, accompanied by an installation and  a participative game of YKON, and a performance of JOKAklubi. The aim of the exhibition is to present the different and unique aesthetic forms of participation and humour, which we deem crucial and exemplary in the discourse of public sphere and politically engaged art.

YKON GAME: Sunday, April 15, 3-6 pm

YKON, a group of seven artists, develops games and workshops, which last several hours and include up to 50 people . In Zurich, a game with the following preliminaries will be set up: “It is a world simulation game for up to 30 players. It’s based on a simple thought experiment: imagine that the world is brought to a complete halt. Everything stops. No more business as usual. With the world frozen, you and your fellow players can tinker with it as you please. What will you change? How do you convince others to go along with your changes? And what about the consequences? Through the 1960’s, Buckminster Fuller was developing the ‘World Game’. It was to be his masterplan for the planet Earth: a tool that would formulate a comprehensive, design science approach to all the problems of the world. Inspired by the ideas of Fuller, we have developed the YKON Game, a more poetic perspective on the future of our world.

Instead solving the problems that we know, The YKON Game seeks to uncover the ideas that we’re still missing — sometimes wonderful, sometimes terrifying thoughts that could forever alter the world, and the way we live in it. For its players, the game poses an existential challenge: they will have to think about what kind of world they truly want. So come and change the world. You don’t need to be an expert: everyone is welcome.“

Contact: volkart@shedhalle.ch

PEOPLE IN WHITE AT ROME FILM FESTIVAL

We are happy to announce that People in White will be screened at Rome Film Festival 1st November 10.30pm. After that there will be Q&A.

People in White is a project that explores the complicated relationship between doctor and patient in mental health care.

Margreet receives electroshock treatment (ECT) for severe depression. As a side effect of the treatment she suffers from memory loss. She has been in therapy with the same psychoanalyst for 20 years. He knows more about Margreet than she remembers about herself. “He is my memory,” she says, and worries about him dying before her. Margreet is one of ten Dutch people who tell stories about their encounters with mental health-care professionals.

In People in White the dynamic between caregiver and care receiver is seen
specifically from the subjective viewpoint of people with mental illnesses. A central artistic device is re-enactment of key moments in the therapeutic process in which former patients play themselves as well as their doctors. Memories vary from beautiful, healing moments to the horrors of isolation and abuse.

BACKGROUND

People willing to share their stories were found through adverts in Dutch newspapers. The directors conducted extensive interviews with the 14 participants. All the dialogues and stories in the film are direct quotations from those interviews. Six of the participants were willing to appear in the film themselves, other participants choose to be represented by actors. The film was shot in an abandoned wing of a mental hospital.

People in White was commissioned by the 3rd International Madness and Arts Festival in Haarlem, Netherlands. The festival is one of the leading institutions using a multi-disciplinary approach to explore mental-health issues. The work was supported by SKOR, Netherlands and AVEK, Finland

YKON AT MERCOSUL BIENNIAL

YKON participates in 8th Mercosul Biennale, Porto Alegre, Brazil

Within the framework of the 8th Mercosul Biennale dedicated to the topic of “Geopoetics”, YKON presents two pieces, the “YKON game” and a new work “The Flag Piece” commissioned by the Biennale.

For “The Flag Piece” all the 204 Flags of UN-recognized countries where reengineered in a kind of molecular cut and paste into their single color elements and symbols (Stars, Moons, Eagles..). In collaboration with a local seamstress cooperative the elements were re-united into a giant single transnational flag (915 cm x 480 cm). The flag is accompanied by a selection of international flag laws and stories about flag desecration.

YKON game was developed 2009 – inspired by Buckminster Fuller´s World Game. YKON GAME – also nominated for the DMY Berlin Design Festival prize 2011– is a beautifully bizarre journey and collective attempt to alter the World. Instead of solving the common problems that we are facing, The YKON GAME seeks to uncover the ideas that we haven’t payed attention to yet – ideas that are sometimes wonderful and sometimes terrifying – other thoughts that could forever alter the world and the way we live in it. YKON developed for the Mercosul Biennale a new version of the YKON-game. The game will be played daily throughout the biennale in a special constructed geodesic dome.

About the Mercosul Bienal

Entitled Essays on Geopoetics, the 8th edition is concerned with territoriality and its critical redefinition from an art standpoint. It will bring together 105 artists from 31 countries that develop relevant works regarding the notions of country, nation, identity.

The exhibition has 7 parts, the main exhibition is held under the title Geopoetics, presenting works and artists that question the notion of nationality.
Another part of the biennial, entitled Travel Notebooks – features artistic expeditions to nine regions of Rio Grande do Sul between April and August.

The 8ª Mercosul Biennial will be open from September 10th to November 15th 2011.

ARCHIPELAGO SCIENCE FICTION – FILM AT CAA-EXHIBITION

“Archipelago Science Fiction” can be seen at Korppoo´s Saaristokeskus from 12 –  6pm daily until the mid of July. You can also see it at the Silja Line “Europe” boat cruise leaving from Turku.

The Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat describes the film “touching” and Helsingin Sanomat describes the film as “extremely funny”.

The piece is part of a unique contemporary art exhibition CAA which has produced 20 new pieces from international artists – all of them worth seeing!

PEOPLE IN WHITE AT MOMA, NY, 9TH JUNE 8.30PM

Join us to the screening of People in White at MoMa´s T2 -theatre. The selection of Finnish Documentaries is curated by Sally Berger in collaboration with DocPoint festival.

ARCHIPELAGO SCIENCE FICTION

In the next weeks our two year work process in the Turku archipelago will culminate in the filming of four short science fiction films. Basing on web questionnaires and face to face interviews we mapped islanders´worst and best case scenarios about the future of the archipelago. Basing on those interviews 3 workshops were held at Utö, Houtskär and Korpo. The workshops produced  different science fiction film ideas portraying bleak or optimistic (or both) visions of the archipelago of Turku after 100 years. Filming will begin in May 20. More then 100 locals will act in the films.

Archipelago Science Fiction is a collaboration between Tellervo Kalleinen, Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Henrik Andersson. It is part of an ambitious  art exhibition CONTEMPORARY ART ARCHIPELAGO, opening June 18 2011 around Turku Archipelago. Curators are Taru Elfving and Lotta Petronella.

PEOPLE IN WHITE AT DOCPOINT FILM FESTIVAL, HELSINKI

We are glad to show our latest film about doctor-patient relationships in mental health care “People In White” at the renowned documentary film festival Doc-Point in Helsinki. The film portraits 11 people suffering from mental illnesses telling and re-enacting stories about different mental health care workers who have treated them. We are especially pleased about the jury’s statement: “The greatest surprises were works that boldly and successfully deviate from traditional Finnish documentary conventions. In People in White persons receiving therapy and and mental health treatment recall their shared experiences, reliving their situations through acting. What makes this film interesting is its complexity and the insight that reality is not always straightforward but depend on a particular point of view and subjective interpretation. Inevitably, the film also raises questions about reliability and the (in)correctness of any interpretation. On the other hand, the creation of reality in a documentary is based on its maker’s honesty which transmits itself to the viewer.” The film runs in the Finnish competition.

Screening times:
28th January, 5pm: Ateneum Sali, Helsinki
30th January, 3.30pm: Kinopalatsi 5, Helsinki
Additional Screenings:
1st February, 7pm Malmitalo
3rd February, 6.30 Vuotalo

People in White was commissioned by Madness and Arts Festival in Haarlem (MAF3), and that is where the work was first previewed in October 2010. Now the film is finalized, and we are proud to have the premier at Documentary Film Festival DocPoint! Thank you for SKOR and AVEK / Heidi Tikka for financing the film.