Common Ground – A Public Space Game culminates in the opening of a collectively designed park

If you could decide, what kind of a park would you like to have in your home town? 
This question was put to thirty Rauma residents between the ages 6–89 who had volunteered to participate in the Common Ground contemporary art project by Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen. In the project, a new park was designed and built using a participatory scheme developed by the artists. 

In April 2018, the project’s game board, a 1,900 square metre plot of undeveloped land in the centre of Rauma, was divided into 30 sections, which were distributed among the players by lot. Each player became the sovereign ruler of their own section. In five meetings held in the space of two years, each player received 200 euros to be used before the next meeting to further their vision of the park before the next meeting. In the sixth and last meeting, the players were collectively given 14,000 euros for the finalisation of the park. During the game, the players could choose to tend only their own section or to pool resources – the money, the land, the ideas. Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen served as overseers without actually steering the direction of the game. 

The process has involved countless discussions and negotiations among the players. As a result, the City of Rauma has now a unique and personal park which reflects both the needs of individuals and their common voice. 
Common Ground is part of the continuum of works created by the artist duo in their 18 years of collaboration. The works explore participation and the interplay and tensions between individuality and collectivity. This is the first artwork by the duo that is sited in the public space. The City of Rauma will maintain the park up to at least 2022. 
The artists have documented the players’ experiences during the project. The documentation will be available in a mobile app published in conjunction with the opening of the park. An exhibition based on the materials will also be produced in the future. 

Join us for the opening of the Common Ground park on 12 September 2020 at 14.00–18.00, Kalliokatu 28–30, Rauma.

Archipelago Science Fiction is part of Ocean Dwellers exhibition at Nordic Embassies, Berlin. The exhibition is curated by Solvej Ovesen.

The Turku archipelago on the Baltic Sea provide the framework for four sci–fi scenarios. The islanders themselves perform the hilarious and sometimes chilling episodes, which base on their own fears and hopes of how the area will develop.

FACT Liverpool is organising a new, this time entirely work -related complaints choir, as part of their exhibition Real Work. The choir director is fabulous Jennifer John. The choir performances take place 31 August 2019 – follow Fact web site for details! The premier of the video documentation of the choir song is 12 September 2019 – welcome! Tellervo Kalleinen will be present in the event.

Archipelago Science Fiction is part of Objekti 5.0 exhibition of contemporary sculpture, installation and urban art, curated by Any Best & Merja Puustinen. You can find our work from Pop up Gallery, Entresse shopping centre, 2nd floor – in Espoo center.

The complete complaints choir installation can be seen at Galleria Laikku, Tampere, as part of Tampereen sävel -festival. This is the first time, that also the complaints choir of Georgia is shown in Finland! Thank you The Tampere Vocal Music Festival and AV Arkki for the collaboration!

Complaints Choirs -solo exhibition is taking over the beautiful space of  Kunstverein Ludwigshafen as a 5 channel installation. The installation is extended with the Georgian complaints choir! An artist talk and conversation will take place at the Kunstverein 30 June 12 o’clock  – and four local complaints choir perform in that event. Thank you curator Barbara Auer for this wonderful collaboration!

9 CARTUCHOS
– Paper Bag Stories From Cuba

The paper bag is a deceptively simple object, often overlooked, seldom admired. It nevertheless can tell manifold  stories spanning from early industrialization, to late modernist consumer society up to the most recent global trade wars.  Especially in the Cuban context, with its own economic model, the blockade of the US and the collapse of the Eastern bloc the simple paper bag can be a great interrogator of histories, politics, economics and, conflicts of a global scale. In Cuba paper bags mean both past and the future: paper bags were changed into plastic bags when the Soviet Union collapsed, so for many people they are nostalgic objects.

We commissioned local professional writers and thinkers to write a speech about Cuba from their particular point of view – using a paper bag as a reference point. An edition of 7 paper bags with excerpts of each of the 7 speeches  printed on the bags in total 100.000 bags.  The bags are distributed over the period of the biennial to vegetable markets and small grocery stores around Havana to be given out to people. Thus the artwork is slowly distributed to many households of the city over the period of the biennial.  The speeches at whole can be listened at the Havana biennale exhibition

101 kaikkien puolesta on julkaistu myös verkossa! https://satayksi.fi

101 For all is now online. It is first only in Finnish, but later on we will add English subtitles.

Imagine a Finland of 100 inhabitants: 51 of them would be women, 13 would be over 70 years old, one would be from Asia and one would hold a Ph.D. 101 For All put it’s focus at the people hidden inside statistics – and to the stories behind their opinions.

In 2015 we visited one hundred homes around Finland and interviewed people about their personal relationship with 30 topics that tend to divide opinions. The 100 interviewees formed a cross-section of the Finnish population in terms of gender, age, region, education, level of income, country of origin and mother tongue.

Why do we think like we think? The interviewees tried to pinpoint experiences and influences that play a role on how their opinions were shaped. Their 1900 responses fed into an interactive video-installation first shown in Helsinki Art Hall in 2015.

The Finnish Cultural Foundation supported the exhibition in Helsinki Art Hall and the publishing of the work online in 2019. Even 92 of 100 participants allowed their interviews to be used also in the online version of the art piece. The photo is from the installation in Helsinki Art Hall.

Archipelago Science Fiction will be part of  Making Worlds at Zentrum für Teoretische Peripherie, Berlin. The event includes screenings and performances from artists Monika Czyżyk | Henna-Riikka Halonen | Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta | Tuomas A. Laitinen | Bjørn Melhus| Almagul Menlibayeva | Jaakko Pallasvuo | Ming Wong and conversations facilitated by curator Isabel de Sena.

The huge work of translating 101 For All  in English  is done! Thank you Laura Hilska for the crazy translating the work, which has 65 hours of video material! We are very happy to have the work passing the borders of Finland already in spring 2019: We´ll show it at  Stadtgallerie Kiel as part of An Der Nordkante -exhibition.