CONTACTS  20 Years of Pixelache
Saturday 3. December 2022
Symposium 10:00-17:30
Kiasma Teatteri (Theatre)
Helsinki
Free entrance

CONTACTS is a transnational symposium that weaves sociocultural issues that are facing our contemporary times. The symposium opens a public sphere for critical dialogue on communal survival and cohabitation, and will unfold a series of presentations, film screenings & an open-mic closing session.
 

Contacts are fundamental life forms such as gathering, confronting, and sharing. Transversal solidarity, interdependence and mutual support are potential tactics to reveal and confront silenced structural oppressions such as racism, classism, nationalism, authoritarianism, and patriarchy. 
 

Pixelache organizes this symposium as a way to celebrate and reflect on 20 years of existence as a cultural association. Over this period of time Pixelache has been emerging from digital subcultures to engaging participatory platforms, from DIY to Doing-It-Together, activating and creating through its increasingly postnational community and network of artists, designers, cultural producers, thinkers, and activists. 

 

Participants

Juha Huuskonen
Z. Blace
Minna Henriksson
Giovanna Esposito Yussif
Alice Mutoni (Ubuntu Film Club)
Paula Pin
Marc Dusseiller
Eeva Berglund
Kisito Assangni
further participants to be announced

 

Symposium Program
 

10:15  Introduction & moderation by Andrew Gryf Paterson
10:20  A Rather Nostalgic Slideshow: Some reflections on the intermingling of what and how in the early electronic art scene - talk, Juha Huuskonen
10:50  noGLAMore - recorded talk & live questions online, Z. Blace 

11:20  Introduction & moderation by Soko Hwang
11:25  Dangerous and Endangered Archives - performative talk, Minna Henriksson

12:00-12:40  Lunch break

12:40  Nucleus of the Great Union - screening, The Otolith Group
13:15  On Non-Dominant Praxes and Epistemologies in Resistance - talk,  Giovanna Esposito Yussif
13:45  Tepantar (Horizon) - screening, Pierre Michelon

14:20 Break

14:30  Introduction & moderation by Irina Mutt
14:35  Ubuntu Film club's Alice Mutoni presents 'The Night Thief', 
            'We don't celebrate Christmas’ - screening   Written and directed by Khadar Ayderus Ahmed
15:15   Biotranslab entanglements through transhackfeminist practice - talk,  Paula Pin
15:45  Transplant - screening, Quimera Rosa

16:05 Break

16:15 Introduction & moderation by Andrew Gryf Paterson 
16:20 Oh GOSH! Reflecting on Hackteria's Collaborative Practices in a Global Do-It-With-Others Context - talk,  Marc Dusseiller
16:50 Activist art and changing academic responsibilities - talk, Eeva Berglund
17:20 Open-mic for Pixelache members & audience

17:45 End of symposium

In Kiasma Teatteri foyer 

10:00-18:00  Another Story - video presentation & essay text,  Kisito Assangni

Facebook event to stay updated

 

Team

Curators:  Soko Hwang, Irina Mutt, Andrew Gryf Paterson
Producer:  Arlene Tucker
Communication Manager:  Mathilde Palenius
Graphic design:  Soko Hwang
Financial Administrator:  Raisa Veikkola
 

Contribution

Host:  Pixelache Helsinki
Co-operation:  Kiasma Teatteri (Theatre)
Support:  Arts Promotion Centre Taike, City of Helsinki, Wikimedia Foundation (rapid fund), Pro-Helvetia. Sons of lumiere.
 

#Pixelache2022 #pixelache20 #20YearsOfPixelache 
#ContactsPixelache
#LookingForwardsLookingBackwards

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Biographies

Juha Huuskonen is one of the initiators of Pixelache and was the Programme Director between 2002-2011. Since 2014 he has been the Director of HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme (www.hiap.fi). He has also worked as an independent artist, curator, organiser and software designer (archive at www.juhuu.nu).

Z. Blace (b. 1976 Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) works as artivist and Wikimedian committed to open, participatory and sustainable technology and media, but also queer situated knowledge and alike efforts, that can help inform, inspire and emancipate under-represented. Z. has focus and interest in research and deployment as creative and critical practitioner in arts, culture, activism often focused on infrastructure, organizational and communication/ collaboration methods, forms and formats. Z. was the co-founder of Multimedia Institute/MaMa in Zagreb and first Wikimedia-in-Residence in Croatia. https://monoskop.org/Z._Blace

Minna Henriksson is a visual artist working with a disparate range of tools including text, drawing, painting and linocut. Henriksson’s work relates to leftist, anti-racist and feminist struggles, and aim at highlighting positions of power and oppression. The works are based on research and often draw from real historical events. Formal solutions and considerations of representation are an important part of the artwork. In 2017 Henriksson was awarded with the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Award of artistic work committed to the ideal of democracy and antifascism. http://minnahenriksson.com/ 

Giovanna Esposito Yussif engages with curatorial praxis and research. Her background is in art history, museology, and critical theory. Giovanna has a long-standing commitment to nondominant praxes, dissentient imaginations, and epistemologies in resistance. In 2019 she curated the Pavilion of Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale with the Miracle Workers Collective. She is currently artistic director of Museum of Impossible Forms -MIF, co-artistic director of Drifts Festival, curator for M_itä biennale 2023, and co-curator for Helsinki Biennale 2023 with MIF.

Ubuntu Film Club is a collective based in Helsinki and formed by Alice Mutoni, Rewina Teklai, and Fiona Musanga. With the motto ''Expanding narratives, with a twist of fun, one film at a time'' Ubuntu film club has been organizing screenings, panel discussions and workshops in cinema theaters, museums and film festivals. Aiming for a more community driven city for everyone, Ubuntu Film Club generates a necessary and important context for BIPOC, migrant and African diaspora youngsters as well. https://www.instagram.com/ubuntufilmclub/ 

Paula Pin is a researcher and activist which has a strong inclination towards research and experimentation processes with collective and free technologies. Taking the practice of noise as a disturbance into the social construction of gender, she co-creates with Maria Mitsopolu the transfeminist group Transnoise in 2012. In the last years she has been developing an interest in DIY-DIWO technologies, hacking and hardware electronics. She is co-founder of Pechblenda, a trans-hack-feminist electronics laboratory. Her active participation in the lab Pechblenda and Transnoise, opened the opportunity to collaborate with the biohacking network of Hackteria. She has also been designing and fabricating devices for a Mobile Lab Biotranslab, that are used for autonomous gynecology practices and investigation.

Quimera Rosa [Pink Chimera] is a lab that researches and experiments on body, technology and identities. Our aim is to develop practices able to produce non-natural cyborg identities from a transdisciplinary perspective. Our work is based on the deconstruction of sex and gender identities as well as in the interaction body/machine/environment. Our performances present hybrid beings, chimeras, where the production of the subjectivity is the result of a prosthetic incorporation. Particularly interested in the articulation between art, science and technology and their functions in the production of subjectivities, our work is currently focused on the creation of transdisciplinary projects and performances, the elaboration of electronic devices that work with body practices, and bio-hacking experiments. Most of our work is done in a collaborative manner and always free of patents and proprietary codes. It has been presented in streets, contemporary art centers, bars, galleries, universities, concert halls, colleges, discos, museums, squats, festivals and national scenes.

Marc Dusseiller aka dusjagr is a nomadic researcher and workshopologist. He is part of the Center for Alternative Coconut Research and co-founder of SGMK , Bitwäscherei and the Hackteria network . He loves making DIWO laboratories for creative biological experimentation and works in an integral way, combining science, art and education. He has worked as guest faculty lecturer and mentor at various schools, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore (IN), UCSB (USA) and in Switzerland, FHNW, HEAD, HSLU, ETHZ. He lives and works in Zürich, Yogyakarta and Taipei. He also loves coconuts. www.hackteria.org/wiki/Dusjagr 

Eeva Berglund teaches and writes on issues to do with society and the environment, particularly on grassroots urbanism, environmental social movements and transformations in notions of expertise, whilst occasionally participating in and persistently trying to better understand activism. She has a doctorate in social anthropology and an MSc in urban planning, both from the UK. She is currently Adjunct professor of environmental policy, Department of Design at Aalto University, and university researcher at the University of Oulu in Cultural Anthropology, both part-time. www.aalto.fi/fi/ihmiset/eeva-berglund 

Kisito Assangni is a Togolese-French curator and consultant who studied museology at Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Currently living between UK, France and Togo, his research interests gravitate towards the cultural impact of globalisation, psychogeography and critical education. He investigates the modes of cultural production that combine theory and practice. His discursive projects have been shown internationally, including the Venice Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, Whitechapel Gallery London, Centre of Contemporary Art Glasgow, Malmö Konsthall Sweden, Torrance Art Museum Los Angeles, Es Baluard Museum of Art Palma, and National Centre for Contemporary Arts Moscow among others. Assangni is a contributing editor at Arshake and serves as advisor to apexart New York.