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

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 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://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Zblace 

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.

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. https://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. https://www.aalto.fi/fi/ihmiset/eeva-berglund 

Kisito Assangni is a Togolese-French curator, art consultant, and farmer who studied museology at Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Currently living between UK, France and Togo, his research focuses primarily on psychogeography and the cultural impact of globalisation. His discursive public programs and exhibitions have been shown internationally, including the Venice Biennale; ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Centre of Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Malmo Konsthall, Sweden; Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles; Es Baluard Museum of Art, Palma, Spain; National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow; Marrakech Biennale among others. Assangni is the founder of TIME is Love Screening (International video art program) and art advisor for Latrobe Regional Gallery in Victoria, Australia.

Further participants to be announced.

Full Symposium Program on the event page 

Pre-register to the event by clicking here
 

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