This is the exhibition opening for 'Muistakaa Espanjaa' by Amanda Vähämäki, opening as part of the 2010 Helsinki comics festival.  The exhibition will be on display through 15 September.

This performative event will present the work of four diverse artists from Dartington College of Arts: Cara Davies, Gillian Wylde, Ria Jade Hartley, Worst Wurst, and Samuel Rodgers. Visiting Helsinki for two weeks to work in collaboration with the Theatre Academy, the presenting artists will deliver varied presentations about their work. Presentation form will potentially include a book reading, a game, a score, a performance, a talk, cyberspace interaction, and general discussion.

Cara Davies is a performance artist and digital archivist, working with the mediums of dance, video editing, performance art, multi-media installation, documentation, archives and conceptual research. Interweaving a professional practice with a focus on practice-led research Cara completed her undergraduate studies in Dance and Performing Arts at Chichester University. After working with the University's Digital Archive for Research in the Visual and Performing Arts she has maintained an interdisciplinary connection between her role as a documenter and performer collaborating with a variety of choreographers, musicians, archivists and performance artists.Cara is a founding member of international collective Galloping Guineapigs and has been awarded the Ferdynand Zweigg Memorial Scholarship. Most recently Cara has worked for the documentation team at Marina Abramovic Symposium's 'The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow' (Jan 2010), performed with the Sardinian-based collective Carovana (summer 2009- spring 2010) and presented at the Inter-auto-prese-turbance-docu-formativty festival at the Theatre Academy Helsinki (2009) and Exeter University Intermedia Centre's symposium 'Performing Presence: from the live to the simulated' (2009).For this presentation night at Ptarmigan Cara will present Windmills of your Mind Flux Game which is a performative presentation attempting to articulate that which does not have an ending or beginning. It is part of the research series: Tantamount tothe Selfsame Difference. www.caradavies.blogspot.com

Gillian Wylde is an artist making things on her own and sometimes with others. Video-performance activities respond to particularities and specifics of a site & place, context & people, ‘people, people who need people, are very special people’. Central within these processes of response are properties of the pathetic or shoddy, ‘traumedy’, instances of featurelessness, nowotony and/or petty conjectures of the queer.
Critical investigations of ‘agency’; forms of energy (such as mechanical, electrical, or chemical energy) in relation to the video camera, the body (human or animal) and object or thing, are constants through most of the work like maybe a savage smell or hairy logic.
www.15minuteswithyou.org.uk/site/gillian_wylde_.html

WORST WURST presents: ALIEN KIOSK
Benedictine Curtain will briefly talk about her project ALIEN KIOSK. ALIEN KIOSK was a pile of banana boxes (many banana boxes!) on a ply board with wheels, that temporarily formed an excessive, over-straining, hyperactive cell, displaying all-no-any-anti-anti-anti-insider-&-outsider-cross-multi-sub-under-para art and art. ALIEN KIOSK was a one-woman's artists’ initiative by Benedictine Curtain, inviting everybody without a club card to join the party and/or show work. Dickheads, art wankers and misogynist hero revolutionaries were strictly excluded. ALIEN KIOSK was a cake-and-beer picnic for art lovers by art lovers. It took place at Dartington College of Arts, at an event called ALIEN SÉANCE in a village hall on the english countryside and most recently at supernormal festival, UK.

Benedictine Curtain is Boris Becker’s first girlfriend in 1986 (yeeeeeeeessssss, the german tennis player). Her dad is the chief of police in the tiny little country of Monaco.

Ria Jade Hartley is currently completing her MA in Visual Performance: Time Based Practices at Dartington College of Arts, UK. Her practice stems from a performance background, during which time her work has focused on interaction, participation, communication and exchange. Working within the mediums of performance, live art, video, photography, installation and social practices, her work investigates the relationships between audience/performer, space and situation. Her processes offer to engage anyone meaningfully, questioning human relationships as a model of an artwork. 
Where does it begin? Ultimately it’s about communication. Its open ended. It requires your participation. The screen is site. The content is unknown. You are witness, audience, participant, performer. The content is built through interactive engagement. There is dialogue. There is image. There is a system. There is remote participation. There is a connection to physical space. There is a process. There is a relationship between physical and virtual space. There is a relationship between artist, audience, artwork and context. 
BLOGSPOT and YOUTUBE

Samuel Rodgers is a sound-oriented artist and improviser/composer. Time is given to exploring acoustic phenomena, and developing physical/tactile relationships to sounding objects and spaces. Sound recording and reproduction are key in the articulation of these spatial relationships. Samuel has ongoing collaborations with sculptor Stephen Cornford, artist Rob Gawthrop and sonic artist Jack Harris, and is currently completing an MA in Time-based Art Practices at Dartington College of Arts, researching interfacing between live event and recorded artefact.

DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE (BEL)
VOM GRILL (BEL)
TEEMU MANNINEN
PEKKO KÄPPI
JARSE

+ DJ JOHN FAIL + DJ TBC

Klo 16-22 Liput 8e / 6e Mental Alaskan jäsenille

Neljäs vuosittainen LAL LAL LAL-festivaali lähestyy! Tällä kertaa tapahtuma on kaksipäiväinen. Kotimaisten nimien lisäksi festivaaleille saapuu kolme belgialaista ja yksi yhdysvaltalainen artisti.

Lauantain konsertin pääesiintyjä DUCKTAILS on yhtä kuin yhdysvaltalainen "international playboy" Matt Mondanile.
MM on monille tuttu myös indieihme Real Estaten riveistä. Ducktailsin musiikki on trooppisen sumeaa, lähes nestemäistä. Ducktails on niputettu osaksi "hypnagogista" genreä mm. The Skatersin kanssa. Havaijipaidat valmiiksi!

Sunnuntain klubilla esiintyvä belgialainen DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE puolestaan lähestyy tyylipuhdasta new age-musiikkia. DITF on vuosikausia hyperaktiivisesti musiikkia tehneen ja julkaisseen Lieven Martensin pitkäikäisin projekti, jonka myötä hän on sukeltanut yhä syvemmälle delfiinien ja valaiden maailmaan.

Kolmas belgialainen vieras on improvisoidun ja kokeellisen musiikin kauhukakara, monitaiteilija Dennis Tyfus.
Tyfuksen tuotanto on hämmentävän laaja. Vuosikaudet hän on julkaissut musiikkia Ultra Eczema-levymerkillään, suunnitellut ja silkkipainanut levynkansia ja julisteita itselleen ja muille, järjestänyt konsertteja Antwerpenissä sekä ylipäänsä herättänyt yleistä pahennusta eri puolilla maailmaa. Viime aikoina Tyfus on alkanut esiintyä soolona VOM GRILL-nimen alla. Enimmäkseen ihmisäänellä leikkivä VG voi tarjota livetilanteessa mitä tahansa, mikään rima ei ole Tyfukselle tarpeeksi matala.

PEKKO KÄPPI on jouhikonsoittaja ja etnomusikologi. Käpin musiikissa yhdistyvät perinnetietoinen soittotaito ja innokas kokeellisuus. Hän on myös mainio tarinankertoja, joka aina avaa numeroidensa kiehtovat taustat. Käppi löytää jouhikostaan aina uusia ulottuvuuksia. Viimeisimmällä levyllään "Vuonna 86" hänen jouhikkonsa raaka särösointi luo mielikuvia arkaaisesta noisesta.

JARSE on tuttu analogisyntetisaattoribändi Shogun Kunitokin riveistä. Myös hänen soolotuotantonsa on hatunnosto elektronisen musiikin pioneereille. Jarsen musiikissa on kaikuja mm. Terry Rileyn hypnoottisista ja intiimeistä pulputuksista ja Delia Derbyshiren kiehtovista elektronisista miniatyyreista. Jarse ei kuitenkaan jää imitoimaan mennyttä, vaan tempaa mukaansa olohuonepsykedelian miellyttävään mutta arvaamattomaan maailmaan.

Runoilija TEEMU MANNINEN oksentaa suuhunsa pienen vaaleanpunaisen mustekalan, kasan kvanttimekaanisia bikineitä ja kukkivan palasen Ben Affleckin jauhettua sydäntä.

Gail Priest is an Australian sound artist. Her practice involves
sound design/composition for performance, installation
and live laptop-based exploratory music. She is also a curator, writer and commentator on sound and new media arts.

more information and music at http://www.gailpriest.net/

We are proud to host this landmark event in science, technology and future happiness.  Beyond our Vision presents key developments in technology by true visionaries of our time.  More information about the schedule and presentations will be added here.

Presenters include:

Lisa Erdman
Ville Antero Hietela
Mari Keski-korsu
Eden St James
Steven Fraser
Sigbjørn Bratlie

This advancement towards our bright future was realised in part through the generous assistance of Central Station

This is the exhibition opening for 'Muistakaa Espanjaa' by Amanda Vähämäki, opening as part of the 2010 Helsinki comics festival.  The exhibition will be on display through 15 September.

September's Labyrinths and Rings series brings together two American artists working on opposite coasts.

Andrea Zalewski is an architect and researcher from New York. She is one of the three authors of the short film Cities of Preferences, produced for Rotterdam Architecture Biennale 2009. Cities of Preferences is a short documentary film (18 min) that addresses the spatial organization of communities within the modern city, and presents the neighborhood segregation model developed by Thomas Schelling, a 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics. In addition, the documentary illustrates some of the culturally rich enclaves found across the boroughs of New York City to reflect upon the positive and negative aspects of segregation and congregation and how designers might engage with this phenomenon. The film premiered at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam in 2009 and at Studio-X in New York City in 2010.

We will be screening Cities of Preferences with Andrea Zalewski present, to be followed by a discussion of the film and its themes.

Mack Cole-Edelsack is the Executive Director of The Pedalto Institution for Incorporated Art.  He is also an architect, artist, critic and bureaucrat based in Los Angeles, California. He will give a presentation on the Pedalto Institution and its recent Delegation & Fact-Finding Mission to Tallinn, Estonia. In addition, Mr. Cole-Edelsack will field questions on a variety of matters, regardless of his level of familiarity or expertise.

This is the closing event for Jonna Karanka's 'Shine Shrine' exhibition.

"I wrote a letter to Madonna when I was nine years old. I had read from Suosikki that she's going to quit her music career and concentrate on acting. I was paralyzed - Like a Virgin was my first ever LP, and I got Desperately Seeking Susan t-shirt as a birthday gift when I turned eight years old." -- Jonna Karanka

Shine Shrine is an exhibition project that tracks down traces of fanism and contemplates the nomadic side of touring and making music. Unseen video material will be provided.

music from Boom Edan: Hyväntuulista noisea oudoksumisen tunteesta Skotlantilaistuneelta Keravalaiselta.

A multimedia mobile phone is becoming the foremost social media tool to capture personal documentary content about almost anything that captures one's interest and can be shared with friends, family and the public. In this multimedia event, examples will be shown of content that has been primarily captured by a multimedia mobile phone and shared online. Examples include digital stories that reflect multicultural activities up and down in Finland. Some of the stories have be sourced from the Net, some of them were created by the presenter and some of them were produced by twelve year olds that reside in Tampere. These youngsters produced these stories as part of an EU funded project - the Mobile Literacy Programme (MobiLeap). The event will be accompanied by music DJ'd by Chivhanga.

More info about MobiLeap: http://mlab.taik.fi/mobileap/

Ptarmigan's Labyrinths and Rings series continues in August with Giles Bailey and Caleb Waldorf, presenting at Labyrinths and Rings on the 11th and both performing at Ptarmigan on the 12th.

Giles Bailey was born in York (UK) in 1981. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art, The Royal College of Art and is now enrolled in the Master of Fine Art programme at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.

Working largely in performance his research is concerned with construction of text through collisions of sources. He explores the possibility of the script as a site for collaged material drawn from the various mediations of theatrical, literary or cinematic events. Through the re-articulation of a documentary image, close scrutiny of speculative moments in nascent cinema or positioning of biographical footnotes he proposes terms that address and problematise the roles of performer and audience.

He has recently produced issue 12 of Achim Lengerer’s discursive publishing platform Scriptings and contributed texts to the journal Gnommero and Stealing one Thought out of the Other by Matthias Meyer. He was a member of the independent music and art collectives Nuts and Seeds and Circus Circus and from 2006 - 2008 was on the committee of Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (UK). 

Caleb Waldorf is an artist currently living in Los Angeles, California. Since 2008 he has served on the committee for The Public School, an open framework for pedagogy started in  Los Angeles by Telic Arts Exchange. He is the Co-editor of an online journal for short-form writing and media work called Version. In 2007 he co-founded and is currently the Creative Director of the magazine Triple Canopy. Most recently, he has started a research collective called Third Rail. Caleb received his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego in 2007.

Gareth Hayes will again be DJing, delivering a set of psychedelic music while refreshments will be served.

Toisin kuin metsäluontomme, sitä käsittelevä kuvasto on monimuotoistunut median digitalisoituessa. Sosiaalisen median aikana tapamme viestiä metsästä toisillemme on muuttunut blogien, foorumeiden sekä kuva- ja videopalveluiden alkaessa kilpailla samasta elintilasta perinteisen viestinnän rinnalla. Uusi metsäaiheinen viestintä on erottamattomassa suhteessa uusiin tapoihimme olla vuorovaikutuksessa metsään. Jos haluamme kohti ekologisempaa metsäsuhdetta, minkä tyyppistä viestintää ja kuvastoa meidän olisi suosittava? Entä mikä olisi se median vieraslajisto, joka meidän kenties pitäisi kitkeä mediamaisemastamme? Forest 2.0 -näytöksessä tarkastelemme verkossa leviävää uutta metsäkuvastoa, jota tuottavat yllättävän moninaiset toimijat. Illan päätteeksi videoraati palkitsee kaikkien aikojen parhaimman ja huonoimman metsäaktivistivideon.

Tapahtuman järjestää Pispalan nykytaiteen keskus Hirvitalo. www.hirvikatu10.net

Labyrinths and Rings with Ellen Friis(DK) and Henrik Vestergaard Friis(DK)

Ptarmigan presents the first of it's Labyrinths and Rings programme -  an ongoing series where creative practitioners (artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, or anything else) present their work and engage in a discussion with the audience.

The artists presenting are Ellen Friis and Henrik Friis.  There will also be local djs and themed food and drink (more details to come)

Ellen Friis (1973, Denmark) studied "interdisciplinary art in the public space" at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee, exchanged 2002-2003 to to the Turku Arts academy, interdisciplinary art study, "Crossing Borders". Now living in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Investigating topics of time, such as slow motion, backward motion and quantum mechanics in performances and videos shown at various festivals and events in Scandinavia, Poland and Germany. Coming up this fall 2010: Participation in ELLEN by Hotel Pro Forma, a site specific piece where all actors carry the name Ellen. Is now initiating a danish forum "Samtalekøkkenet" for discussions about art, practice and performativity - starting this fall in Copenhagen with 6 foreign and 6 danish artists.

Henrik Friis
Born 1971 in Aalborg, Denmark and holds an MA in Theatre Science from the University of Copenhagen and from the Free University in Berlin.

In Denmark he has worked with Kanonhallen, Erik Pold and in Norway with Balteatret and Verk Production. In 1999 moved he to Berlin, where he has lived and worked since, mainly with artists from Applied Theatre Science in Giessen: Otmar Wagner, Florian Feigl, Dariusz Kostyra, Nino Sandow, Jörn J. Burmester and the groups Elizalde Area Code and Keifer.

 In 2001, he established his own label Zarathustras Onkel in order to do Relationel Theatre. Zarathustras Onkels performances We Come in Peace and Gerüstbauficken has toured quite a lot the last years. Furthermore he has edited an anthology, several articles, and worked as a curator.

Henrik will preent his latest work. Zarathustras Uncle's reconstruction of the danisch Culture Canon. www.zonkel.com for more info.

Olympia Splendit is a guitar-bass-guitar trio by Heta, Katri and Jonna.
They play blues influenced stonerhenge with some occasional shrieking.

Cleavage is a duo by Tuukka and Joonas. They play lofi beats adjusted
with comfy noise bulk.

http://www.myspace.com/cleavagecleavage

Join us for the opening of 'Fragment #6'.  This is part of Kuebel's ongoing 'Somnambulia Stories' series.

Exhibition: 15.06. – 22.06. 2010 open Tuesday to Saturday 12.00-17.30

Satakieli-installaatiotaan varten Eronen imitoi kotikutoisen elektroniikan avulla sataa eri Suomen lintua. Nämä synteettiset linnunlaulut on nauhoitettu 50 kasetin sadalle puoliskolle. Installaatiossa kasetit soivat samanaikaisesti.

Curated by Sari TM Kivinen.

Identity construction within popular culture, artistic practices and the everyday.

Description: This event will look at clips that highlight ways in which imitation occurs within popular culture, artistic practices and in everyday life. Posing the question of who is copying whom this presentation will contemplate ideas surrounding identity authorship as well as consider the various levels of parody evident in the selected clips shown. Consideration will be given to ways in which various cultures parody each other’s dominant strands of popular culture and how this can form parodist hybrids. For example artists such as the Motel Sisters from Australia will be considered for their imitation of the American heiress Paris Hilton, the work of the Motel Sisters readily available online as an example of manipulating (via parody) the so called original.

Kivinen is a performance artist from Sydney, Australia currently based in Helsinki whilst completing an MA in Live Art and Performance Studies at the Theatre Academy. Her work explores elements of fiction, reality, imitation and performativity. 

Opening night of the exhibition of work culminated from the previous week's events. This will include new drawings by Malcy Duff alongside some of his past work relating to the theme of "You're A Winner."

Team Usurper, from the workshop on Wednesday, will perform as well as Helsinki's own Reijo Pami.

Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff will jam in the studio space for the duration of this day. People are welcome to come and look at them, cheer and boo.

We've moved around some of the events this week so please check out the new plan -

Now, on Friday evening:

Usurper (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Dismantled instruments, broken objects, and junk-as-aesthetic sound interplay. 

Kuupuu
Helsinki's own Jonna Karanka, a warmup show before her Greek tour!

and individual activities by Usurper members:

Malcy Duff: The Knuckleball
A routine, and a selection of readings from comix and images by Malcy Duff.

Ali Robertson
Ali will provide a motivational speech to the audience.

Music will start at 20:28 sharp! The usual sushi/refreshments will be available. Admission is free!

Comic Workshop (The Dog Walking Technique)
klo 10- 12
A character based comic book workshop hosted and designed by Malcy Duff. Participants will be invited to create characters through unique drawing techniques, and explore further possibilities in character development using a method invented by Malcy Duff.

Team Usurper workshop
klo 14-19
You are invited to join Usurper (Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff) in a workshop of dismantling instruments and improvising. Participants will play a show as part of the workshop on May 9th. Please bring an instrument you are willing to dismantle.