Summer 2006

ART WORKERS in RESIDENCE at NIFCA in HELSINKI


NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art is honored to host in residence at Suomenlinna:


Michael Baers, USA (19 June-17 July)
Maria Finn, Copenhagen, Denmark (June-July)
Alissa Firth-Eagland, Toronto, Canada (17 May-16 July)
Ilya Gapanov, St. Petersburg, Russia (10 June-6 July)
Michelle Kasprzak, Edinburgh, UK (1-17 June)
Ray Langenbach, USA/Malaysia (13 July-10 August)
Igor Lebedev, St. Petersburg, Russia (July-9 August)
Randa Mirza, Beirut, Lebanon (10 June-10 August)
Vesna Pavlovic, New York, US (June)
Kai Syng Tan, Singapore (30 June-21 July)
Jiang Zhi, Beijing/Shenzhen, China (11 July-10 August)</black>





Michael Baers (USA)
In residence at NIFCA (19 June-17 July)

Michael Baers works with publications and related forms, most commonly using combined drawings and text. His work encompasses a wide range interest, from film to architecture to history to art theory and philosophy. What his disparate projects share is an interest in criticality and a commitment to pushing the boundaries of the discursive in art. During his stay in Helsinki, he plans to complete a project on the Copenhagen alternative community, Christiania, as well as work on an upcoming exhibition he is curating at Sparwasser HQ in Berlin.

Studio Johan Tobias, tel. (+358 9) 668 255
m_baers () hotmail.com


Maria Finn (Copenhagen, DK)
In residence at NIFCA through the Nordic AiR program (June-July)

The residency at Suomenlinna will be used for the project "The Summer after Monika", based on the film "The Summer with Monika" by Ingmar Bergman from 1952, from a script co-written with Per Anders Fogelström who also wrote the book. The title refers to the fact that it's a film after a book, which now is used as the basis for a new work. But the title also refers to what happens when you reset the film to a contemporary context. By doing so, the work becomes a reflection of what has happened with the issues raised by the film at its conception. The film will be reset to Helsinki and a remote island in the Finnish archipelago. A young woman and man will be re-photographed in scenes from the film, and some of these will be transferred to drawings. Photographs and drawings will be shown together in a slide series, a narrative structure similar to film but without a start and end. “The Summer after Monika" is my subjective experience of the film, emphasizing what I have found interesting. By focusing on the surrounding landscape, individual destinies are put in a broader context, reminding us how society shapes us as individuals.

Studio Elias, tel. (+358 9) 668 411
maria () mariafinn.dk


Alissa Firth-Eagland (Toronto, CA)
Research Residency at NIFCA (17 May-19 July)

Artist-curator Alissa Firth-Eagland produces events, curates exhibitions and creates programs of performance and video. Her projects forefront experimental approaches, such as commissioning cross-disciplinary partnerships between participants. She has undertaken projects in the Toronto, Ontario and Banff, Alberta arts communities: collaborative projects, publications, multiple location exhibitions, and interventions in public spaces. Alissa has coordinated projects for the TRANZ-TECH 2003 Toronto International Media Art Biennial, Cultural Human Resources Canada, the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre, the first annual Toronto Alternative Arts Fair International 2004, YYZ Artists Outlet (Toronto), Fado Performance Inc., and The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Her exhibition for the 2004 Junction Arts Festival, Sorry for the Inconvenience, was nominated Best Curated Exhibition at the Toronto Untitled Art Awards. Most recently, she has been awarded an Ontario Arts Council Chalmers Fellowship for six months of independent curatorial research. During her time at NIFCA, Alissa is looking closely at the practices of Nordic new media artists for an exhibition of Canadian and Nordic artists who are using the video medium in ways that are located outside the formal single-channel screening or festival context. She is hoping to commission new works that defy categories of video, animation, installation, intervention, and performance.

Guest Room Heikki, tel. +358 (0)45 – 657 7422 (gsm)
alissafe () gmail.com


Ilya Gapanov (St. Petersburg, RU)
In residence at NIFCA through an exchange with the Pro Arte Institute in St. Petersburg, RU (10 June-6 July)

In my work, I deal with memory and nationality. I use cultural signs and motifs typical for contemporary civilization. By mixing contexts, I come to new meanings and readings. For me the Suomenlinna island is a historic and cultural center, a retainer for sources of different legends. My interest is focused on the historic and geographical context. I try to give form to a spiritual basis, which connects Russian and Finnish culture.

Studio Carl August, tel. (+358 9) 668 356
igaponov () mail.ru


Michelle Kasprzak (Edinburgh, UK)
Research Residency at NIFCA (1-17 June)

Michelle Kasprzak is an artist, writer and curator. Since winning the InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre Emerging Electronic Artist award in her early career, Michelle has proceeded to exhibit her work across North America and Europe. Michelle's writing has been published in magazines such as Mute, Spacing, Broken Pencil, and Public. Her recent curatorial projects include an online exhibition produced with Virtual Museums of Canada and Gallery TPW, and a year-long programme of video art on a public video billboard in Toronto, Canada with Year Zero One. She is currently based in Edinburgh, UK, and is the Programmes Director of New Media Scotland. She maintains a web presence at http://michelle.kasprzak.ca.

Guest Room Nina, tel. +358 (0)45 – 657 7423 (gsm)
michelle () kasprzak.ca


Ray Langenbach (USA/Malaysia)
Research Residency at NIFCA (13 July-10 August)

Ray Langenbach (USA/Malaysia) is an artist, writer, and curator generally working in performative propaganda. He lives in Kuala Lumpur where he serves as Head of Media, School of Performance + Media, Sunway University College. Recently his work has focused on the uncanny appearances of Social Realism and Socialist Realism in Singapore social ritual and art. This residency is focused on a research project entitled Lenin's Face, which entails identifying remnants of Socialist Realism in Finnish modernist and contemporary art. Subsequently, the research will lead to an exhibition and/or conference addressing the nuances and implications of this globalized aesthetic-cum-ideology in contemporary Nordic and Southeast Asian cultures.

Guest Room Nina, tel. +358 (0)449-326 178 (gsm)
raylangenbach ( ) mac.com


Igor Lebedev (St. Petersburg, RU)
In residence at NIFCA through an exchange with NCCA, St. Petersburg Brach of National Centre for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia (July-9 August)

Igor Lebedev (b. 1966 in Leningrad) works with photography, objects, installations. He has had 25 personal exhibitions, participated in more than 100 exhibitions in Russia, Germany, Finland, United Kingdom, USA, Japan. While staying in residency at NIFCA, Igor is going to make a project about those Russians, coming to Finland very often, to buy regularly consumer goods in middle lots to resell them in Russia. Also he wants to investigate how everyday cultural “rubbish”, one can find in the small private second-hand stores, becomes something like exhibits in a museum of everyday life. At last he is planning to create a photopanorama of Suomenlinna.

Studio Flat B 28, tel. +358 (0)9 686 43 228
Igorswan ( ) list.ru


Randa Mirza (Beirut, Lebanon)
In residence at NIFCA through the Global Perspectives residency exchange program in collaboration with Espace SD, Beirut, Lebanon (10 June-August)

Born in Beirut (Lebanon) 28 years ago - this is 2006.
I work with digital photography and live video editing.
My latest line of work is about postwar; what remains, transforms or changes, gets forgotten, or disappears after a war situation. Also, I am questioning the relation between war and tourism, developed and third world countries, in a capitalistic economic system.
www.randamirza.com

Studio Emanuel, tel. +358 (0)9 668 433
randamirza () yahoo.com


Vesna Pavlovic (New York, US)
In residence at NIFCA through the West Balkan AiR residency exchange program (June)

Photographic projects I have done so far have the anthropological approach in common, they analyze different cultures and their visual representations, or behavior of certain social groups. They also address the question of the audience, and the event, shifting those two positions. In my research I am also interested in how we experience history and the changes it brings to society and culture. Following those leads, my residency at Nifca, in Helsinki, will be an exploration of the city and the traces and imprints of various cultures it has.

The other ongoing series concentrates on the interaction between the performer and the audience, and uses stand-up comedy as a metaphor. In visiting the places where those acts happen, I consider myself a performer, with the camera, interacting with the space, while visualizing the friction and the tension that stays after the performance ends. The psychological space becomes the event, and brings all kinds of meanings. Apart from bringing the experiential of the photographic process into those images, and discussing the ways of viewing, this project also looks into stand-up comedy as a social practice and a commentary.
http://services.mi2.hr/gallery

Studio Augustin, tel. +358 (0)9 668 355
vp2136 () columbia.edu


Kai Syng Tan (Singapore)
Artist-in-residence at NIFCA through the Global Perspectives residency exchange program in collaboration with 72-13, Singapore (30 June-21 July)

Like a typical tourist she marvels and clicks with her camera at the stereotypical representations; as a consumer-archeologist she digs and scrapes and scavenges so as to swallow them all in a desperate attempt to make all the surrounding signs, information, noise her own; as a compulsive information-arranger and editor she attempts to digest, re-arrange, regurgitate - and re-imagine – these trophies and fragments of sounds, sights, experiences, notions... Several of visual artist Kai Syng TAN’s major blocks of works have been born of her responses to her environments and often times these are situations that are exotic, curious, cruel, clichéd, inane, or all of the above, all at the same time. Her residency in the Suomenlinna Islands will become a new travelogue of hers, and she intends to, she hopes will become the beginning of a new series of work!

Studio Augustin, tel. +358 (0)9 668 355
kaisyng ( ) yahoo.com


Jiang Zhi (Beijing/Shenzhen, China)
Artist-in-residence at NIFCA through the Global Perspectives residency exchange program in collaboration with Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China (11 July-10 August)

I was born in a small town named Yuanjiang, Hunan Province in 1971. I graduated from China Academy of Fine Art in 1995. It is an academy of strong experimental spirit. After graduation, I came to Beijing and started to write and published experimental stories. Since 1997, I have been devoted to photography, documentaries, feature films and experimental short videos. My representative works are: ”MuMu”(photography), “Sucker”(photography),
“Forefinger”(documentary), ”The moments”(documentary), “Our Love”(documentary & feature film), “Let there be light”(video & photography), etc. I also founded an artistic group and issued underground culture magazine. Now I am living and working in Beijing and Shenzhen, China. Recent exhibitions: 2005 / The 29th Hongkong International Film Festival; The 2nd Guangzhou Triennale of Art, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China. 2004 / Between Past and Future--New Photography and Video from China, ICP and Asia Society, New York, USA; Techniques of the Visible--Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China. 2003 / "Z.O.U - Zone of Urgency"--The 50th International Art Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; The 10th Biennial of Moving Images, Geneva, Switzerland 2002; Under Construction--New Dimensions of Asian Art, The Japan Foundation Forum/Tokyo Opera City Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; The 4th Gwangiu Biennale Exhibition, Gwangiu, South Korea.

For the residency program in Finland, I have a plan: Mu Mu in Finland (photography). Mu Mu series started in 1997, featuring a wooden doll wondering in different places. From 2002 onwards, Mu Mu became half doll-half human. Mu Mu series is a combination of personal imagination and reality. Mu Mu in Finland will try to view Finland from a special angle. I also have a video plan, but that has to wait until I arrived in this country and get inspiration there.

Studio Carl August, tel. (+358 9) 668 356
jiangzhistudio ( ) gmail.com



Address for the studios and guest rooms: Suomenlinna B 44, 00190 Helsinki, Finland
Address for Studio Flat B 28: Suomenlinna B 28, 00190 Helsinki, FInland

For further information please contact the art workers directly or project coordinator Mitro Kaurinkoski at NIFCA.