A series of soft gestures towards Hospitality
A series of soft gestures towards Hospitality
A non-performance curated by Museum of Impossible Forms, as part of ‘Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities’
Since its formation, the philosophy of Museum of Impossible Forms as a collective and as a space has been concerned with issues of community, sharing, collaboration and hospitality. What is meant by hospitality pragmatically can take many forms. Essentially hospitality involves ‘care’ as a central node in the m{if} scheme. This often means addressing often overlooked elements of practice such as thinking about creating a sustainable and welcoming environment at our events, including accessible facilities and food. The notion of care extends from these elemental aspects towards more complex issues of economics and labour politics. Museum of Impossible Forms is a free space with the mandate to make available our resources (archive, library, workshop) and expertise to the surrounding communities. Furthermore, we compensate invited guests, artists, curators and speakers to support the integrity and ethics of cultural labour which is all too often underpaid, and underappreciated.
Care and consciousness towards ethical labour practices also means that Museum of Impossible Forms is a safer space in more ways than one. Not only does m advocate for safer space in its usual articulations of “(a) a supportive, non-threatening environment that encourages open-mindedness, respect, a willingness to learn from others, as well as physical and mental safety; (b) a space that is critical of the power structures that affect our everyday lives, where power dynamics, backgrounds, and the effects of our behaviour on others are prioritized; and (c) a space that strives to respect and understand survivors’ specific needs” – it is also a space that specifically entangles different realities and experiences with collaboration, participation and a space for audience that is prompted by ideas of utopia and oppression, history and the future, borders, time, art and technology, and, more importantly, community. Live conversations, travelogues, discussion sessions and performances, and exhibitions of new and archival material interrogate our shared histories and forge new collaborations across time and space.
For Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities, Museum of Impossible Forms will non-perform ‘A series of soft gestures towards Hospitality’ These gestures will be the result of direct/indirect collaborations between Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Museum of Impossible Forms, nynnyt (consisting of Orlan Ohtonen and Selina Väliheikki), Asematila, Artist Collective Bread Omens (consisting of Jani Anders Purhonen and Elina Rantasuo), Heidi Hänninen, as well as other invited guests and participants from Kontula.
Gesture I: Rehearsing Dialogues
Frame Contemporary Art Finland
The First gesture of Hospitality is to invite and welcome people into one’s own space, of relinquishing agency and authorship
Museum of Impossible Forms welcomes and opens its doors to the organisers, invited speakers, and guests of Frame’s ‘Rehearsing Dialogues’, a series of conversations, discussions, presentations, and happenings performed daily.
Gesture II: How to work responsibly with Imperfect Tools
nynnyt
Devising together the tools required to counter Institutional Hegemony is the Second gesture of Hospitality
We will host nynnyt, a feminist collective duo consisting of Selina Väliheikki and Hanna Ohtonen, who will open the space through a workshop on ‘How to work responsibly with Imperfect Tools’. Through their talk, they will outline complexities within Finnish Contemporary Art spaces and the problematics within the Institutional spaces.
Gesture III: Bread Omens
Jani Anders Purhonen and Elina Rantasuo
The exploration of sustenance and sustainability is the Third gesture of Hospitality
Museum of Impossible Forms and Asematila present ‘Bread Archive’: a multi-sensory installation as a method to bridge two programs through epistemological knowledges, using bread and its histories within Finnish Cultural memories, within its contemporary fabric and the entanglements of purity, immigration, refuge, borderless-ness, community and participatory knowledge gathering.
Gesture IV: Bread Stories / Leipätarinoita
Heidi Hänninen and Museum of Impossible Forms
To participate with and involve those who live amongst us is the Fourth gesture of Hospitality
Along with community artist and activist Heidi Hänninen from Kontula Art School (KAS!), the project will work with sister institutions (D-Asema, Kontula Library, Luuppi – Kontula Youth Center ) within Kontula to host a series of workshops aimed for residents of Kontula.
We will discuss forms of thinking and molding experiences related to bread and hospitality in different cultures. Materials used will be dough clay made from flour, salt, and oil. The sculptures made with this can be fired on Saturday 10:00 – 13:30 as a part of Bread Omens.
All workshops free and open to public.
Gesture V: Bread Archive
Museum of Impossible Forms and Asematila
Producing and Transmitting Knowledge is The Fifth gesture of Hospitality
Museum of Impossible Forms and Asematila will conceive and present a ‘Bread Archive’, a multi-sensory installation as a method to bridge the two spaces through epistemological knowledges, in this case of bread and its histories within Finnish Cultural memories, within its contemporary fabric and the entanglements of purity, immigration, refuge, borderless-ness, community and participatory knowledge gathering.
Bread Archive and Bread Omens project will be introduced on wednesday afternoon 13:00 - 14:00, first at the Bread Archive at m and then at/around the oven in progress in front of Kontula Public library. Guests will be invited to walk with us to the oven location to continue the presentation/discussion. On Saturday 11:00 - 14:00 there will be a public firing of the oven.
The event is part of the Frame Contemporary Art Finland's public programme Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities, taking place in Helsinki, Finland, 9–14 September. It brings together local and international arts audiences for a week of interactions and dialogues.
Fore more information: https://frame-finland.fi/en/ohjelma/rehearsing-hospitalities/