Announcing the Participants Performance LAB 2020
OPEN CALL FOR AN OPEN CALL: NAVIGATING THE CHAOS
Announcing the list of artists/collectives selected for the 2020 edition of Performance LAB. This year Performance LAB will function as a seven-month long incubation laboratory, where the selected artists will work with artist-duo Varia Sjöström and Hatz Lambo to work on projects and realize ideas which will be showcased at the Museum of Impossible Forms in November 2020.
The selected participants are:
Irina Mutt
Independent writer and curator from Barcelona and currently based in Helsinki. She has been part of the public program commission at Hangar BCN and for the Catalan Critic Association also as commission team. Some of her exhibitions have been “Undoing text” for Ineditos Casa Encendida Madrid or ‘A break can be what we are aiming for’ La Capella Barcelona Produccio. Doing and thinking from intersectional feminism.
Mercedes Balarezo
My name is Mercedes Balarezo, I was born and raised in the highlands of Ecuador and now living in Helsinki. Even though I have made dance my language, dance did not ‘choose’ me. I chose it, as a very stubborn decision. In my artistic practice, I have been interested in the mestizo identity, art pedagogy and currently, I am working with the relationship between voice and movement.
Nicolina Stylianou
Visual artist, and curator; Nicolina Stylianou is a practice-led research artist who fabricates performative sound sculptures. The sculptures assist her live performances and form a hybrid between performance, sound and sculpture. Her conceptual thought negotiates the state where objects are not yet identified and how this pre-identification feels like a metaphorical correlation to perception. Nicolina’s interest lies in noise and information, and is a stimulus of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical thought related to the two tensed cultures the: Apolline and Dionysiac. She conceives Apollo as information and Dionysos as noise. By considering their tension and essence Nicolina works on the organic forms they sculpt.
Aman Askarizad
Aman Askarizad is a visual Artist, photographer and musician based in Helsinki. In his works, he intend to create a dialogue between lived experience in socio-political contexts, and representations and reality and dismantle the politics of it.
Hanan Mahbouba
Hanan Mahbouba is a filmmaker, writer and visual artist currently based in Helsinki. For the last six years, she worked as a writer and producer in NYC. In 2020, she wrote and directed the short film Fatima Falling and is currently at work on the script for her first feature film.
Jessica Escobar
Jessica Escobar (Habana, 1991) is a Mexican, Finnish, Cuban creator in the search of elements that make up traditions and identities. Based in Helsinki, her work aims to understand human movements and the cognitive processes motivating and developing within them. In recent times she has taken techniques from user experience, marketing, and propaganda and applied them to contemporary art practice. Currently interested in creating works that engage the public in the processes of art-making.
In 2017 she completed a BA in Industrial Design, awarded by Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
The participants are currently meeting with Varia Sjöström and Hatz Lambo either online or physically on a one-on-one basis to develop their projects
Stay tuned for more updates on the participants’ projects
Museum of Impossible Forms is a cultural space, located in Kontula, Helsinki. It is a contested Space and it represents a contact zone, a space of unlearning, formulating identity constructs, norm-critical consciousness and critical thinking. Impossible Forms are those that erase and facilitate the process of transgressing the boundaries/borders between art, politics, practice, theory, the artist and the spectator. For 2019-2020, Museum of Impossible Forms operates under the curatorial theme of ‘The Atlas of Lost Beliefs (For Insurgents, Citizens and Untitled Bodies)’.
Museum of Impossible Forms is a Safer Space. We follow a Safer Space policy to create a welcoming, inclusive, awesome environment.
Events at the Museum of Impossible Forms are completely free and accessible without prior booking.