Open Stage
What leaps of faith, means and ends are required in order to move towards culture(s) embracing the diversity of an expanded community of organic and inorganic beings? What kinds of positions and practices of co-existence, agency and communication can be imagined into being in the face of the threatening climate breakdown? Furthermore, where may the de-centring of the human perspective lead to scientific and artistic modes of knowledge and representation, and vice versa?
Open Stage forms an experimental platform within the conference, where art and science are brought into dialogue across a range of media. Open Stage invites proposals from artists and researchers focused on envisaging futures to come from the shifting position of cultures and the arts. The aim is not to illustrate prevailing theories or critical positions with art works, but rather to challenge both art and science to push the limits of the possible and the knowable. For example, how can different methodologies of investigation, expression and signification open towards other, non-human modes of being in, sensing and making sense of the world? To date, no single vocabulary of academic language or form of art suffice to address this alone. But a set of critical encounters may begin to do so.
Open Stage makes a claim, in practice, on the indispensable role of the arts in cross-disciplinary dialogue and in the production of knowledge. The arts offer spaces and particular methodologies that allow for the dialogue of complex or even contradictory views, here brought together in the face of the urgency to address the ecological challenges of today and to work towards sustainable futures. Meanwhile the most radical re-imagining is emerging now in the field of arts and culture(s) from the fertile ground on the porous boundaries of disciplines. Open Stage is an experiment in the activation of these very boundaries between myriad modes of artistic and scientific research. The stage is open for the unruly, the out of order(s), and the yet-to-be-recognized.
The presentations proposed for Open Stage can be in any format or mode of address, from academic posters to performances, images, sound, objects, installations, etc. The selected presentations will be mainly exhibited and/or performed in a temporary exhibition space at the conference venue (Wanha Satama).
Selected works and workshops for Open Stage
- Cultural inidcators of a "Sustainable Food Cycle"
- Melliferopolis - Honeybees in Urban Contexts. Videos of Bio-Artistic Interventions
- BIOS
- Clyde Reflections
- Building Sound Communities
1. Cultural indicators of a “Sustainable Food Cycle” (Research project)
Patrick Honauer, rundumkultur; Yvonne Christ, ZHAW & Susann Wintsch, treibsand.ch (Switzerland)
Patrick Honauer from rundumkultur is developing a sustainable circular food flow system based on ecological, economic, social and cultural principles in Switzerland and Nepal (www.rundumkultur.ch). Rundumkultur is a concept of BachserMärt – a retail chain in Switzerland (www.bachsermärt.ch). A network of more than 30 farmers develop food production and food processing for five BachserMärt shops. The stakeholders share their research, knowledge and experience with each other to create a culture of sustainable food supply. Their cooperation ensures a successful food waste strategy (www.greenabout.ch).
As a method to cultivate sustainable development, rundumkultur regularly hosts round-table dialogues. The participants in this food cycle search for an alternative to industrial agriculture through dialogue: retailers and customers look for a future supply culture as a collaborative common aim. Of central importance are dialogue and cooperation between rural and urban populations.
In a transdisciplinary process, Susann Wintsch (art historian and curator), Yvonne Christ (environmental engineer) and Patrick Honauer (entrepreneur) focus on defining indicators to assess the sustainability of products, and on exploring a common understanding of values throughout the food cycle.
In the action research project “Future Food Cycle” a tool was developed to help visualise and assess values related to food. This work was conducted in collaboration with an interdisciplinary class of university students at the ZHAW LSFM Institute of Natural Resource Sciences in Wädenswil, ZH/CH (environmental engineering/communication). The tool is used in BachserMärt grocery stores in the Zürich region and in workshops. The aim is for participants to learn more about possible indicators for a “Future Food Cycle”. At the conference in Helsinki, this tool will help us to focus on the cultural value of specific food articles in a discussion with an interested audience. The project continues until September 2015.
2. Melliferopolis - Honeybees in Urban Contexts. Videos of Bio-Artistic Interventions.
Christina Stadlbauer, Melliferopolis (Belgium) & Ulla Taipale, Melliferopolis (Finland)
“Melliferopolis – Honeybees in Urban Contexts” is a project that intertwines honeybees and arts in urban contexts. This transdisciplinary initiative steps out of a merely anthropocentric view in order to focus on an api-centric world and explores the role of bees in urban environments as well as the relation between humankind and these insects.
The Melliferopolis hives, placed in public and visible places, are designed to invite city dwellers to engage with these animals and experience the effects the hives have on them and their immediate surroundings. Through public events and participatory workshops, the collective genius, pollination activity, architecture and soundscape of the bees are being offered to the public to explore. Melliferopolis aims at appreciating the intrinsic value of honeybees, reaching beyond the reductionist view of bees as ecosystem providers and honey producers. The project is open for collaboration and participation.
Melliferopolis was launched in Helsinki, Finland, in 2012 by Christina Stadlbauer (artist, scientist, beekeeper) and Ulla Taipale (independent curator, researcher, beekeeper) and is active internationally. Melliferopolis is introduced with the following three documentary videos:
HIVE FIVE (2’29, by Mikko Raskinen / Aalto University, 2013)
Hive Five is a sound picnic featuring five Helsinki-based artists and the inhabitants of Hexa-Hives in a jam session at Aalto University Campus in Otaniemi, Espoo. The intervention was organised by the sound artist Till Bovermann.
BEE ARK (4’31, by Kalle Kuisma / M2HZ, 2014)
During a workshop in the Botanic Garden of Helsinki in 2014, the participants designed and co-created a hive with the Australian artist Nigel Helyer.
CITIES CARRYING HONEY (8’11, by Lotta Petronella, 2012)
The first workshop of Melliferopolis on the Harakka island in Helsinki in 2012 gives a glimpse on the launch of the project. Getting acquainted with the materials of beekeeping, the participants prepared the hives for an apiary.
3. BIOS (Performance)
Nina Ossavy, Ossavy & Kolbenstvedt (Norway)
The work we want to show is a version of BIOS especially made for this conference.
BIOS is a visual and meditative piece focusing on the phenomena of Colony Collapse Disorder. With this work, we relate to research around this theme, yet in an open and reflective visual mode. It is an attempt to create a new language for a crisis that the vanishing of the honeybees is but a symbol of. In BIOS we use corporeal, sonic and visual elements alongside with subtle use of text carefully layered with hints of an almost forgotten ritual world. We juxtapose the big narrative with the small as we shift positions from the individual to the global narrative in an attempt to make a discourse on life itself and the threats to humanity we are witnessing.
Through our work, we reflect upon new sustainable ways of living with the non-human world.
BIOS, meaning life in Greek, has been shown in two versions. One at the opening at Black Box Theatre in Oslo, in October 2013, with Nordic Voices (a vocal ensemble), a percussionist and a violinist. And another one in Spain and Norway (Oct/Nov 2014) with a smaller cast: actor Nina Ossavy, percussionist Eirik Raude and singer Frank Havrøy.
We now want to focus the performance even more by using only two performers, as an assisted solo piece, with Nina Ossavy as the main actor and actor/musician Marius Kolbenstevdt as assisting performer / technician.
4. Clyde Reflections. A short film and audio-visual installation
Stephen Hurrel, Hurrel Visual Arts (UK) & Ruth Brennan, Scottish Association for Marine Science (UK).
Clyde Reflections is a meditative, cinematic experience based on the marine environment of the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. It was funded by the 2013 Imagining Natural Scotland initiative which was created to 'explore the interplay between the natural world and its representation, and promote deep collaboration and knowledge exchange between the creative and scientific sectors.’
Produced by artist Stephen Hurrel and social ecologist Ruth Brennan, the film features underwater and microscopic footage, combined with voice recordings of seven people who have a close relationship with, or specialist understanding of, the Firth of Clyde. These include a retired fisherman, a marine biologist, a diver, a marine conservationist, a spiritual leader and a physical oceanographer.
Brennan conducted unstructured interviews around a series of themes with these individuals, recorded by Hurrel, with a focus on what the individuals perceived to be ‘natural’ and ‘not natural’ in the Firth of Clyde. Led by Hurrel, both worked together to combine the documentary-style approach of the interview stage with a more ambient, meditative and poetic rendering of the material.
By engaging with people who connect deeply with their environment, Clyde Reflections presents a multi-perspective representation of a particular marine area in order to challenge a simplistic representation of this environment. The film provides a creative example of how 'landscape' is not a fixed entity, or separate from people, but is dynamic in terms of its socio-ecological properties as well as how it can be perceived.
The objective of Clyde Reflections is to open up space for contemplation by reflecting the unfixed, shifting nature of relationships between people and place.
The art-science collaborative process is described in-depth at http://www.sams.ac.uk/ruth-brennan/clyde-reflections-pdf. The film can be viewed online at Vimeo. It will be installed at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, from May-July 2015.
5. Building Sound Collectives (Workshop)
Casper Hernandez Cortes, Fonografit (Denmark)
What role does non-verbal communication play in our effort to build culturally sustainable collectives*?
Talking is very useful in our effort to find a common understanding about sustainability in all its forms. However, there is much more at play in human interaction. What about our non-verbal communication? What about our expressions through gesture and sound? These forms of interaction are closely linked with our fundamental capacities for building trust and showing empathy, and for relating to our peers in ways that circumvent hierarchies and prejudice.
Through hands-on collective processes in a non-intrusive and amusingly serious workshop design, we are going to explore the workings of gesture and sound, and see how we can build our own genuine cultural patterns, based on an ad hoc and diverse group of people.
The workshop will be preceded by a short introduction by the facilitator, and we will engage in a common reflection afterwards.
*) Here, we define a culturally sustainable collective as a collective that has the capacity for generating, storing and retrieving its own cultural patterns while being open to influences from other collectives.
Read more about the workshop concept here.
Saara Hannula (artist / researcher)
Taru Elfving (curator PhD)
Terike Haapoja (artist / researcher)
Jenni Nurmenniemi (curator)
