The Helsinki Biennial Art Mediation Forum 2023: An Anthology
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Introdution
The Helsinki Biennial Art Mediation Forum 2023 is a collaboration between ViCCA (Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art) at Aalto University’s School of ARTS and the Helsinki Biennial 2023. Helsinki Biennial 2023 Head Curator Joasia Krysa initiated the collaboration and invited ViCCA faculty Bassam El Baroni and Patrizia Costantin to develop and lead it. The project focuses on mediation as an articulation space for the biennial’s themes and artistic contributions. It consists of two components: the Helsinki Biennial 2023 Symposium, which took place on December 9, 2022, and The Curatorial School of 'May' a project involving eight students from ViCCA at Aalto ARTS. The first part of this compact anthology you are currently reading features newly commissioned essays by Filipa Ramos, Adeena Mey, and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás based on their public talks at the HB23 Symposium. The symposium served as a launchpad for the biennial, highlighting its central themes of contamination, regeneration, and agency. It addressed the effects of the climate crisis and the role of contemporary media in curatorial practices. Unlike older forms of media, 21st century media emphasize prediction and anticipation of the future as opposed to recording the current moment.
The second section is dedicated to five new essays by ViCCA students. The essays are one of the outcomes of The Curatorial School of 'May' a yearlong workshop that took the seemingly humble word ‘may’ in the biennial’s title – New Directions May Emerge – as its point of departure. ‘May’ and ‘might’ are indicators of probability, possibility, or permission. They are words that we take for granted because of their supplementary function in sentences. The ‘may’ in the biennial’s title produces fertile ground for possibilities to arise while indicating that the uncertainty of eventual outcomes should be acknowledged in today’s inventive modes of research and practice. The Curatorial School of 'May' nurtured speculative encounters with the biennial's themes, methodologies, and inquiries. The school’s participants have engaged with interpretation and mediation through diverse lenses such as geological methodologies, poetry, hauntology, ancestral knowledges, healing practices, zoology, media studies, psychogeography, and research into human and posthuman agencies. This multifaceted approach highlights a continuously evolving and dynamic understanding of interdisciplinarity, one that serves not as an end unto itself but as the foundation for achieving meaningful mediation from the vantage point of an open future.
In addition to five essays featured in this anthology, the school’s participants are programming a set of special events taking place during the biennial. Through these events, they will communicate and perform their research on HB23’s key topics and the art projects that it showcases. Materials and productions by The Curatorial School of ‘May’ can be found on the biennial website. The school’s aim is to present thought-provoking strategies for sensing and giving accounts which intersect with the realm of mediation in ways that accentuate the ‘May’.
Directions Emerging from the Helsinki Biennial 2023 Symposium
Drawing on Joasia Krysa’s themes for the 2023 Helsinki Biennial, Filipa Ramos' essay, Possible Love, explores the intersections within the material and philosophical realms that bridge human and nonhuman worlds. It proposes a re-thinking of two tropes, species and mating, that have deeply influenced Western perspectives on biology and existence. Using examples from poetry, literature, art, and science, Ramos articulates forms of intimate encounter that question the divisive connotations of species and problematize the reproductive emphasis of mating. Through these case studies, she suggests that desire can be a transformative force that changes the way we relate to ourselves, our bodies, and the myriad other living forms that inhabit our planet.
In his essay, Curating’s Technological Unconscious: The History of Cybernetics and the Gaian Transformation of Curation, Adeena Mey examines what he and philosopher Yuk Hui have termed the ‘cybernetization of the exhibition.’ This phrase describes the historical transformation of the exhibition and institution into informational and communicational mediums. This process is closely tied to the writings and institutional experiments in the 1970s, by figures such as curators Peter Althaus, Jorge Glusberg, Pontus Hultén, and philosophers like Vilém Flusser. Interestingly, the 1970s also marked the emergence of a distinction between 'first order cybernetics' – which views living and technological beings as regulated by 'feedback' processes – and 'second order cybernetics' – which sees systems as self-organizing and self-reflective. The former largely inspired these curatorial and theoretical attempts to transform museums and the form of exhibitions. The essay elaborates on the difference between first and second order cybernetics. It posits that we can attribute the prevalent curatorial logic to first order cybernetics, while the recent and evolving changes in the exhibitionary complex might be related to the second order. Second order cybernetics provides us with the tools necessary to reconsider the role of biennales in the Anthropocene. These tools can aid in addressing what philosopher Isabelle Stengers terms the 'Intrusion of Gaia' (the activation of planetary and environmental forces that surpass human control). Mey suggests that, to effectively address the current intersection of environmental, political, and scientific urgencies, we need to rethink institutions and curating through the lens of second-order cybernetics, viewing them as self-organizing systems.
Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás' essay, What never was but might yet have been, directs our attention from cybernetics to cyberspace. According to Nolasco-Rózsás, computer-generated simulations, virtual realities, and networked digital platforms—from cyberspace to the metaverse, from web 1.0 to web 3.0—are no longer mere fictional locations found in science-fiction literature. They hold a significance and role that is on par with physical spaces, even if this is not yet evident in contemporary curatorial and exhibition practices. Information technology has engendered realms that are legitimate, parallel dimensions of our perception, experience, knowledge, communication, and self. Here, the real and the possible, the virtual and the actual, are not antithetical opposites but interdependent entities that constitute an algorithmic present in which many contemporary societies find themselves. The essay weaves together ideas, reflections, and perspectives linking artistic projects showcased in the Helsinki Biennial and historical responses to the new paradigms brought about by calculating machines, as manifested in artworks, manifestos, exhibitions, theories, and even onto-epistemological frameworks.
In a thought-provoking essay published in 2019 and titled Orientation in a Big World: On the Necessity of Horizonless Perspectives, the artist and writer Patricia Reed embarks on an exploration of navigation as a synthetic operation. The concept of navigation, as it unfolds in Reed's text, is an exercise in synthesis, a careful negotiation between intentionality and the contingency of unknown or accidental events. Reed writes, "Navigation is, above all, a synthetic operation." This insight opens up navigation as more than a mere tool for orientation. It paints navigation as a process that fuses our desires and plans with the unpredictable and unforeseen, guiding us through spatial, conceptual, and temporal realms. Reed further unpacks our understanding of navigation in her exploration of planetary considerations. She discusses how navigating an increasingly complex world forces us to consider and engage with our planetary interconnectedness, since for Reed navigation’s “operational zone is planetary, meaning that its activities affect, and are affected by, the mobilization of entities from around the globe.” This perspective articulates navigation as a truly global process, highlighting the interconnectedness of all things on a planetary scale. Reed suggests that we need a distributed approach, one that combines different perspectives and more robust accounts of reality that incorporate diverse experiences and viewpoints surpassing the limitations of personal geophysical location and its emphasis on pursuing a horizon. Navigation without a horizon involves trying out new strategies to handle the complexities that are often hidden and intertwined at many different levels; it is a challenge to our conventional understanding of space as bound by horizons. It opens up a realm where we can navigate without predefined boundaries or set paths while preserving the specificity of location, avoiding the homogenization of the world into one reductive picture, and maintaining the situatedness of knowledge.
Drawing from Reed's comprehensive exploration of navigation, we embark on a journey through the essays contributed by the students of The Curatorial School of ‘May’ for the Helsinki Biennial 2023, New Directions May Emerge. These essays, much like the biennial itself, are both geographically and conceptually moored in an archipelago, specifically Vallisaari Island. They echo Reed's ideas on navigation, acting as synthetic operations that intersect intentionality with contingency, global interconnectedness with local specificity, and horizonless spatiality with the physical confines of the island. Through their diverse perspectives, they invite us to engage with the intricate enquiries of New Directions May Emerge in a broader matrix of connections.
Titled Navigating Turbulence ~ Towards the Conceptualization of Space, Cyane Findji and Myriam Gras present an intriguing voyage that borrows from the investigative methodologies of geology to traverse the expansive maritime landscape of the Baltic Sea. The biennial and its context are here mediated through various island influences. The text seeks to explore the thematic framework of the biennial while making the primary focus water in its various material states. The trajectory proposed by Findji and Gras disrupts the established dichotomy between those confined to the mainland and those tethered to the islands. Instead, it advocates for a more fluid, experiential understanding of the biennial, one that is informed by the unseen that dwells beneath the sea that surrounds Vallisaari. The text invites us to navigate the Baltic Sea vertically, to pierce the surface of the sea, plunging into its depths to explore the layers of contamination and resilience therein, engaging our senses in a multidimensional exploration. Once back on the surface, we re-emerge with what the authors define as manifold points of departure to be explored in our experience of the Helsinki Biennial 2023.
In What Lures in the Deep: Interacting with Virtual Worlds, Aska Mayer and their AI collaborator, the language model LAIKA, take us on a deep dive into the depths of virtuality. Using language and magic as primary navigational tools, they explore the potential of advanced simulation technologies and immersive experiences to extend our sensory engagement. The experiences brought about by such technologies make us better aware of the different senses at play in this form of navigation that seemingly detaches itself from the geographical coordinates of the island. Mayer's essay asks how this sense of expanded bodily experience can open up new ways of interacting with the virtual worlds populating the biennial.
Island (In)visible: Tracing Storytellers and Other Ghosts of Vallisaari by Martina Šerešová introduces us to Hoary Alyssum, a plant-storyteller able to convey histories of oppression as well as resilience. Her essay reframes our biennial experience, exploring the non-human agents that make the haunted histories of the island's past accessible, allowing us to navigate the island through more-than-human perspectives. As visitors of the biennial, we drift through the island, navigating its complexities which appear as traces of contamination and regeneration processes marking several sites and temporalities.
Micol Curatolo explores how mapping, moving, and circumnavigating the island as an art audience involves a relationship with Vallisaari and the many narratives emerging from the island itself. From its military history to its current status as a nature reserve and site for an international art biennial, Curatolo reflects on how engaging the island can help us rethink the ways in which we connect and politically relate to each other and the world we inhabit in times of socio-ecological crisis. NEVER OURS proposes a narrative about how to move and where to look as island visitors. The author encourages us to navigate the biennial in dialogue with the island's intricate systems, of which we, as biennial visitors, are also a part. This heightened awareness towards others, whether they be living beings, landscapes, or stories, promotes a sense of connection and reciprocity that calls us to actively participate in New Directions May Emerge by contributing our perspectives to the discussion.
A relational perspective concerning movement is central to the navigational framework that Julia Fidder explores in Get well soon - meditation for institutional healing. The text presents us with a spatial metaphor that probes the biennial’s decentralized structure in the context of what the author calls ‘institutional healing.’ Fidder’s navigational parameters are situated on a more conceptual plane, prompting an investigation into how the Helsinki Biennial 2023's healing practices are bolstered by both the art projects it exhibits and its curatorial methodology. Site-specific modes of working, decentralization, and shared responsibility shift the biennial's focus from HAM and Vallisaari to broader directions, adding a reflective layer on the implications of New Directions May Emerge that extend beyond the island, reaching mainland Helsinki and the virtual realm.
This collection of writings offers various pathways to engage with the complex ecosystems that make up the Helsinki Biennial, supporting the biennial’s pursuit for new directions to emerge. Visitors are encouraged to extend their antennae beyond the immediate and to notice anew at multiple wavelengths be it those of the sea in its vastness and depth, the digital interface, historical narratives, the surrounding landscape or the social layers of institutions. The diverse actors, themes, and complexities that emerge from this international event necessitate a certain commitment to navigating the biennial, with its many interconnected identities and propositions. This publication aims to nurture and sustain a journey through collective and diverse acts of noticing and observation, both on and off the given paths, inviting readers to tune into the multitude of voices that shape the Helsinki Biennial 2023.
Reference: Patricia Reed, “Orientation in a Big World: On the Necessity of Horizonless Perspectives,” in e-flux journal, #101. June 2019. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/101/273343/orientation-in-a-big-world-on-the-necessity-of-horizonless-perspectives/
Bassam El Baroni and Patrizia Costantin
Editors: Patrizia Costantin and Bassam El Baroni
Contributors: Micol Curatolo, Julia Fidder, Cyane Findji, Myriam Gras, Joasia Krysa, Aska Mayer, Adeena Mey, Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, Filipa Ramos, Martina Šerešová
Commissioning Editor: Joasia Krysa
Visual Identity and Layout: The Rodina
Print: Livonia Print
ISSN 2489-3889, ISBN 978-952-5939-45-3