Research publications

Constellations

Constellations is a book that came out of two preceding projects, both curated by Fergus Feehily—Professor of painting at the Academy of the Arts, Helsinki—at Exhibition Laboratory in 2017, the exhibition of the same name and Conversations in Light and Dark, a two-day conversation series.  These projects featured artists and thinkers from all over the world, Alex Olson from Los Angeles, Terry Winters, from New York, the Japanese artist Yuki Okumura, Helsinki based artist Petri Ala-Maunus and Declan Long from Dublin, to mention just a few. Both projects featured significant involvement of students from the academy, as exhibitors, writers, participants in the conversations and curatorially. The book forms a collective art work, where the visual and written word for equal parts. Constellations features texts by Declan Long, Fergus Feehily, Annie May Demozay, John Hutchinson and Kukka Paavilainen all dealing differently with ideas in and around painting, in addition here is a unique visual representation of Terry Winters’ presentation for Conversations in Light and Dark. The section Correspondence, features pages given over to artists, writers and students of the academy. They were invited to respond to the idea of painting, these responses are varied, text, photographs, notebook pages, poetry and more. 

 

Constellations. Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki. 2018. 

Editors: Fergus Feehily and Johanna Vakkari

Design: Pauliina Nykänen

ISBN 978-952-7131-50-3 

 

 

 

Imaging the Spiritual Quest – Explorations in Art, Religion and Spirituality
As an element in human societies, religion forms part of the backdrop against which artists have worked in the past and present. Today, artists work in a world in which the place, role, and authority of religious traditions and institutions have changed, a process that began with the dawn of the modern era. Although the authority andinfluence of organized religion has declined in Western Europe and North America, 

interest in spirituality (itself a broad category of practices and beliefs) contin¬ues to be on the increase. At the same time, some artiststoday engage the phenomenon of spirituality in their own work, and scholars continue to explore the relationships between art, religion, and spirituality. This collection ofessays by scholars and artists explores the intersections of art, religion, and spirituality in Finland and abroad, both in the past and today.

 

Imaging the Spiritual Quest – Explorations in Art, Religion and Spirituality.

Writings from the Academy of Fine Arts (6).

Editors: Frank Brümmel, Grant White. 2018. 

ISBN 978-952-7131-47-3

Contributors: Riikka Stewen, Jyrki Siukonen, Grant White, Juha-Heikki Tihinen, Johan Bastubacka, Liisa Lindgren, Päivikki Kallio, Elina Merenmies, J. O. Mallander

 

Figures of Touch Sense, Technics, Body

As a sense modality, touch has been both over- and undervalued in Western culture. On the one hand, touch has been regarded asthe basis of sense certainty and as a rather normative support to the theoretical gaze. On the other hand, it has been considered as vague,vulgar, drive-related or impure. Due to these contradictory andpotentially subversive qualities, touch has been invested with variousemancipatory expectations. In its ambivalence, the very sense of touch is essentially over-determined.
 

Futures of Artistic Research – At the Intersection of Utopia, Academia and Power is a collection of essays that brings into focus and explains the actual significance and future possibilities of the experimental exercises and critiques emerging across the field of artistic research. The book is structured around seven main questions and topics that are, at the moment, of interest to a wide interdisciplinary field of scholars, curators, and artists. The starting point for this book is a questionnaire that was sent to writers that the editors consider significant within the field of artistic research. The editors (Jan Kaila, Anita Seppä and Henk Slager) asked them to either provide a separate answer to each question, or to write a short text as a reaction to the set of questions. 

The Research Pavilion in Venice, hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki, (Uniarts Helsinki) has been important as a setting influencing the selection of writers as well as the topic of the book. Jan Kaila and Henk Slager acted as curators, and Anita Seppä as the commissioner, of the Research Pavilion in 2015 and 2017.

Many participants of this book project have taken part in the exhibitions or in the so-called ‘Camino Events’ – spanning a wide variety of cross-artistic events; discussions, interventions, performances, screenings, and concerts – of the Research Pavilion. In addition to them, the editors have invited a number of people not connected with the Research Pavilion to discuss similar issues.

CONTRIBUTORS: Andrea Phillips, Basak Senova, Behzad Khosravi Noori, Cecilie Broch Knudsen, Darla Crispin, Florian Dombois, Jan Svenungsson, Joasia Krysa, Julian Klein, Lars Hallnäs, Leena Rouhiainen, Maiju Loukola, Melanie Bouteloup, Mick Wilson, Mika Elo, Nikita Yingqian Cai, and Renate Lorenz.

By presenting the responses of these internationally acknowledged specialists, the collection shows how the artistic research discussion reworks older definitions of experimenting, knowledge, methodologies, materials, and purposes of art, and how it also advances new ethical and political insights in the field of research. 

Futures of Artistic Research – At the Intersection of Utopia, Academia and Power. Writings from the Academy of Fine Arts (5). 2017.
Editors: Jan Kaila, Anita Seppä, Henk Slager
Graphic design: Marjo Malin
Publisher: The Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki
ISBN 978-952-7131-42-8

Inside and Beside the Camp
The books title Inside and Beside the Camp refers to German barracks on the Tulliniemi peninsula in Hanko, Finland. The peninsula was the point of arrival for German troops who began their transit through Finland from 1942 to 1944. The area closed after World War II, but it attracted public attention in 2014 when the City of Hanko opened a nature trail there, and partly forgotten German barracks from the transit camp were discovered next to the trail. 

The transit camp is in focus in the Deutsches Lager research project (2015–2018). The research project both resembles archeology and is archeology – it effectively excavates history both physically – objects and texts – and visually – photographs and moving images. The artistic researchers and editors of the anthology Jan Kaila and Japo Knuutila process the visualizations of this project. 

Pekka Kantonen: Generational Filming. A Video Diary as Experimental and Participatory Research 2017

Graphic design: Erik Hartin and Moa Pårup
Copy editing: Rebecca Bligh
Publisher: The Academy of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts Helsinki
Printing: Aldgate Press, London, 2017
ISSN 2343-1008
ISBN 978-952-7131-32-9 (printed)
ISBN 978-952-7131-33-6 (pdf)

Markus Rissanen: Basic Forms and Nature – From Visual Simplicity to Conceptual Complexity 2017.

Do basic geometrical forms exist in nature, or are they merely products of the human mind? What roles do the three simple forms of classic Euclidean geometry – the circle, square and triangle – play in the cultural history of forms? Have we reached the limits of describing nature and its functions with basic forms? How do rhombuses help us to decipher the laws of rotational symmetry? This Doctoral thesis in Fine Arts is an interdisciplinary study of basic forms and nature. It combines artistic and scientific modes of research and consists of artistic productions and the cultural-historical study of forms as well as mathematical explanations.
 

 

 

Moscow Conceptualism. Erosion and After. Moskovskij kontseptualiszm. Erozija i posle. Art theoretical writings from the Academy of Fine Arts 8. Ed. Kimmo Sarje. Art Theorethical writings from the Academy of Fine Arts. 2016.

Moscow Conceptualism is at the core of Russian contemporary art. Its influence extends from the visual arts to performance and from photography to literature. This book addresses the various aspects of Eastern Conceptualism from the perspectives of six artists and researchers and an artist group. The articles are by Yuri Albert, Hannu Eerikäinen, Tomi Huttunen, New Normals, Kimmo Sarje, Victor Skersis and Vadim Zakharov. The books texts are in English and Russian.

 

 

Hammer and Silence. A Short Introduction to the Philosophy of Tools. Siukonen, Jyrki. 2015
Should we make sense of what we are doing? Anyone who has ever pondered everyday studio practice will recognize the special difficulty of explaining the simple manual actions involved in artistic work. This historical study proposes to look at those wordless procedures that usually escape our attention when we engage in art and creativity. Touching on practical issues in philosophy, such as the simultaneity of doing, talking and tooling, Hammer and Silence will appeal to a hands-on audience in art and academia.