[spectre] CONTACT: 20 Years of Pixelache - "Save the date" Announcement - Saturday 3. December 2022

[andrew gryf paterson]

Apologies for X-posting. Welcome!

CONTACT: 20 Years of Pixelache Symposium / Looking Forwards <-> Looking 
Backwards
Saturday 3. December 2022.

#Pixelache2022 #pixelache20 #Contact20YearsPixelache 
#LookingForwardsLookingBackwards

Kiasma Theatre (Museum of Contemporary Arts),
& after-party at Magito Studio, Suvilahti Cultural Complex,
Helsinki, Finland

CONTACT is a transdisciplinary symposium that weaves socio-cultural 
issues facing our eras, such as heritage, gender, pre & post-pandemia, 
sharing and exploitation in culture, oppression, isolation, and care. 
The event maps out these different aspects in 4 thematics – Archival 
practices, memory & data; Diversity, post-national & transcultural 
collaborations; Intersectional Feminism & practices; D.I.Y.-D.I.W.O. 
Community & associations – which combine and overlap within precarious 
life conditions, alternative resisting strategies, between reclaiming 
the present and imagination of the tomorrow we will face.

How does art, design, research and activism, in general cultural work - 
reflect and respond to contemporary crises? Can a cultural association 
hold space for activist and political practices?

Contact is a fundamental life condition such as spiritual, physical, 
cultural exchange and sharing, social struggling, diverse solidarity, 
and hospitality for coexistence.

Contact is a metaphor for closeness, for staying in touch, for encounter 
and exchange.

Contact is, as well, a method proposed to reveal silenced issues 
encountering racism, classism, nationalism, authoritarianism, and 
patriarchy. Through meditating and dialogue with diverse alternative 
practices. Contact and gathering, as a way to pool together structural 
and symbolic oppression. As a way to organize communal survival, 
struggle and cohabitation and the dominant political construction of 
social roles.


The one-day Symposium event opens up a public sphere for sharing and 
discussing critical dialogues through mediating different communities 
and alternative artistic practices. It will consist of a series of 
presentations, audiovisual performances, film screenings & an open-mic 
closing session including Pixelache members and audience. The symposium 
is co-curated by Soko Hwang, Irina Mutt, Andrew Gryf Paterson (all 
Pixelache association members).

Following the Symposium at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the 
audience is invited to Magito studio in the Suvilahti Cultural Complex 
for food and after-party, including live audiovisual VJ collaborative 
performance, DJ mashup mix and live folk music. Note the evening 
programme is led by 'Looking Forwards <-> Looking Backwards' & 
'Gathering of Elders 2002' organising-duo Antti Ahonen and invited 
collaborator Jenna Jauhiainen; with the after-party event produced by 
additional Pixelache members Arlene Tucker and Mathilde Palenius. There 
will be more info about after-party in subsequent announcements.

Pixelache hosts this symposium to celebrate and reflect on 20 years of 
existence as a cultural association that has been constantly evolving in 
the context of local and global issues, and related communities of 
practice. Over 20 years the festival has developed from digital 
subcultures such as VJing & experimental interaction, to engaging 
participatory platforms, and in recent years, an ‘ache’ to re-engage 
with non-digital interfaces and systems. The association has also 
developed into a postnational and transcultural community of artists, 
cultural producers, thinkers and activists.

////
Schedule

Full day programme: Symposium (@Kiasma) 10:00-17:30
After-party (@Magito) 18:00-00:00

////
Participants

Juha Huuskonen (Helsinki), Minna Henriksson (Helsinki), Željko Blaće 
(Pixelache Wikimedian in residence, Zagreb, HR), Giovanna Esposito 
Yussif (Helsinki), Ubuntu Film Club (Helsinki), Paula Pin (BioTRANSLab, 
Galicia, nomadic, ES), Marc Dusseiller (Hackteria Global Network, 
Zürich, CH), Eeva Berglund (Aalto University, Espoo-Helsinki), plus 2 
others to-be-confirmed.

After-party performers to be announced in near future.

////

Full participant contribution & schedule details coming within 2-3 weeks.

Registration link for Symposium & Party events in next announcement.

Questions or expressions of desire for online stream: contact20years 
[at] pixelache.ac

-- 
Andrew Gryf Paterson
artist-organiser, independent researcher
http://agryfp.info
+358 50402 3828 | social: @agryfp