1/3/2023 To the serene
Past year we have been gathering resources and scouting possibilities for a new location for our residency program. We are happy to announce we are relocating to a beautiful spot in Rautjärvi, South Karelia.
The building from the year 1905 that during its history has served as a school, a field hospital during the war and as a summer camp center for the local congregation will now be transformed into a center for arts and place for a community. In the surroundings you can find hiking routes, streams, rural lakes and beautiful deep forrest in the southeast of Finland.
We are already renovating the spaces for studios and living quarters suitable for communal living for three artits at a time. We are so excited for all the added space for it allows wider networking opportunities, events, co-learning and peer-support.
The upcoming year will be fully spent on renovating but the open call for 2025 is now open and we welcome applications for residency periods all through may to october.
Toûa Heinonen
Residency coordinator
1/1/2022 Building foundation
This year we are dedicating for gathering resources and finding a space closer to immeadiate access to the wild, somewhere where to grow deeper roots and where there is space for an environmental art exhibition of a permanent nature. We have loved kicking off at Tampere and will continue our collaborations here as well but for upcoming projects and plans of a residency that is possible for multiple artists to join simultaneusly we are excited to explore new sceneries.
For this reason we have rescheduled residencies booked for 2022 and wait to arrange them in a new venue. We hope to relocate soon and looking forward to open a new open call as soon as possible for the upcoming year!
Toûa Heinonen
Residency coordinator
20/9/2021 Environmental art workshops
One of the key objectives of our land art and environmental art workshops for us is to create a new connection between the environment and the artistic experience. The creative processes can take part in the discussion on ecology, about humans and the environment – considering both aesthetic and ethical aspects that come to play.
What defines land and environmental art is that they are created under natures conditions in discussion with its phenomenas, change and corruption. Therefore the works of art are rarely fully permanent but always somehow temporary and in change. Process works may only exist a small while, expressing also evidently the current place, time and the surrounding conditions.
The attention of the work often shifts and expands in the various changes and the boundaries of an artwork integrates in its surroundings and the phenomenas happening in it. The work kind of continues in its local landscape.
In our workshops we discover these charactaristics of land and environmental art and consider these aspects by the materials and concepts of works.
Picture: Our Garden fellow 2021 Isa Kiviaho was working at Ars Eukaryote ry as part of her Media Arts studies in TAMK. In addition to assisting our residency artist and managing administrating assignments she got to demo our environmental arts workshops in our amazing immediate surroundings for the artists of NEO - Omapolku Ateljee from Setlementti Tampere.
The workshops included clay graffiti, earth mandala and chalk drawing in nature.
If you are interested in having a workshop for your community or group we are happy to arrange one for you.
Contact us >> info@ars-eukaryote.org
Toûa Heinonen
Coordinator
15/9/2021 Two weeks at the Attic
I think the concept and feel of time have been collectively changed during the pandemic.
Everything is far away, constantly happening, and yet nothing is happening, bu everything is completely different. There is a feel of this great exhaustion and I ar-rive at the residency, a little bit rested yet still recovering from pretty severe burnout. The plan to distract myself with work and projects has carried this far.
But I’m running on fumes and I cannot lie anymore to myself and say that I’m no affected by all the surrounding circumstances. Including all the mundane tragedies as well my holistic being is ready to fall apart.
The summer has been scorching and brutal UV light has whipped the landscapes for multiple weeks. I arrive to find two rooms designated for me; a bedroom where I can unload mypackage and a studio room that bathes in the evening sun.I need to write. I need to deal with a small mountain of things that were leftoverfrom the utter chaos of spring.
So I sit in the studio, start to move words around. I look at the trees and the leaves as they dance with the breeze which provides some relief from the unprecedented heat.
After two days I’m finished, and I merge from the studio to pet the cats, make dinner, have coffee and conversation. This is what I’ve been waiting for and what always seems to be the most important aspect of any socialized existing; just being together, sharing time and space. Not doing anything but doing the most important thing - maintaining Maintaining yourself, your functions, and your social relationships. The work also happens there, beyond schedule, beyond structure. In the stupid jokes, coffee stains, threads the unwind under cat scratches, in cold leftovers...
I feel I can breathe a bit better. The shallow tightness which has found a home inmy tissues has relented and receded. The cat purrs under my hand, sometimesgrazes my skin with claws if the stimulation is too much. There are more things I want to do. I pick up few different impulses which I wantto follow. Go filming by the lake, edit old materials and try to make some sense oflast year's actions.
I write a love letter, to someone, not to anyone, to everyone. It includes wishes whispers, illusions, and futility. I cover the letters, they become knots and I weavedreams into a visual puzzle.I want to reveal myself sincerely and completely, yet still disappear totally, hide inform and aesthetic. In the end, I leave the letter to the residency.
Objectively two weeks is not a long time.I wish I could stay and experiment with impulses and follow each subject of obsession that arises, but I need to leave Summer is giving in to the first glimpses of autumn. I cannot stay this curve of time forever.
Anna Matveinen
Artist in Residence 19.7.–1.8.2021
4/3/2021 The Beginning
It’s March 2021 and we are in the very verge of putting our residency program in action. This is a project that has been simmering in my mind for years. Luckily now things have aligned in such a position that it is possible to open a space for co-creating and -learning and to develop our dreams further into production of works around our environment.
With the current situation of the world for me it has become even more essention to strengthen structures for creating, grounding and connecting. I’ve always felt being in a residency has done that for me. A designated period to work, a designated space to work, designated people to help and reflect together, a new environment to discover, a new culture to discover, new individuals to discover, a new layer of myself to discover, a new layer of the world to discover, some part of me to leave behind to discover and say goodbye to. A work of art to discover.
These journeys have always given me a great opportunity to expand and really get the hang of the very foundation of my artistic work – almost like magnifying my practice. When all my usual mundane is swept away for a while, where its just a bit more silent, somehow a safer space to investigate something still fragile and growing and unsure.
My main motivation to put such a thing into motion as an artist residency is to get to work as this enforcing and supporting anima for creation and learning. I want to get to witness from very close artists engaging with themselves and their vision. I want to see more environmental art around this city. I want to create a neutral ground for experiments. I want to be able to create time and space.
Toûa Heinonen
Residency coordinator
Our staff + board
coordinator + curator
T o û a H e i n o n e n
chair + director
+358 456768654
info@ars-eukaryote.org
residency manager
A l e k s i L a a k s o
vice chair
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