Research Catalogue

Heidi Hanninen, Academy of Fine Arts / Uniarts Helsinki, 5th year Doctoral student Artistic research: KAS! Kontula Art School – socially engaged public art Possibilities of the community art in culturally diverse contexts In this photo gallery you can take a look inside to KAS! Kontula Art School's socially engaged public art practice through the last artistic part of the artistic research by community artist-researcher Heidi Hänninen. "Kaupunki on meidän koti" ("City is our home") art work includes paintings from 36 KAS community members implemented for the renovated metro station in Kontula suburb. Both sides of the walls by the metro rails were covered by art: other side with the paintings by 18 adults from KAS collective and the other side by KAS Juniors (age 8-19 years). Juniors paintings include word HOME in 29 different languages locally spoken at homes and by friends and relatives of these kids and youngsters involved. Some of the languages are such that our juniors would like to know better or are already learning. In my artistic research initiated in 2021 I focuse on questions about ethically sensitive community art practice in the context of my ongoing project called KAS! Kontula Art School, socially engaged street art project, that I started in 2019 in suburban district Kontula in Eastern Helsinki. The aim of The Kontula Art School is to implement interesting public art but also to strengthen the community spirit and contribute to reduce potential conflicts in the region. Kontula is one of the most vivid, multilingual and culturally rich suburbs in Finland with the income level lower than the average. Kontula has been well known, especially among the media, for drugs used and sold around the shopping mall. The area is conflict sensitive and challenging but also a ground for experimenting new kinds of social / artistic realities and for the birth of communal practices far from the conventional borders and definitions. KAS! project has been cooperating with the local low threshold day center Symppis, where many of the customers have dual diagnosis (issues with both substance use and mental health). The participants of highly heterogeneous Kontula Art School consists of both adults and children. Participants represent various cultures, including substance use cultures. Some of the participants have educational background in arts but majority of them have been self taught. KAS! project has been involving artistically motivated people, regardless of their background, status or the life situation. Through the art making process I have had access to build ethically sensitive methodological toolkit for community art practices in culturally diverse contexts in a changing urban environment like Kontula, where understanding about good life varies greatly between its residents. Art creates possibilities for encountering and helps to break stigmas concerning certain groups of people. From the point of view of “Rebellious Research” (Ryynanen & Suoranta 2016) the world of art has crucial role in the process of fostering wellbeing of people and the justice in our shared society; art can reconstruct thinking and sometimes even the whole life of an individual. The key element in activist art is the act of participating, and questions like how people take part of the process and how does the act of process participates politically arise. (Suoranta & Ryynanen 2016, p. 235) In my study (street) art practice is the method of working and collecting research material (socially engaged art making practice and ready artworks in the public environment) but it is also an intervention for the (social) change. Through this research I suggest that socially engaged art interventions similar to KAS practice can empower both, the authors of the public art works and the whole surrounding community in a unique way, especially when used through the heterogeneous group context. KAS! practice is bringing up critical perspective concerning issues about public art and artistic experience of the urban environment by creating new directions to debate questions related to the community art, artistry, and the nature and possibilities of art itself in this changing world among those new realities that we share and shape together to be lived in. text: Heidi Hänninen (2025) photos: Tanguy Gérôme (2025)

Tässä ekspositiossa (KAS-kuvagalleria) voit tutustua KAS! Kontula Art Schoolin aikuisten kollektiivin jäsenten elokuussa 2024 toteuttamaan Taking Some Space -seinämaalauskokonaisuuteen ja työskentelyprosessiin. Maalauspaikka (Emännänpolun alikulkutunneli) sijaitsee Kontulan ostarin välittömässä läheisyydessä. Ekspositio mukailee taiteellisen toimintani logiikkaa: toiminta sijoittuu konkreettiseen paikkaan, Itä-Helsinkiin ja Kontulaan, kartalle. Maalaamme kartalta tarkemmin rajattua paikkaa, jonka ympärille alkaa kokoontua toiminnan myötä joukko erilaisia ihmisiä, jotka tekevät erilaisia taideteoksia. Nämä ihmiset tekevät samalla myös paikan: ottavat sen haltuun ja määrittelevät sen käytöstä. Eri ihmisten kokemukset paikasta voivat vaihdella ja olla myös ristiriidassa keskenään, jolloin paikkaan kohdistuu erilaisia taiteellisia ja sosiaalisia neuvotteluja. Mitä syvemmälle paikkaan sukeltaa, löytyy sieltä myös kaikki se hiljainen tieto, joka näkyvien teosten pinnan takana on olemassa. Tätä hiljaista tietoa pyrin avaamaan (yhteisö)taiteellisen (toiminta)tutkimukseni avulla. KAS katutaidekartalla näet myös aiemmin Kontula Art School -hankkeen aikana (2019-2025) toteutettujen julkisten ja yhteisöllisten teosten sijainteja ja nimiä. Kuvagallerian prosessikuvien valinnassa olen käyttänyt (tutkimus)eettistä harkintaa. Olen myös halunnut nostaa esille erityisesti erään työparin teosta, joka kärsi maalausprosessin aikana sekä töhrimisestä että kriittisesti keskeneräisen teoksen päälle ennenaikaisesti levitetyn suoja-aineen ja sen poistamisen aiheuttamista vahingoista.

Insubordinate Costume: Inspiring Performance presents a comprehensive study of historical and contemporary examples of scenographic costume – the type of costume that creates an almost complete stage environment by itself, simultaneously acting as costume, set and performance. This book provides readers with an overview of the costumes, designers, context and theory that have contributed to the emerging field of ‘costume as performance’. Focusing on artists and their creative approach to space, form, materials and movement, the book looks at iconic figures such as Loie Fuller, Oskar Schlemmer and Leigh Bowery, amongst contemporary examples of practitioners that are blurring disciplinary boundaries between fashion, dance, performance and theatre. The book includes chapters by Dr Sofia Pantouvaki, who focuses on performance costume as a means of research; Christina Lindgren, who presents the findings of the four-year Costume Agency project at Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway; Charlotte Østergaard, who discusses the implications of 'Listening with costume' and Felix Choong, writing on 'Contemporary Runways, Contemporary Costumes'. The final part of the volume, 'The Practitioners’ Voice', examines current practice through interviews and contributions from key practitioners.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we, in our role as lecturers, conducted hybrid workshops with design and art students from ten partner institutions on five continents. Our goal was to explore soundscapes from different viewpoints, and we were deeply impressed by the outcome. The recordings and their accompanying images and conversations dissolved geographical borders along with social, cultural, and structural differences. We found that a re-sonance or con-sonance emerged from this collective work, in which sounds became manifestations of presence and agency; the sociality and simultaneity of the space we shared together remains with us today. With becoming soundscape, we attempted to bring the social resonance we had experienced in the workshops into the lecture hall.

Kunstens grenser. Prosjektet er både er performativt og diskursivt: Kunstliturgien er en undersøkelse av kirkerommets potensial som kunstarena og en utprøving av kunstens grenser og stedsforandrende kraft i kirkerommet som offentlig rom. Man kan si at kirken befinner seg i et estetisk vakuum. Dette eventuelle tomrom kan tenkes som et mulighetsrom. Kirkemusikerens performative potensial. Prosjektet er samtidig en undersøklese av kirkemusikerens performative potensial. Prosjektet innbefatter en ambisjon om å utvikle og utvide organistens rolle og utvikle en performativ estetikk for musikere, basert på egne erfaringer og kunstnerisk utvikling av rituelt musikkteater og liturgisk orgelspill. Utvikling av liturgisk musikk. Som del av det kunstneriske utviklingsarbeidet inngår samarbeid med et utvalg komponister- der vi i fellesskap vil utvikle musikalske material og konsepter, spesialskrevet for prosjektet og meg som utøver. Kunst og religion. Kirken var, en gang i tiden, stedet for kunst. Er det fortsatt slik? I lys av Reformasjonsjubileet i 2017, innehar prosjektet, på et overordnet plan, en refleksjon over spennet mellom samtidskunsten og kirkekunsten siden reformasjonen, i norsk kontekst. Parallelt er Kunstliturgien en undersøkelse og refleksjon over forholdet mellom tro og kunst, estetikk og religion. Prosjektet har også en spirituell og eksistensiell ambisjon: Kunstliturgien er en undersøkelse av kunstens transformerende dimensjon.

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The Boundaries of Art The project is both performative and discursive: The Art Liturgy is an exploration of the church space’s potential as an arena for art, and an examination of the boundaries of art and its transformative power within the church as a public space. One might say that the church exists in an aesthetic vacuum. This possible emptiness can be understood as a space of possibility. The Performative Potential of the Church Musician At the same time, the project investigates the performative potential of the church musician. It includes an ambition to develop and expand the role of the organist and to cultivate a performative aesthetic for musicians, based on personal experience and artistic development within ritual music theatre and liturgical organ performance. Development of Liturgical Music As part of the artistic development work, the project involves collaboration with selected composers — together we will develop musical materials and concepts, written specifically for the project and for me as a performer. Art and Religion The church was, once upon a time, the place for art. Is that still the case? In light of the Reformation Jubilee in 2017, the project carries, on an overarching level, a reflection on the tension between contemporary art and church art since the Reformation, in a Norwegian context. In parallel, The Art Liturgy serves as an inquiry and reflection on the relationship between faith and art, aesthetics and religion. The project also holds a spiritual and existential ambition: The Art Liturgy is an exploration of art’s transformative dimension.

Having departed from the idea of exploring the subject of “childhood politics” and memory (topics that both Anja Suša and Dejan Kaludjerović have been interested in and invested in through their own artistic practices in theatre and visual arts, as well as in this collaboration), they soon found themselves caught up in the discussion about artistic mandates and the potential artistic format as the output of the research project. The discussion became so intense that it entirely changed the focus of the collaboration—from the content of the project to collaborative protocols—and finally landed in what is best described by Claire Bishop as the “Grey Zone,” which can also be understood as a liminal space between contemporary artistic practices in the fields of performing and visual arts. Coming from the ideologies of the Black Box and the White Cube, which have been further reinforced by many years of institutional practice that still revolves around the idea of formal artistic education and artistic mandates, the artists soon realized that they wanted to embark on the journey of reinventing themselves in the artistic field of the “other,” despite the lack of formal training or any previous experience. They tried to explore the possibility of entering each other’s art fields based solely on artistic experience, and not on any particular art training.