Research Catalogue

The research explores 'ornamenting' as a transferable method in inter-disciplinary studies, inter-faith dialogues and artistic/therapeutic practices. Adapting techniques of Renaissance musicology, the processes we have developed de-create and re-create vital connections. It is a communica-tions strategy for times of crisis. Starting with simple sonic relations we extend the method far be-yond its traditional musical setting. The practice utilises 'Nothingness' as a component of creativity, providing a novel response to figurations of nothingness as mere negation. Preliminary results sug-gest its potential as a counter force to nihilism and social dislocation. The work divides into four areas. 1. Primary research on relationships between sound, meaning, and the sense(s) of self, exploring how sense is made of Otherness via processes akin to musical praxis: consonance, dissonance, 'pure voice' and ornamentation. 2. To apply this new perspective to a range of exile experiences – mourning, social disconnection, ex-communication and aggres-sive 'Othering'. 3. To investigate the cancelling of normal time-conditions in crisis situations such as trauma, dementia, and mystical experience, relating non-linear temporality to creative practice and healing. 4. To widely disseminate our results and methods as contributions to the methodology of artistic research via journal articles, live workshops and performances, and a book of original, praxical, testable, and teach-able interventions.

(EN) "Imperial coffe breaks" is a transdisciplinary seminar format that deals with challenges of perception and possible transformations of academic time and space, using a ritual as example of shared identities and multiplicities. A Greek coffee is a Turkish coffee, a Palestinian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Bosnian, Armenian, Cypriot and more. Grinded a bit more finely or a bit more roughly, served in a cup with or without a handle, with cardamon or not, with sugar or without. During our meetings we prepare and serve this coffee with the multiple “originalities”, while we discuss written and oral histories and practices around the beverage. Starting from the Ethiopian berry that spread with the Ottoman Empire, the bean that still holds a strong presence in Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Balkans, the powder that comes to foam and its local variations, we will talk about other Empires, slavery, cargo boats, plantations, corporates and associations/meanings/roles/origins of coffee trade and consumption in our daily routines. As this kind of coffee is traditionally also served in memorials, we will inevitably discuss loss and grief. We will also talk about relations to the future through tasseography (cup reading divination) that is another strong tradition. We will look at epistemological effects, ways we construct truth and meaning and ways to work with random patterns. Finally, we will exercise cleaning up our mess after the gatherings. Through sharing and rotating the roles, we will practice rituals of togetherness and empathy, thinking with coffee and with each other, about the origins and futures of otherwise unremarkable things in our daily life. (DE) „Imperial coffe breaks“ ist ein transdisziplinäres Seminarformat, das sich mit den Herausforderungen der Wahrnehmung und möglichen Transformationen von akademischen Zeiten und Räumen befasst und dabei ein Ritual als Beispiel für gemeinsame Identitäten und Verschiedenheiten verwendet. Ein griechischer Kaffee ist ein türkischer Kaffee, ein palästinensischer, ägyptischer, libanesischer, bosnischer, armenischer, zyprischer, kurdischer. Etwas feiner oder etwas gröber gemahlen, in einer Tasse mit oder ohne Henkel, mit Kardamom oder ohne, mit Zucker oder ohne. Bei unseren Treffen bereiten wir diesen Kaffee mit den vielfältigen „Eigenheiten“ zu und servieren ihn, während wir über schriftliche und mündliche Überlieferungen und Praktiken rund um das Getränk diskutieren. Ausgehend von der äthiopischen Kaffeebeere, die sich mit dem Osmanischen Reich verbreitete, über die Bohne, die im östlichen Mittelmeerraum, in Nordafrika und auf dem Balkan nach wie vor stark vertreten ist, bis hin zum Pulver, das aufgeschäumt wird, und seinen lokalen Variationen, werden wir über andere Reiche, Sklaverei, Frachtschiffe, Plantagen, Unternehmen und Vereinigungen/Bedeutungen/Rollen/Ursprünge des Kaffeehandels und -konsums in unserem Alltag sprechen. Da diese Art von Kaffee traditionell auch bei Gedenkfeiern serviert wird, werden wir unweigerlich über Verlust und Trauer sprechen. Wir werden auch über die Beziehung zur Zukunft durch Tasseografie (Wahrsagen aus dem Kaffesatzlesen) sprechen, die eine weitere starke Tradition ist. Wir werden uns mit erkenntnistheoretischen Effekten befassen, mit der Art und Weise, wie wir Wahrheit und Bedeutung konstruieren, und mit der Art und Weise, wie wir mit zufälligen Mustern arbeiten. Schliesslich werden wir üben, nach den Versammlungen aufzuräumen. Durch das Teilen und das Rotieren der Rollen werden wir Rituale der Zusammengehörigkeit und Empathie praktizieren und mit Kaffee und miteinander über die Ursprünge und die Zukunft von ansonsten unauffälligen Dingen in unserem täglichen Leben nachdenken.

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 reducing 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)

theory practice theorize practice practice theory ... By using any of these words I am establishing an order of importance among them. My body cannot vocalize two of them at the same time. How in the world can this terrible order of things be abolished? How can we relate to a possible merge of the dichotomy theory/practice through language?

The theory & practice affair: this is piece "16" from the series "x out of 5448643200", and it is an arrangement of 16 possible combinations among 5448643200 available of the letters {p, r, a, c, t, i, c, e, t, h, e, o, r, y}. These letters make the word 'practicetheory', and also the word 'theorypractic'e. In fact, none of these two words exist, and yet are identifiable 'theory' and 'practice' as constitutive halves within them. Discourse not only describes the world but actually produces the world. We, as researchers and as artists - and particularly as artist-researchers - are in permanent tension with the two blocks, theory and practice, and despite our struggles to merge both, we are, through language, every time referring to one after the other. One after the other, in a hierarchy. We cannot speak the two words at the same time and, unless we invent a new word to refer to the crossbreed of the two, we are condemned to this limiting dichotomy. "x out of 5448643200" presents the hypothesis of billions of possibilities to re-write the productive merging of theory and practice. "16" shows sixteen of them (Thanks to Steve Norton and Robert Stevenson for collaboration)

White to Earth, 2020