recent activities
KAS-kuvagalleria (Taking Some Space) - Heidi Hänninen (2025)
(2025)
Heidi Hänninen
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
(2025)
Susan Marshall
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.
recent publications
Fractured Curation: On the Cost of Discontinuity
(2025)
Dorian Vale
Fractured Curation: On the Cost of Discontinuity
Author: Dorian Vale
In Fractured Curation, Dorian Vale exposes the silent violence of discontinuity in institutional exhibition-making. Drawing from the principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism, this essay critiques not the art on display, but the fragmented and careless curatorial strategies that sever meaning, rupture context, and erode ethical witness.
Focusing on spatial logic, visual sequencing, and the absence of coherent narrative threading, Vale reveals how curation can either dignify or disfigure the viewing experience. When works that bear trauma, memory, or moral weight are mishandled—isolated from their context or stitched into spectacle—the institution itself becomes a site of erasure.
This essay stands as a manifesto for curatorial reverence. It reclaims the role of the exhibition not as entertainment or aesthetic collage, but as a moral architecture—one that must be approached with continuity, restraint, and care. The cost of ignoring this? A public who walks through beauty without bearing its consequence.
Vale, Dorian. Fractured Curation: On the Cost of Discontinuity. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.16996506
This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)
Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, fractured curation, curatorial ethics, art exhibition critique, museum responsibility, trauma in curatorial practice, continuity in curation, moral proximity in exhibition design, witnessing through curation, ethical curation, spatial narrative in museums, careless curation, art and erasure, institutional critique, aesthetic sequencing, exhibition as architecture, custodial art criticism, reverent exhibition design, post-critical museum theory, viewer disorientation, discontinuity in art spaces
How do chairs lead to extinction?
(2025)
Sonya Levchynska
Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2025
BA Interior Architecture and Furniture Design
Summary (8968)
Five Principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism: A Study Guide
(2025)
Dorian Vale
This concise study guide introduces the foundational framework of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC)—a new aesthetic philosophy that centers presence, moral proximity, and restraint in the practice of art criticism. Developed by Dorian Vale, the guide breaks down PIC into five core principles:
Restraint over Interpretation
Witness over Commentary
Moral Proximity over Objectivity
Viewer as Evidence
Rejection of Performance
Each principle is accompanied by a brief case study, reflection exercise, and ethical commentary, making this guide suitable for students, educators, curators, and critics seeking to apply PIC in the field. Instead of decoding the artwork, this framework encourages a posture of reverent presence, allowing the artwork to retain its autonomy and moral gravity.
This resource is designed to be taught, discussed, and practiced. It supports classrooms, curatorial programs, writing workshops, and museum education—inviting a new generation of viewers to approach art with humility, silence, and philosophical depth.
Vale, Dorian. Five Principles of Post-Interpretive Criticism: A Study Guide. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17077734
This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)
Post-Interpretive Criticism, study guide, art education, critical theory, Dorian Vale, aesthetic philosophy, viewer as evidence, slow looking, ethical criticism, trauma in art, art pedagogy, witness-based art criticism, art classroom resource, art and ethics, moral proximity, presence over interpretation, contemporary criticism, museum education, poetic criticism, art curriculum