Verbal Art

A short New Years greeting from me in Copenhagen, with a small public-service announcement of how the podcast is continuing after this holiday. Thank you for listening, talk to you next year! For questions, comments, or other feedback, write me on verbal.art@protonmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I meet Oskar Partanen in Annantalo in Helsinki, to see his solo exhibition Self Titled and talk about his cute but eerie sculptures that move and make sounds. His creatures live side-by-side in one room, but somehow seem to all exist within each their own universe. We talk about repurposed items, pragmatic choices in materials, and Oskar explains how he has hacked electronic audio devices and buil...

Today on the podcast, I have little treat! As a Christmas present, I made a live recording of an exclusive, improvised Christmas collage concert! I am layering five Finnish Christmas cassette tapes, all played on old, analogue tape players, to sculpt a new old holiday sound for you to enjoy while you are waiting for Christmas Eve. There is a lot of old gold in the mix, but everything is in Finnish...

I return to Asbestos Art Space in Helsinki, to see Kamila Śladowska's solo exhibition Growing Interconnectedness , which has turned the gallery into a surreal painting installation of water, plants, and morphed shapes of naked, human bodies. Kamila tells about foraging herbs and finding inspiration in nature's ecosystems, and guides us through her assemblage of deconstructed paintings and sculptur...

I meet Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa in Oodi library in Helsinki, to talk about her video work Nanita, para siempre . Paola explains how her Colombian roots grew stronger while living in Finland, and how she keeps a close connection to her family by making them a focal point in her art. We discuss different techniques for working with film- and video, and Paola talks about the process, and feelin...

In this crossover episode with OOO Radio (Out of Office), James Prevett guides me through his exhibition Together With in Forum Box gallery in Helsinki. James explains how ongoing collaborations with other artists, the public, and his daughter, helps him reconsider and reinvent himself as sculptor, teacher and curator, as we look at years of different initiatives of socially engaged sculpture disp...

I finally sit down with Niko Nordström, to talk about his solo performance This Is Why I'm Late , in The Theatre Academy in Helsinki. We talk through his semi-fictionalised self-portrait of monologues about clocks, dreams and the struggles between thought and time, all the while dipping into the history of structured time; the societal needs for, and science behind, these structures. Niko explains...

I join Tangmo's participatory performance memory field in The Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, and meet her there later to unpack it. Together we talk through the performance from beginning to end, and Tangmo expands on how she developed the project and incorporated multiple collaborations with other Thai artists. She tells about the horrific background of the piece: The Thammasat Massacre in 197...

I take a walk on Vallisaari island with Myriam Gras and Cyane Findji, to look at a selection of works from Helsinki Biennial 2023 . They have organised a series of guided tours for the exhibition, with focus on more site-specific works. Their project, Navigating Turbulence ~ towards the making of place , also contains a publication and a sound piece. We talk about the island's many functions; mili...

I visit the Bachelor's Degree Show in The Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, to talk to Sara Rantanen about her sculptural installation that she activates with performances. She tells about self-discoveries in her recent transition from painting to performance art, using her body as a research tool, and we discuss how a change in medium can affect the way you approach not only your work but also yo...

Verbal Art is back after a short hiatus - I could not keep up with my schedule... I have my first ever return guest on the podcast, Harriina Räinä, this time I visit her solo exhibition Volatile Shells in Hippolyte Studio in Helsinki (check Verbal Art episode 5 for my first interview with Harriina, in Helsinki Art Museum). She explains how she is continuing her research on relationships between hu...

Sorry, I had to skip this week because my master's thesis deadline took all I had to give! And I had the flu. So episode 37 will come next Wednesday instead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I visit Ana Gutieszca in her studio in Helsinki, where she gives us a listen through her electronic music gear, and talks about her love of noise and drum machines. We also take a look at her animal drawings, and she explains how she turns her drawings into sound by using the electric conductivity of graphite and her own custom-built devices. We discuss the aspects of time and flow in music making...

David Lundström Nabel shows me his very large sculpture in the group exhibition Yhtäkiä - Suhduhnle in Kuva/Tila gallery in Helsinki. David explains how he transported a massive cable drum through the city and into the gallery, and talks us through his assembly of different materials and found objects. We discuss what makes a work masculine, if size matters in the exhibition space, and how the dif...

I visit the group exhibition Shall we sleep on this? in Yö Galleria, curated by Chih-Tung Lin. They talk us through the works of the three artists Amanda Lono, Minjee Hwang Kim and Noora Lehtovouri, and tell us all about their curatorial process and decisions of the show. We discuss exhibitions as enduring entities, the non-linear dynamics of group shows, expectations vs. outcome, and how to curat...

I visit Helsinki Art Museum (HAM) again, this time to see Laura Dahlberg's new sci-fi inspired solo exhibition Abiotic Variables feat. Alien Babies . Laura explains how she has used silicone to cast soft robots, and how she learned to use air as a mechanic tool. We also get to know about the crazy, lively material called liquid crystal polymer, and Laura tells the story of how she got to develop h...

I meet Clément Beraud in Helsinki Art Museum (HAM) where he works as exhibition technician. He talks us through the installation of selected works from Helsinki Biennial, explains the practical considerations and tells about what can go wrong in the long, delicate process of transport and re-assembly. We get an insight into the greater ecology of a large gallery and all the people involved in the...

In this second, final part of my self-reflective solo episode, I continue to explain about my current master's thesis project: a site-specific sound art piece on cassette tape, titled The Silence of Sea Tower. I reminisce on all the challenges and wonders I have come across during this year-long engagement, talk about how this whole thing in many ways feels like one big puzzle I am trying to piece...

For this milestone episode I thought it was a good time to check in with myself, and try another round of interviewing myself - exactly one year since the first attempt. And when I talk to myself we never end, so this is a conceptual episode in several chapters. I did two long interviews with myself in my studio in Helsinki, one in the daytime and one in the middle of the night, and then I edited...

I meet Laura Lowe in her studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, to look at her very large paintings of gloomy yet shiny, abstract landscapes. We discuss when a painting is dead or alive, the decay and resurrection of landscape painting in the era of climate change, and Laura tells how she went from self-taught artist to alchemist in the paint lab. She describes the technical process of wo...

I meet Roberto Fusco in HAA Gallery, on the old military island Suomenlinna close to Helsinki, to talk about his and Emma Fält's multimedia installation in the group exhibition Sweet Water, Rough Water. Roberto explains how he has translated numeric data of waves in the ocean into computer animations, and then laser-engraved selected stills onto paper. We talk about the serenity of storms, the poe...

In this experimental participatory-audio-performance-turned-into-podcast episode, I talk to Fjolla Hoxha about her investigative theatre performance What is seen and what’s (left) behind the scene? in Studio Pasila in Helsinki. We learn about the history of Finnish theatre - the Helsinki City Theatre movement in particular - and talk about the invisible labour happening behind the stage. We discus...

I visit Yun-Chen Chang's performance/exhibition Relax on a Shaky Ground , in the White Studio in the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki. We talk about inviting other artists into multidisciplinary collaborations, how to dance with tables, what it takes for an item to change from functional object to art piece or inanimate performer, how many sounds you can produce with one table - and how to avoid bein...

Natalie Hamada talks us through her solo exhibition of serigraphy prints, Tell all the truth but tell it slant , in Myymälä2 gallery in Helsinki, and meanwhile she tells us about her life in Syria, the war, and how she moved to Finland to study her master's in the art academy right when the country shut down for the first lockdown. We learn about her collage-style silk screen-printing technique, w...

This episode is a triptych experiment wherein I visit Madeleine Andersson three times in Helsinki Cable Factory, during her three month artist residency in HIAP. We have an ongoing conversation about her artistic research on - among other things - speculative theory, radical stupidity, petrosexuality and toilet-science, and her first stay in Finland. She talks us through her ideas, challenges and...