Photograph by Paul Warcho
NORDIC OUTBREAK visits Finland’s Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and Media Facades Festival Helsinki.
The traveling exhibition Nordic Outbreak presented Nordic video art in public space in New York in March-April 2013. Together with 32 Nordic video and media artists, including Eija-Liisa Ahtila, J. Tobias Anderson, Jeannette Ehlers, Vibeke Jensen, Jesper Just, Hannu Karjalainen, Dan Lestander, Egill Sæbjönsson, Superflex and others, the event explored the contemporary dynamics in Nordic moving image and the new modes of exhibition in the digital age.
During coming autumn the Nordic Outbreak shall set on a tour around Nordic countries. The tour starts in Helsinki at the end of August, with a selection of Nordic Outbreak videos on show in screenings at Kiasma (20.8.–1.9.) and Media Facades Helsinki Festival (22.–25.8.). A mini-seminar on media art in public space shall also take place at Kiasma on Wednesday the 21st of August.
Nordic Outbreak has been curated and produced by Tanya Toft, Associate Curator at Streaming Museum and Ph.D. Fellow at Copenhagen University, and Nina Colosi, Creative Director and Founder of Streaming Museum in collaboration with a Nordic advisory team of curators (Daniela Arriado, Birta Gudjonsdottir, Kati Kivinen & Jacob Lillemose). The visit of Nordic Outbreak to Helsinki is organized by Streaming Museum, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and Media Facades Festival Helsinki.
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, architect Stephen Holl
The concept of Kiasma involves the building’s mass intertwining with the geometry of the city and landscape which are reflected in the shape of the building. An implicit cultural line curves to link the building to Finlandia Hall while it also engages a “natural line” connecting to the back landscape and Töölö Bay. In the landscape plan, extending the bay up to the building will provide an area for future civic development along this tapering body of water, which also serves as a reflecting pool for Finlandia Hall and new development along the south edge of the water. The horizontal light of northern latitudes is enhanced by a waterscape that would serve as an urban mirror, thereby linking the museum to Helsinki’s Töölö heart, which on a clear day, in Aalto’s word’s, “extends to Lapland.” The changes in elevation proposed with the water extension and it shallow depth would allow for parking decks and/or highway linkages which are presently part of various planning considerations.
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