2-4 May, HIAP Suomenlinna

Recent decades have seen human rights violated and restricted under pressure of political and economic interests. PEN has a long tradition of organizing “Writers-in-Exile” residencies. Today there are also many artist dissidents in need of “asylum”, who work visually rather than in writing. As the Director of the Visual Culture Research Center (Kiev, Ukraine), Vasyl Cherepanyn, said at the Freedom of Speech conference at HIAP Suomenlinna in September 2012:

Compared with the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, recent social movements follow a line that separates the image from the word, the visual turn, away from the linguistic.

HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme now invites interested partners to join in a three-day meeting in Helsinki to discuss the possibility of creating a network of NORDIC ART ASYLUM Residencies. The aim is to offer temporary residencies for visual artists, film makers, curators and cultural theorists who have been forced to leave their own countries for reasons related to their artistic practice.

Participants in the meeting are particularly expected from residency organizations, large or small, and from other cultural institutions interested in developing the Asylum Residency concept. Individual artists, curators and other arts professionals are also welcome.

The meeting will discuss the various ethical, practical, financial and legal issues that have to be considered when planning an Asylum Residency programme. Based on the outcomes of the meeting, the aim is to develop a concrete proposal for a pilot programme for Art Asylum Residencies. It is envisaged that the first phase of the residencies will mainly be organized with Nordic and Baltic partners, possibly expanding to other parts of Europe at a later stage.

The meeting will start at 5 pm on Thu 2 May 2013 and continue until 1 pm on Sat 4 May 2013.

The programme consists of keynote lectures and facilitated workshops on topics such as Legal Aspects of the asylum seeking processes; Challenges of setting up an artist-asylum scheme; A residency as a “temporary home”, the need to create a social context. The speakers and facilitators include Morten Goll (Trampoline House, Copenhagen) and Iida Siimes (Pen, Helsinki).

The NORDIC ART ASYLUM network meeting is a continuation of the Freedom of Speech: Perspectives in Contemporary Art in Europe conference held in summer 2012 at HIAP Suomenlinna as part of the Paths Crossing project, which was funded by the EU Culture Programme. The meeting is being co-curated by independent curator Marita Muukkonen and HIAP.

The meeting is being organized with support from Nordic Culture Point.