How does participation in contemporary art negotiate, renew and produce social relations? With their focus on questions rather than solutions, encounters rather than objects, much of contemporary art practices activate the threshold between private and public while initiating momentary communities and empathic ruptures.

The discussion draws together recent and ongoing projects from HIAP, Gallery Sinne and Kiasma. The guest speaker, philosopher and art critic Lars-Eric Hjertström Lappalainen from Stockholm responds to the current exhibition at Sinne by the artist group Good TV. In the daily evolving exhibition reality and fiction are combined to recreate the rhizome-like structures of the internet: a mythical event creates a point in time, which is then woven together with daily news from newsletters and television and finally retold to the audience.

The guest speaker, philosopher and art critic Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen responds to the current exhibition at Sinne by the collective Good TV and will be joined in the discussion by the curators Taru Elfving (HIAP) and Leevi Haapala (Kiasma), who critically reflect on the challenges and potential of participatory art projects with case studies of productions for Kiasma’s Camouflage exhibition and in HIAP residencies.

The event is part of the HIAP project Arts De Signs – Signalling Art as Social Design and Helsinki Design Week and it is organised in the frame of the World Design Capital Helsinki 2012.

The event launches HIAP Talks: Public Matters, a series of debates and dialogues that focuses during 2012-13 on the acute concerns around the changing notion of the public and, in particular, its manifestations in and impact on the field of contemporary art. The invited international speakers bring to the table different critical perspectives and creative approaches, which allow insights into the practices and politics that affect our understanding and inhabitation of the public today.

The monthly talks are curated by Taru Elfving and organised by HIAP (Helsinki International Artists Programme) in collaboration with Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and other partners. They take place at Kiasma seminar room with a few noted exceptions.