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* Shake, shake, shake it all out * Dancer–researcher Simo Vassinen from BodyTalk has created four short reset exercises for us. You can use them to tune yourself in at any moment to digest something, start something or to shift your mind through your body – to kick off a Festival session you are hosting, or to reset yourself between the sessions. Use them beyond the Festival: in the middle of the work day, to start a meeting, to brush off the day. They’ve been tried, tested and loved in the Untitled community.

Rave Shake, Walk in the Dark, Talk Gibberish and Breathe & Hold – which one will you try first?

To learn more about the thinking behind these excercises, check Simo’s session at Untitled Festival 2020: Re-imagining The Body by Simo Vassinen [FI / DE]

Music: S Ruston feat. Lucky Pete’s Lovers – Narcosexual [used with kind permission of the artist]

Website:   https: //www.togetheralonefi. com / round-i-selected-projects /  bodytalk

 

This was a session at Untitled Festival 2020.

In this discussion, Indy Johar will present a hypothesis that building a new relationship with ourselves and the world around us is both fundamental and possible to avoid the self termination of society.

Indy Johar is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Dark Matter Labs  – a multidisciplinary design team working with partners, clients, and collaborators across the world to develop new working methods for system change. Dark Matter Labs is focussed on the great transitions our societies need to respond to the technological revolution and climate breakdown we face. They aim to discover, design and develop the institutional ‘dark matter’ that supports a more democratic, distributed and sustainable future across five domains of exploration: Cities, Finance, Institutions, Experiments and Education [Source: https://darkmatterlabs.org / Projects]

Twitter: @indy_johar, @DarkMatter_Labs

Website: https://darkmatterlabs.org/projects

Photo: Indy Johar LinkedIn (c)

 

 

This was a session at Untitled Festival 2020.

At UNTITLED, Mari Keski-Korsu will enact a performative intervention called ‘Holding Space with Yarrow’. It is a participatory and performative session that engages with yarrow through foot baths, hydro bodies and meditation. Yarrow (Siankärsämö) is one of the oldest plant remedies in Nordic region and is considered to help with many illnesses and conditions. The plant has about 150 names in Finnish, all describing its different features. The names connect linguistically to the Baltic Sea area healing culture that is documented in poems and stories. Yet what may this powerful plant, which many consider merely a weed, mean for us today? How could its voice be heard in human communities?

Images: Ida Enegren / Frame Contemporary Art Finland.

The session can accommodate 15 people per session; 5 on site and 10 online. The sessions are not suitable for anyone allergic to asters (composite plants). If you’re taking part in Holding Space with Yarrow online, please prepare your foot bath in advance. You can consider this as a ritual towards our time together – making something ready for yourself with a lot of positive energy and love.

Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation Licence

Collect about four handfuls of yarrow flowers and leaves from your yard or nearby park. In urban areas, the best places to find yarrow are abandoned sites where grass is not cut. If you can’t find the flowers anymore, search for the leaves. Remember to respect the plant and don’t collect everything, leave something to continue growing, too.

To prepare your foot bath:
– Add the yarrow into a litre of hot water
– Leave it for about 20 minutes
– Pour the hot yarrow water into a washing basin and add enough water for it to reach your ankles.
– Don’t put your feet in the bath right away, let’s do that together
– Have a towel and pair of clean, warm socks ready by the side
– As we start our session, sit comfortably on your chair so that you can see the screen to connect with everyone and your footpath is close to your reach.

Mari Keski-Korsu is a transdisciplinary artist who explores how ecological changes manifest in Everyday life. The work is based on Collaborations with different kinds of communities, individuals and species. Her medium of expression is a hybrid combination of performance, visual arts and live art. Her current practice for several years now, is focused on interspecies communication and care, aiming to enable empathy towards whole ecosystems. She is interested in intersections in between art, activism and science from permaculture and ecofeminist perspectives. In 2020 -2022, she is an artist member of an art & science team working in the Access Abisko program in sub-Arctic Sweden, researching on how climate breakdown affects values ​​and rituals.

More about Mari Keski-Korsu and her art at marikeskikorsu.net .

More about Holding space with Yarrow at www.artsufartsu.net/akantupakilla-lahirohtola

Twitter: @real_mkk

Photos: Ida Enegren / Frame Contemporary Art Finland.

Related UNTITLED Agenda Tracks : Reimagining Human, Reimagining Climate

 

How we think about the future determines how we act today. For a long time, the prevailing belief has been that we are living in the age of TINA – T here I s N o A lternative. However, the rise of populism, Fridays for the Future and, more recently, the coronavirus crisis, are only the most recent developments to demonstrate that a vivid competition about alternative Futures has begun.

In this conversation, we will reflect upon different conceptions of the future – from progressivism to collapsology – and think about why and how we should include future generations in today’s policy making.

The conversation will be Hosted by Paulina Fröhlich, Head of the Program “Future of Democracy” at Progressives Zentrum, and Paul Jürgensen, Project Manager at Progressives Zentrum. Das Progressives Zentrum is a Berlin-based, non-profit think tank devoted to promoting effective policies for social progress.

Twitter: @PaulinaFrohlich , @pauljuergensen , @DPZ_Berlin

Website: progressives-zentrum.org

Should we always dance first and then talk? Can our nighttime bodies and Fantasies inform the Everyday? What happens inside us when a beat drops and goes on, and on, and on, and on? This conversation looks into raves, techno music, states of ecstasy, the power of monotonous repetition and collective dancing as sources and tools to open up new perspectives and mindshifts for digesting societal realities and moving into different futures. We will spend time remembering our own dances, taking Moments to Breathe, listening, perhaps doing a techno shake to dust off and guide our thinking. When were you last in a state of ecstasy? What triggered it and what happened afterwards? What were your first and your latest dances?

NB: You don’t need to be a Raver, witch or Shaman to have this conversation – we all have a body and we all spend time with other bodies. How and why should we bring the body into the core of thinking?

Simo Vassinen (FI / DE) is a dancer, writer and former Futures researcher. He has investigated mental health, subculture codes, nostalgia and ecology through self-taught physicality and journalistic performances. Starting to dance and perform professionally at the tender age of 31 opened a whole new world for Simo – he belives that everything always Returns to the body, and we can connect many dots through movement, dances and other physical practices. In a time thrilled by newnewnew technologies, Simo thinks that the technologies of the body have Endless masses of Uncharted land that are craving to be explored. His recently initiated project Bodytalk with dance artist Maria F. Scaroni (DE / IT) and futurist Roope Mokka (FI) looks for connection points between dance practices and Futures studies.

Website:  https: //www.togetheralonefi. com / round-i-selected-projects / bodytalk

The city of Helsinki and its citizens have received a brand new vision for arts and culture reaching the year 2030. Created by an independent committee consisting of high-level professionals, it is now being facilitated for discussion by city officials. The core vision is that Helsinki is seen to hold art and culture at the heart of good living and city development. We want to open up for discussion the measures needed so that in 2030:

  • In a constantly changing reality, art helps Helsinki know itself, imagine alternative worlds and build paths to the future.
  • Art helps challenge familiar models and find new solutions for the City’s operations and planning
  • The City knows how to utilize art-based methods, and artists help in many ways in the planning of the urban environment, in the social and health sector and in education.

As a measurable goal, the vision suggests: “the City of Helsinki will introduce the expertise of artists and the utilization of art-based methods in the development of the city across divisions”. The key issue we want to discuss with you is how to achieve this. What are the extreme Theoretical limits of arts and culture in societal problem Solving? What could be the concrete actions actualizing that potential?

Everyone with interest, experience, knowledge or creative thinking is welcome to join the discussion. Knowledge of art-based methods and understanding of how to create change in established processes is valued. Join us visioning and finding pathways to a world where arts and culture can be a tool for a new and superior way of problem Solving. A world where the fields of arts and culture are a solution, rather than a (resource) problem.

 There’s huge potential in unlocking the problem Solving capacity of arts and culture. The know-how and skills of arts and culture are underutilized widely in the society. We need Courage and measures to bring together skills and methodology from different fields of society – arts & culture, politics, science & education, business – in order to solve complex problems better.

 The session is Hosted by the city of Helsinki’s Sector of Culture and Leisure. The operations of the sector emphasize freedom. The freedom to choose, to be yourself and to do the things that interest you the now. Your hosts will be  Mari Männistö [Culture Director of Helsinki] and Christian Sannemann [Participation Specialist].

Websites: Read the vision here , News item about publication

 

Papana & Norkko are two fictive Siberian Flying squirrels (ie Flying squirrels!) Living in Solkivuori forest, Tampere, Finland (that is Solkivuori’s Collaborative Flying squirrel care and protection forest). They are professionals of forestry, legislation, bureaucracy and unconventional co-operations.

In their own words:

“During the festival days we are having a round table discussion with human and other-than-human experts. On our discussion agenda we have common-to-many-species-things that shape our shared Futures, such as hunger, roots / flying and sustainable livelihoods.

We have done research for the discussions by making some future-leap-Flying-Orientation-interviews for Untitled community and participants. You can see some digested fragments on our internet-influencing-channels Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter. We will continue in making the interviews after the Festival. If you wish to be interviewed by two Siberian Flying squirrels, please contact them through metsaesitys@gmail.com

Our mission is to stop the ongoing mass extinctions threatening both squirrels and humans. To further our goal, we have started developing ways for human–Siberian Flying squirrel -co-operation. One way is to learn to use human platforms to create spaces for interspecies utopian conversations. We believe this will commit to nourishing the political imaginations of our multispecies societies.

“Anything is possible for a squirrel with an agenda! Everything is possible for a squirrel who has an agenda!” “Kaikki on mahdollista oravalle, jolla on esityslista!”

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Papana & Norkko are created by the Metsäesitys collective (Milla Martikainen and Katri Puranen).

www.forestation.wordpress.com

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube

Related UNTITLED Agenda Tracks : Reimagining Human, Climate

Photos: Flying squirrels Papana alias Milla Martikainen and Norkko alias Katri Puranen (c)

As the world is in Transformation just including people to current projects and institutions is not enough. The right way would be to build a more just world together. We want to invite people to explore what comes after diversity and inclusion, how to centralize the marginalized and take on big issues such as just and fair distribution of value in the urban setting: in urban planning, in housing, in services, in public spaces and in work. When a new building is built, who benefits? Is the value distributed evenly and is there feedback to quality and Sustainability, 

How about the people who live in the neighborhood? The people who walk by? Do the buildings provide something good for the cities and communities? For whom do they provide something? The rich? The well off?

YLVA focuses on real estate and financial investments along with the hotel and restaurant sector. It is owned by the Student Union of the University of Helsinki and its profits are used to promote student activities. [ Source: ylva.fi ]

Website: https://ylva.fi/

Twitter: @YlvaHelsinki

Images: YLVA (c)

What would a circular city look like if we started with people rather than materials? What would a Circular city look like if we designed for circular behavior? This is a shopping street where buying used children’s clothes is as easy, fun, and enjoyable as buying new clothes. It is a housing area where it is as easy to discard your waste as it is to connect with a neighbor to exchange small kitchen appliances. It is ground floor units where you can contribute to production (food, content, ideas) as you can consume (coffee, electronics, clothing). It is a community where healthy, sustainable, Delicious food is as affordable and plentiful as unhealthy, unsustainable Delicious food.

The city is the place in which these individual choices will be made. How might we design for the environments in which sustainable behavior is the default choice? How could we create better Collaboration between both the public and private companies and citizens to collect share the burdens of this Massive transition? How do we design for new structures, forms of Collaboration, urban systems Results from the session will be a starting point for a roadmap that will be open and publicly available online. How could the idea be experimented with? What else should change in order for what we imagined to become true?

Designers, entrepreneurs, corporations, city officials and economists interested in re-defining urban commerce would find this session interesting. We are interested in this approach because the circular economy holds endless potential, but current discourse, innovation, and focus appeals to technocrats and not to the Everyday consumers who will be key to realizing the potential. hy are you interested in the idea personally? Why do you think it has transformative capacity?

SONY DSC

The session will be Hosted by Gehl CIO Jeff Risom and Director Liselott Stenfeldt, both are part of Gehl Innovation which focuses on establishing new partnerships and to use innovative tools and methods in order to reimagine concrete future scenarios for our Cities. Gehl is a human-centered urban consulting company based in Copenhagen, New York and San Francisco. Our focus is to create better Cities for people and to create beneficial relationships between People’s quality of life and their built environment.

Twitter handles: @citiesforpeople , @jeff_risom ,@liselott 

Website:  www.gehlpeople.com

Photos: Gehl (c)

Our idea is to create large lifestyle housing for people that want to go to zero-carbon and live with nature with gardening as well as produce food with modern aquaponic methods. This would increase the speed of sustainable lifestyle change due to peer-learning and innovation and less need for leisure travel. This idea has transformative capacity as it can bring together people and thus speed up innovation to jump to sustainable lifestyles. And we believe this can be done at a mass affordable scale with a carbon-neutral wooden construction.

The idea can be experimented with choosing a few existing housing companies primarily people who have a desire to live ecologically and with nature and using that as the Testbed for things to have in new developments. This session should be interesting for anyone in architecture, construction, food production, property, city or urban planning, as well as people who want to live in the zero-carbon future.  

The Y-Foundation is a Developer and Global Forerunner of the Housing First principle. The Y-Foundation offers affordable rental housing in Finland. 

Twitter handles:  @JKaakinen  @lassyj  @kimmoronka

Website:  https://ysaatio.fi/en/y-foundation

Images:  The Y-Foundation (c)