WHAT WE DO?
● TAKEN BY THE WIND (2020).
A new project from The Coast Guard Girrls is born simultaneously with the current coronavirus pandemia. We as global people are now suddenly in the situation where we are staying in locked places, being emotional and afraid. All of this feels like a wartime zone. The world we trusted has altered, there is an invisible bad virus attacking us all, hiding in the corners. There is no smell, no taste, nothing to see, but we know it is there. We see the destruction it makes in our hospitals. We have to stay inside, there are no options, we may feel lonely, we are like living outside of our normal lives. But, in another way, this situation reminds the slow creation process of the artists: now at home there is time to evaluate our lives and our past life decisions.
In our ’Taken by the Wind’ project we interview and talk with people, we create new connections, we listen, we write, we draw, and film, because we appreciate and respect the ability of us everyone to think actively. What we as The Coast Guard Girrls would like to find are different options how we as people would like to live actively instead of staying passive in this new situation. Also we are interested in how we, as individuals, see our PostCovidien future? (M.Oja & R.Kevo)
● THE BREATH OF LAND (2020).
Personal video interviews with immigrants who still remember weather & climate conditions in the land of their origin. The videos will be projected in the space, to the transparent and moving curtains, which form situational sculptures. With this work we aim to intercommunication in the multilayered and complex structure of our contemporary society. (M.Oja)
● THE CITIES ON THE MOVE (2020) Question & Answers (Q&A) with the local politicians and urban planners living and working in different coastal EU-cities. Cities, which are under the threat of future sea level rise caused by climate change. These Q&A’s will be shown on the www-pages created for the project. With this project we want to present the preparedness or unpreparedness of the local decision makers and make this knowledge transparent for everyone to see. (R.Kevo)
● Additionally, IN THE WIND (2020). In Manifesta 13 Marseille we are also showing a new media work, In the Wind (2020). The authors of the work are artists Leena and Oula Valkeapää. This video work is a combination of poetry from the fells of Lapland and the Sámi tradition collected and combined with contemporary methods, using mobile phones. Valkeapääs’ work deals with the Sámi people living in Lapland with their unique way of understanding the concept of wind. The Valkeapääs’ work tells a story about the change of indiginious people in climate change. Leena Valleapää works as an environmental artist and Oula Valkeapää continues his family’s tradition of reindeer herding on the fells of Northern Lapland.
WHY?
The coronavirus epidemic is affecting our project. Due to the recent conditions we are dependent on internet information. The separation of people is the highest point of conceptual modern life and the reason for our project is now even clearer than ever before. We want to work for different kinds of solutions and make the world more human and environmentally sustainable as soon as it’s possible. We are looking for the PostCovidien World.
Our earlier ideas in January dealt with how a mass of ecological concern and other problems come from separating things from their origins. Our natural surroundings suffer from the fragmented and fast-paced world of today. We would like to bring back slower personal histories and inherited knowledge to better understand the current situation and seek for the change. We are pondering sudden and odd relationships between people in this climate change era. We are interested in new relationships, which are created by floods, earthquakes, rising sea levels and pandemics, all of which we are all facing voluntarily or not. We also want to take into account new cultural habits and verbal expressions emerging in these complex and multifaceted conditions.
WHERE?
We work in Helsinki and Turku. Also, we work during the biennial nomadic international art event MANIFESTA 13 (when the timetable is confirmed) in Marseille and/or in the other cities in the connection to Manifesta13 Les Parallels Sud in the collateral event ARKAD by Dimora OZ and Analogique (IT).
All our four projects will be shown together in one place, or separated in different places, as a one project by The Coast Guard Girrls.
WHEN?
Between June 2020 and November 2020, exact time will be announced 15.4.2020 for the Manifesta13. (Because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, exhibition places of the different parts of the project will proceed and be confirmed later, in a flexible timetable).
WHO ARE WE?
The group ’The Coast Guard Girrls’ was formed in January 2020 by
• Marjatta Oja, artist-activist-post doc researcher
• Riikka Kevo, designer-activist-analyst
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Internationally published Information of the project, which got postponed due to Covid19-pandemia and got realized remotely in an on-line form www.coastguardgirrls.com :
TAKEN BY THE WIND curated by Dimora OZ
TAKEN BY THE WIND, curtain, fan, two screens, one computer, headphones, video projector and two media players, 2020
TAKEN BY THE WIND is a project by Coast Guard Girrls.
A mass of ecological concern and other problems come from separating things from their origins. Our natural surroundings suffer from the fragmented and fast-paced world of today. We would like to bring back slower personal histories and inherited knowledge to better understand the current situation and seek the change. We are pondering sudden and odd relationships between people. Relationships which are created by floods, earthquakes, rising sea levels, not forgetting the other phenomenon of climate change. Also taking into account new cultural habits and verbal expressions emerging in those conditions.
The first part consists of interviews with immigrants who still remember weather & climate conditions in the land of their origin to be projected in the space to the transparent and moving curtains.
The part second is a Q&A with the local politicians and urban planners living in coastal EU-cities that are under the threat of future sea level rise caused by climate change. Q&A will be shown also on the www-pages created for the project.
The third part is a new version about the series of Manifestations, (See link), focused to the wind. The material comes from the traditional reindeer herding culture on the fells of Northern Lapland, while Oula A. Valkeapää has sent the messages by mobile phone (text and photos) to his partner Leena. They reveal the parallel existence of the everyday and the mysterious through Oula’s experiences. More info https://bioartsociety.fi/projects/splice/pages/leena-and-oula-valkeapaa
KAD PRESENTS ARKAD
Ideated and curated by Dimora OZ and Analogique
KAD (Kalsa Art District) presents, for Manifesta 13 Les Parallèles du Sud, the collateral event ARKAD, curated by Dimora OZ and Analogique.
ARKAD starts on August 28th with an online project that collects different contributions and documentation of the artistic productions located in Marseille and in many other European locations. ARKAD is conceived as a complex device of participation and communication, of production and artistic research. The display in Marseille is a physical and symbolic ark that welcomes and collects projects and that shows the synergies developed in the Mediterranean and, in particular, in the South. ARKAD intends to continue its specific reflection and its exhibition and research characteristic beyond the single cultural event, placing itself as a widespread exercise and experience, able to continue over time and host other projects and artists. The project is distributed between the city of Marseille and other locations, all adhering under the term of Kin Line Legacy, as a network of spaces and projects that, from their respective territories,participate in the plan of ARKAD. ARKAD’s theme represents the architecture of proximity, where true proximity is not attributable only to the physical and material world, but it is realized on subtle and non-Euclidean geometries, beyond the space-time coordinates. According to the suggestions of Timothy Morton, reality is made up of hyper-objects that transcend localization and are perceived in stages. Economy, global warming and pandemics are complex processes whose reality goes beyond the concept of interconnection, cause and effect. Phenomena such as the Entanglement of quantum physics reveal how portions of matter can communicate and synchronize each other even at great distances. ARKAD questions the geometry of meridians and parallels, reflecting on a new exercise of perception of the reality. The device located in Marseille represents a display where the related contributions revolve around dynamic and osmotic geometric shapes. The term ARKAD suggests the architectural element that creates passages and convergences, or augmented realities and design software. Through all these suggestions, ARKAD declares that the world dimension is revealed in synergy and practice, in a perspective capable of overcoming physical limits through – as Donna Haraway suggests – making Kin, the generation of bonds beyond the lineages, taking care of others, overcoming the divisions of race, sex, nation, gender, specie and morphology. If the ark saw the construction of a future in a binary process of copying and pairing, ARKAD is a project that affirms crossing borders to land in a land that has already to emerge, that is already under our feet.
KAD is a network of artists, curators, spaces and cultural operators within the Kalsa area (Kalsa Art District) that developed since the beginning of the events started in 2018 (Manifesta 12, Palermo Italian Capital of Culture). KAD responds to the need of the socio-cultural and urbanistic context of the historic center for an organic and systemic vision of heritage and tangible and intangible assets. KAD is made up of Dimora OZ, Église, PUSH, MeNO, Giuseppe Veniero Project, Rizzuto Gallery, Arteria Mediterranea, L’Altro Artecontemporanea.
Dimora OZ is a transmedia artistic-curatorial group directed by Lori Adragna and Andrea Kantos. Dimora OZ has curated, coordinated and assisted numerous Manifesta 12 collateral events and is a winner of the Italian Council. Analogique is a studio that, through curatorial practice, works in architecture, landscape and urban design. After participating in several projects at the Venice Biennale, at the Farm Cultural Park and Manifesta 12, for Manifesta 13 they designed the pneumatic device of ARKAD.
ARKAD is a project that includes a traveling device in Marseille to which artistic productions, publications and workshops are connected. The program, under the term Making Kin / Legacy, includes a series of interventions, participations and artistic actions spread in various locations in southern Europe.
Visual, performance and transdisciplinary artists: Andrea Aquilanti, ANDRECO (Andrea Conte), Sonia Andresano, Roberto Boccaccino, Peter Bracke, Stefan Bressel, Simone Cametti, Barbara Cammarata, Eleonora Chiesa, Carla Costanza, Coast Guard Girrls (Marjatta Oja and Riikka Kevo), Francesco Cucchiara, Gino D’ugo, Daniele Di Luca, Gandolfo
Gabriele David, Église (Iole Carollo, Alberto Gandolfo, Peppe Tornetta, Simona Scaduto, Nicola Di Giorgio), Natascia Fenoglio, Mauro Filippi, Koen Fillet, Pietro Fortuna, Daniele Franzella, Markis Heinsdorff, Andrea Kantos, Christian Parolari, Leandro Pisano, Giacomo Rizzo, Konrad Ross, Alberto Ruce, Isabella Pers, Tiziana Pers, Georges Salameh, Daniela Spaletra, Matteo Spertini, Michele Tiberio, Michele Vaccaro, Vacuamoenia (Fabio R. Lattuca, Pietro Bonanno), Leena & Oula Valkeapää. Performer: Francesca Alberti, Francesca Arri, Alessandro Chemie, Giovanni Gaggia, Luigi Presicce, Tomasz Szrama, Mona Lisa Tina, Massimo Uberti, Virginia Zanetti.
Curators, architects, cultural managers: Lori Adragna, Roberto Albergoni, Analogique (Claudia Cosentino, Dario Felice, Antonio Rizzo), Modesta Di Paola, Nicola Bravo, Rosa Cascone, Maria Letizia Cassata, Cristina Dinello Cobianchi, Gianluca D’Incà Levis, Andrea Kantos, Santa Nastro, Vera Mormino, Leandro Pisano, Sasvati Santamaria, Pier Paolo Scelsi, Giuseppe Veniero.
Space, projects and partners: aA29 Project Room, Arteria Mediterranea, AlbumArte, Analogique, Bridge Art_residency, Casa Sponge, Dimora OZ, Dolomiti Contemporanee, Église, Fabula lab/Museo Archeologico Atella, Fourteen ArTellaro, GAD, KAD, KaOZ, Liminaria, Una marina di libri/L’Altro ArteContemporanea, MeNO, Museo di Santa Croce a Genova, Oratorio Santa Maria (Selàa), Orto Botanico di Palermo, Parco Archeologico di Selinunte, PUSH, RAVE, Rizzuto Gallery, Scuola Popolare Villa Romana, Giuseppe Veniero Project. Media Partner: Artribune
MARSEILLE PROGRAM
START ESADMM 23-28/11/20 12h-19h
VISUAL TRANSDISCIPLINARY ART 23-28/11/20
Stefan Bressel, Roberto Boccaccino, Barbara Cammarata, Carla Costanza, Francesco Cucchiara, Gandolfo Gabriele David, Mauro Filippi, Pietro Fortuna, Daniele Franzella, Andrea Kantos, Riikka Kevo, Giacomo Rizzo, Marjatta Oja, Alberto Ruce, Leena e Oula Valkeapää