Curated by Ivor Stodolsky and Marita Muukkonen
Commissioned by Checkpoint Helsinki as part of Helsinki Festival
The 7th iteration of the Re-Aligned Project of Perpetuum Mobilε
Lasipalatsi Square, Helsinki 22-31 August, 2014
Read the FULL PROGRAMME
On the heels of the positive public resonance to BACK TO (THE) SQUARE 1 of March 2014, Checkpoint Helsinki presents a second iteration of the Re-Aligned Project. Taking over the central Lasipalatsi Square, TO THE SQUARE 2 will connect to artistic and political movements on several continents.
TSQ2 ARTISTS: Ammar Abo Bakr (Luxor/Cairo); Núria Güell (Barcelona), Khaled Jarrar (Ramallah); Vladan Jeremić & Rena Rädle (Belgrade); Nikolay Oleynikov (Nizhny Novgorod/Moscow); Raumlabor (Berlin); ZIP Group (Krasnodar).
Featuring THE SQUARE newspaper edited by Ivor Stodolsky; design by Tzortzis Rallis (Occupied Times); art by Ganzeer, Federico Geller, Vladan Jeremić & Rena Rädle and articles by Michel Bauwens, Feminist Pencil, Grey Violet, Núria Güell, G.U.L.F., Occupy Museums, Teivo Teivainen, Telekommunisten and Nadya Tolokonnikova of Zona Prava/Pussy Riot.
TO THE SQUARE 2
From Tunis to Tahrir Square, Cairo
From Occupy to Wikileaks and Blockupy ECB, Frankfurt
From Tiananmen Square in Beijing to Bolotnaya Square in Moscow …
What fills a square? A tent, a tank or a tower? A mob, a demand or a feast of engaged arts? Where are all those people who took to the square? At home? In court? In prison? In exile? Where did it all come from, and where does it go — that revolutionary energy?
What would it take for people to go TO THE SQUARE 2… to revolt again? Something revolting? Total economic inequality? Ecological catastrophe? Raw racism? An infinitely bigger “big brother”? Everybody knows: it’s all happening already…
Everybody knows. Yet who, just strolling across the square, does anything? The increasingly cynical answer of the generation of the “post-modern”, was to turn their collective back on reality. But problems only grew. Today’s generation “pre-” has to face the real world, as it were, by force of nature.
Art climbs a tower, takes a bird’s-eye view, builds a springboard… it dreams and rebels. A drawing-board for ideas, art re-imagines societies to re-make them.
TO THE SQUARE 2 brings artists from different regions with experience of real action on the squares and streets, to a shared space. In a square in Helsinki, and through a “pre-mondial” network, they will seek to mobilize people with art.
www.checkpointhelsinki.fi / www.perptualmobile.org / www.helsinginjuhlaviikot.fi/en/
