COLLECTIVE GAME!
- A playful multidisciplinary art event in Helsinki, with a dash of photography in it
http://yhteinenleikki.blogspot.com/ (in Finnish)
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COLLECTIVE GAME!
Photography is a versatile medium that is capable of performing wonders. As part of the 30th anniversary year of Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in 2009, Collective Game! has spread around Helsinki in the urban space, pushing the boundaries of photographic art. Divided into six stages, the project has presented performances, community art, therapy sessions, press campaigns, free handouts, public slide shows, urban utopias and projects in the underground, buses and trams. Artists Meiju Niskala and Joel Rosenberg were invited by Hippolyte to plan the programme and select the artists for the project.
The processes in the project are divided into six stages:
1) Opening of the anniversary year of Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in December 2008
2) Opening week of the Helsinki Photography Festival 2009 at the end of January 2009
3) The penultimate weekend of the main exhibition of the Helsinki Photography Festival 2009 at the Helsinki City Art Museum, Meilahti, on 14 March 2009
4) A weekend of events at Ruoholahdentori, Helsinki, 8–10 May 2009
5) Art Fair Suomi 2009, Cable Factory, Helsinki, 20 September – 5 October 2009
6) Final exhibition of the anniversary year of Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in November 2009
Collective Game! is part of the 30th anniversary year programme of Photographic Gallery Hippolyte.
For more information, please visit http://www.hippolyte.fi/en/galleria/tiedote/h30_tiedote.html
Collective Game! is also part of the Year of Photography 2009 programme: http://www.katse.org
The anniversary year of Photographic Gallery Hippolyte is supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The Year of Photography 2009 is supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.
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Performance artist and writer Meiju Niskala likes to give a twist to ordinary things. For her, the urban environment is an amusement park that is everywhere around us. In her work she may collect four-leaf clovers or search for discarded Post-it memos in the streets, or have photos of herself taken with unknown passers-by. During the anniversary year, she wanted to spread the word of playfulness, hooking up with art school students to create new concepts such as bingo in a tram and Google Earth prose.
Joel Rosenberg is a photographer, gardener and utopian whose explorations led him into the continent of environmental art, something he is currently engaged in turning into a profession. During the anniversary year, Joel wants to create a new kind of community among art school students.
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More information: Mitro Kaurinkoski, director, email: firstname.lastname@hippolyte.fi, tel. +358 9 612 33 44, Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finlad http://www.hippolyte.fi
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte is run by the Union of Artist Photographers in Finland -- a nonprofit artist-run association with 332 member artists.The Union promotes and supports photo-based art, and the professional, economic and social interests of its members.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -STAGE 6: FRIDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2009
Give Something Day
The Buy Nothing Day is celebrated at the end of the year. This time it falls on the 27th of November. But there is a new development: the Give Something Day, when everyone is invited to leave some (art) treasure somewhere to be discovered by some unknown passer-by.
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte has decided to lead the way: A group of candidate members of the Union of Artist Photographers will take works of their own on a walk to leave them in public places in the city. The idea is to offer the candidate members of the Union an opportunity to engage in a collective project that also invites them to consider the values and site-specificity of photographic art.
Participation in the Give Something Day is open to everyone. All you have to do is to choose a work (or works) that you would like to be discovered in the public space. The works can be large or small, they can have faulty colours or be of second quality. The idea is in the giving. Dig out the first bowl you threw on the pottery wheel, the best drawing you made in high school or an old photograph from the attic. Depending on the weather, you can just drop off the work as it is or wrap it up. Include a message to the unknown urban treasure hunter and leave the work on 27 November in a place where you would like someone to discover it and take it home.
The campaign is part of the Collective Game! project celebrating the 30th anniversary of Photographic Gallery Hippolyte. The anniversary year programme is dedicated to shuffling and rearticulating the relationships between photography and space.
Information about other events in Hippolyte's Collective Game! project is available online at http://www.yhteinenleikki.blogspot.com/ (in Finnish only).
For additional information, contact the curators of the Collective Game! project:
Meiju Niskala +358 (0)41 4584 854
Joel Rosenberg +358 (0)50 565 8793
yhteinenleikki@gmail.com