About Helsinki Biennial 2023
“As contamination changes world-making projects, mutual worlds—and new directions—may emerge.”
—Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
New Directions May Emerge adopts its title from a quote by anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, who proposes learning from (the art of) “noticing”. With close attention to other people, animals, plants, the environment, data, and other entities around us, the biennial explores how we might find new ways of living in, and understanding, the world.
The biennial unfolds through multimodal acts of noticing, sensing and sense-making. Moving from humans to non-humans and between varying scales – a spectrum spanning data as the smallest scale, through to islands and speculative new worlds denoting the largest—the biennial invites audiences to consider how recognising small or otherwise invisible details might prompt possibilities to act, to imagine differently, and reconcile the impact of human intervention, environmental and technological damage.
The biennial takes its point of departure from the island of Vallisaari, the regenerative energy of multispecies landscapes, and data which is in turn manipulated by algorithms. It gathers ideas from an eclectic mix of influences – from natural science and cosmology, the supernatural and artificial intelligence, data science and science fiction, the sense-making practices of humans and nonhumans, the actions of sentient and other worldly beings – to identify some of the conditions through which new directions may emerge.
Placing diverse practices in dialogue with one another, from established and emerging artists and collectives, from Finland and across the world, the biennial present twenty-nine artists and collectives, twelve new commissions and further six new iterations of works produced specifically for Helsinki Biennial 2023 – Matti Aikio, Ahmed Al-Nawas & Minna Henriksson, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Golden Snail Opera (Anna Tsing, Yen-ling Tsai, Isabelle Caronelle, & Joelle Chevrier), Asunci.n Molinos Gordo, Alma Heikkil., INTERPRT, Keiken, Sonya Lindfors, Tuula N.rhinen, Lotta Petronella with Sami Tallberg & Lau Nau, PHOSfate (Mohamed Sleiman Labat & Pekka Niskanen), Diana Policarpo, Sepideh Rahaa, Bita Razavi, Red Forest, Remedies (Sasha Huber & Petri Saarikko), Tabita Rezaire, Yehwan Song, Jenna Sutela, Emilija Škarnulytė, Suzanne Treister, Adri.n Villar Rojas, and Zheng Mahler.
The joint intervention at the Helsinki Biennial 2023 (titled New Directions May Emerge) by post-critical graphic design studio The Rodina and spatial consultancy Diogo Passarinho Studio was a core conceptual collaboration that shaped the physical and visual experience of the exhibition. Instead of treating graphic design and exhibition architecture as separate components, the two studios merged their disciplines into a cohesive visual and spatial intervention. Their Collaboration was focused on how emotional contexts and raw architectural adjustments can shape long-term memories of an environment, helping visitors navigate both human and non-human scales across the island and the city of Helsinki.
Helsinki Biennial is produced by HAM Helsinki Art Museum.
The Online Venue is part of Helsinki Biennial 2023: New Directions May Emerge curated by Joasia Krysa, in collaboration with other intelligences—Museum of Impossible Forms, TBA21–Academy, Critical Environmental Data, ViCCA@Aalto Arts, and an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Entity.