11.10.2022 - 18.10.2028

AARG – Art and the Rural Gathering

AARG is an annual discussion event addressing current themes in contemporary art and the countryside. The program of the Kunsthalle Seinäjoki is based on countryside and issues and phenomena arising from the urban-rural interface.

AARG 2022

AARG 2022 presented observations and questions about the future of sustainable food production in the context of art and at the same time served as an assembly for the three animal-themed exhibitions: What’s It Like to Be an Animal, Pigs and  Farming presented in Kunsthalle Seinäjoki in 2020-2022. AARG 2022 was held in Kalevan Navetta at the 25th and 26th of August 2022. Recording of the gathering can be watch on the video. Program can be seen from this link.

Moderator was Special Advisor  Susanna Mäki-Oversteyns from The Arts Promotion Centre Finland. Speakers in the gathering were Art Curator Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen giving presentation on Contemporary Art Exhibition as part of Socio-political Animal and Food Discussions. Documentarist and writerRiikka Kaihovaara talked about Beyond Factory Farming, Associate professor Panu Pihkala was giving a talk in English about Environmental Feelings and Hope,  ISEAS Food Symposium 2022 was held at the same time in the area. Few of the participants came to give Greetings from the symposium. Short introductions from  Artistic Director Katja Juhola: ISEAS, Artist Teemu Mäki: collaboration with Kirjakerho, Artist and philosopher Raisa Foster: Collaboration with Young Farmers and Seinäjoki High School, and Community artist Joan Marie Kelly: Tiistenjoki Elementary School,  Artist Teemu Lehmusruusu presented his artistic project Trophic Verses and CuratorIda Enegren gave a presentation of the artistic program at AARG that she curated. 

Art Programme

kesäkuu, elokuu
Tuomas Lehtomaa 

2022
Ice cubes and map

Curator Ida Enegren, Production Art University Seinäjoki Unit

kesäkuu, elokuu is a work that consists of melting ice cubes on the roof of Kalevan Navetta and a map wrapped around the publication made to accompany the parallel artistic programme. The work is the sum of thoughts, trials, and experiments that emerged during a two-week working period in Seinäjoki in June. A recipe found online for a drink made from sprouted grains became a central starting point for the work. Lehtomaa’s work is often formed by the relationships between material, space, and body, and the way they position themselves as parts of a wider field of meanings, immediately outside what is perceived. Lehtomaa is interested in artistic work as such, the feelings and thoughts that emerge in different work processes, being with unawareness. The liquid used for the soaking and sprouting experiments was preserved and transported to a freezer warehouse. It will be brought back to melt during the seminar day in August.

Purpose, Scope and Penalties
Asunción Molinos Gordo
2016, Video, 18 min
In the video Purpose, scope and penalties, three farmers and a researcher meet at a local café in Uchisar, Turkey, to drink tea and to discuss factors that impact farming and, in particular, to evaluate the consequences of the controversial seed law that was enacted in 2006. Seed law no. 5553 was carried through at record speed without the opportunity for citizens, farmers, or scientists to comment on it. The law regulates the production and selling of seeds and aims to restructure the seed sector to increase productivity and yield. Artist Molinos Gordo wants to shed light upon the bureaucratic and political obstacles faced by farmers.

 

Couscous: Seeds of Dignity
Habib Ayeb
2017, Documentary, duration 57 min
Couscous, with its various recipes, constitutes the staple food of all of the populations of the Maghreb region, including Tunisia. Almost self-sufficient in cereals until the beginning of the 20th century, Tunisia now imports more than half of its food needs as dependency increases year on year. The documentary, filmed in Tunisia, approaches food issues from a local viewpoint and highlights the food productions’ diversity and complexity that go beyond national borders. Couscous: Seeds of Dignity focuses on the political, social, economic, and ecological conditions of cereal and couscous production.

AARG 2021

AARG 2021 gathering was part of the Gustafsson & Haapojan exhibition “Pigs“, which deals with the poetics and politics of pigs. Animal production and the industrial production and economic exploitation of bodies named animals has an impact on numerous aspects of society and environment. At the same time, production and the work needed for it is moving farther and farther (and more often) onto the borders of the field of vision.The seminar provided a background of the history and present situation of production in Finland. The law allows to use animals from other species: the agency and selfness of other species have been made invisible and insignificant, so they have become objects. Legislation often favours the economy and the pursuit of profit, but the climate crisis and pandemics may force us into social agreements on a more sustainable basis. The price of intensive production is not only paid by other animals, nature and future generations, but usually also by the people who make their living from it. The most important issue for the survival of human communities is food production. The seminar also highlighted more humane ways to solve it. Gathering was live broadcasted in Finnish on the 30th of September 2021 at 1.30pm to 4pm. the broadcast link and  program.

Art Curator
Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen
Greetings from Kunsthalle Seinäjoki
Writer
Laura Gustafsson, moderator

SPEECHES

Animal Welfare Ombudsman
Saara Kupsala
Animal welfare regulation, farm animals
visibility and consumers knowledge on animal welfare

Researcher of regenerative food economics,
leader of the Invisible Work (Näkymätön työ) research project
Galina Kallio
Regenerative agriculture – land relations, invisible work
and possibilities and impossibilities of subsistence

Researcher, teacher / Åbo Akademi,
founder of the publication Global Journal of Animal Law
and the Finnish Animal Rights Lawyers Society.
Birgitta Wahlberg

Fundamental animal rights – what and why
Activist, photographer / Rights to animals
Kristo Muurimaa
Documentation of legal business through illegal means
– production facilities through candid camera

 

 

 

AARG 2020

AARG was a platform for discussion and a place of coming together for art institutions, curators and other art professionals whose work is concentrated in the countryside. The program guidelines of the Kunsthalle Seinäjoki draw from the questions and phenomena arising from the countryside and urban-rural interface. The Kunsthalle run the rural art development project Mullistaja in 2017 – 2019, in which models of co-operation were molded and have been later developed. AARG continues the work that began in the project. Networking, sharing of concerns, development and mutual support by building up productive relationships is the overall plan of the AARG.Learning from others what’s new in the countryside and in the rural arts creates more creative area development planning and perhaps even new funding models for contemporary art in the rural areas.

The first AARG was hosted as a live broadcast on December 10th 2020 in collaboration with Kunsthalle Seinäjoki art producer Pii Anttila, art advisor Aura Seikkula, the Finnish Art Promotion Centre, Head of the programme Jussi Koitela, Frame Contemporary Arts Finland, The head of the exhibitions Bodil Johanne Monrad Viborg Kunsthal (DK), director Mariangela Mendez Prencke, Havre Magasinet (SE), curators Kaspar Wimberley and Susanne Kudielka, Morning Boat (UK), curator Michele Horrigan, Askeaton Contemporary Arts (IR), artistic director Daniel Peltz, Rejmyre Art Lab (SE), curator Taru Elfving and artist Matthew Cowan, curator Yvonne Billimore.

Program can be read from here.