RACA is a Copenhagen based group consisting of Pulsk Ravn and Johan Carlsson.The group works with urban social actions and creations of imagined everyday situations. With their backgrounds in design and architecture is RACA challenging the borders of art, architecture and design, investigating and questioning how to bring theories into everyday life.

RACA has participated in several exhibitions both in Denmark and abroad. Among those; Montreal / Canada / 2008, Souvenirs / Bergen / Norway / 2008, / Van Alen Institute /  New York / 2006. In 2004 RACA received a three-year grant by “Statens Kunstfond” (Denmark’s Arts Council) based on their research and contribution to a more un-predictable city.

RACA gave an artist talk at Ritz November 4th and carried out the project Genealogy during their stay.

Read more

On residency in Vaasa, Sarah Browne (Ireland) has been researching the production of muscha (moonshine). She has also been developing a new film work that deals with natural and bodily metaphors, particularly ideas of love, control and intoxication used to discuss moments of crisis and breakdown within capitalism and ’the economy’. The result of the research will be shown in an exhibition at Kuntsi Modern Museum of Art in Vaasa 2010.

Read more

The Platform Parasite Art Event is part of an ongoing collaborative art project that the Platform initiative Cheap Finnish Labour (CFL) started as a social intervention in Istanbul and realised in parallel with the inauguration of the 11th Istanbul Biennale.

Read more

"During my stay at Platforms residency in Vaasa, Finland, a newspaper debate have been going on about the name of a residential estate planned by the famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. According to Aalto all the wooden pair houses that form the area should originally have been painted in pastel colors. But due to changes that ABB Strömberg, a local factory, did to the houses - that were planned to be rented out to the factory's employees, upset Aalto and he suggested that the houses instead should be tarred. The dark color of the tarred houses, made the local people name the village Neekerikylä (FI) Negerbyn (SE) - the nigger village."

Read more

Artist talk with Mattias Olofsson, based in Umeå (SE) and Jimmy Kuehnle based in St. Louis (US).

Mattias Olofsson is the residency artist at Platform during July-August.

Jimmy Kuehnle is the residency artist at Ateljé Stundars during June-July. Ateljé Stundars is part of the international Artist in Residence programme hosted by KulturÖsterbotten.

"The simultaneous proximity and distance of people in urban centers motivates the core of my art practice. Members of society are disconnected from one another despite almost daily contact in a monotonous cycle of daily tasks. I seek to challenge the public in order to break it out of its repetitive cycle. Humans are very adept at assimilating the world around them to the point that unusual experiences quickly become commonplace. Many wonders and sublime experiences are overlooked.

I make sculpture and performance props using materials ranging from heavy steel to light inflatable fabric to create novel experiences for the viewer. The work is a hybrid of sculpture, performance, new media and interactive practices. My recent inflatable suits have allowed me to take the work into the streets for direct contact with the public. My sculpture and performances are intentionally absurd to the point that traffic stops, pedestrians gather, and interactions occur."

Johan Lundh is an artist, curator and writer based in Stockholm and Vancouver. On April 5th he gave a talk about his practise.

One Day Show is a project by Johan Lundh in collaboration with Dragos Alexandrescu, Eva Forsman, Joakim Hansson and Therese Sunngren. It is a project exploring contemporary art through a speculative study of artistic, curatorial and discursive production. During an all-day workshop, the participants developed an exhibition together from scratch.

Read more

MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING

A performance displaying a visual scenario of costume, props and actions, asking - how can we ever really understand one another, when our stories will always be so different?

The work is part of a larger research project, Imploding, about how our personal backgrounds inform the way we interpret situations and people we meet. This project is supported by Scottish Arts Council.

Read more

Gwendoline Robin associates the object with the body in space to create ever more complex installations and performances, in which object responds to space, movement to fire, light to the sound of the explosion, and in which the artist’s body can explore, perform and dance with the danger and the poetry of fire.

There is immediacy in Gwendoline Robin’s work; a relationship with the present moment given by the suddenness of the explosion, the very essence of fire, the evanescence of smoke. It confronts us with surprise, fear, danger, relief, and with wonder, too, and humour.
(extract of Gwendoline Robin in conversation with Tania Nasielski)

website : www.gwendolinerobin.be

Images

The residency of Mark Harris was done as an exchange with Plan 9 in Bristol (UK)
. Peter Rosvik was in Bristol for the month of February.

Read more

On March 13 Mark Harris and Toby Huddlestone, both based in Bristol, presented their work in an artists talk at Platform.

Toby Huddlestone's performed his new artwork SPECTACLE, a public intervention and documentation project. 100 volunteers were needed to 'create' a spectacle by coming together and participating - no acting skills were required. All participants received a print of the work as a thank you for taking part.

Around the same time as Jörgen Erkius started to teach poetry (if that's possible, as he says himself) at the Viadrina University in Frankfurt/Oder, he also made his first longer film, a film about Wolfgang Borchert. During his residency in Vaasa, Erkius produced a film about the Finnish Swedish poet Josef Julius Wiksell.

Read more