During their one-month residency at Platform, Lewis & Taggart developed a new collection of sculptures and works on paper through a process of collecting, combining and re-working materials and imagery found and borrowed from within the city of Vaasa. The collection was compiled into a publication entitled Night View from the Soap Factory and other works for Vaasa, which was locally printed and subsequently launched at the Vaasa City Library.

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Willem Wilhelmus, Myk Henry,
Martin Renteria & Nathalie Mba Bikoro

This year's last Platform Live offers a wide selection of international performance art: Willem Wilhelmus (Finland/Netherlands), Nathalie Mba Bikoro (Gabon/UK), Myk Henry (Ireland/USA) and Martin Renteria (Mexico) will do performances on this week's Friday at the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art.

Address: Sisäsatama, Vaasa / Inre hamnen, Vasa

Free entrance. Welcome!

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu, artist and film director, will present two film projects, Troleibuzul 92 (8'00) and My Beautiful Dacia (72'00). He will also talk about an ongoing group project, The Iron Curtain, a box of memory, which is done in collaboration with Xandra Popescu, who will be present as well.

Stefan Constantinescu is a visual artist and a film director. In 2010 he participated at the Bucharest Biennale 4 where he presented the installation "An Infinite Blue". In 2009, he represented Romania at The Venice Biennale, with the films "Passagen" and "Troleibuzul 92"."My Beautiful Dacia" that is co-directed with Julio Soto, is a portrayal of Romania's transition from Communism to Capitalism through the story of the Dacia automobile, an emblem of Communist Romania. The film's premiere was at the Montréal World Film Festival and in 2010 the film was awarded the second prize at the Documenta Madrid Festival. In 2008 he conceived "The Golden Age for Children", a pop-up book about the last 20 years of the communist regime in Romania. He is currently working on a series of fiction films "7 Nuances of Gray" and the group project "The Iron Curtain, a box of memory". Stefan Constatinescu lives and works in Stockholm and Bucharest.

Free entrance. Welcome!

STEVE VANONI

Performane art and live experimental electronic music!

Address: Sisäsatama, Vaasa / Inre hamnen, Vasa

Free entrance. Welcome!

A collector's instinct is an ongoing project that Jokela started in 2006. The work consists of objects found and collected at various locations, mainly in Stockholm, where she lives. The objects are what many would call rubbish, but for her they are things that tell us a story about the place and time when they are found.

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Here comes the third installment of SHuSH by Amal Laala, artist in residence during may and june

The first two were crazy death pop in Melbourne's abandoned spaces. After being kicked out by a torch wielding psycho who claimed to be the owner but ended up being arrested and being shut down by police, we have decided to move north, way north to Vaasa, Finland!

So the Finnish sun has finally come out to play and so have we!

LIVEMUSIC

Hei // ambient drone with baritone guitar & electronics

Mattias Häggqvist // psychedelic blues

DJ's

Rasmus Hedlund // electronic dub

Tuomo Väänänen // minimal dub-techno

Ufo-Matti // experimental music

Captain Hank // dj&vj set

Art

Jonathan Lindholm, Concrete Flowers, live installation

Street-art jam in livingroom-carpark on random objects

Live feed from projects happening in Australia/Morocco

Visuals and animations from Australia

Paintings from Mikael Linder

Sima, Bin Buffet and a Carpark living room.

What more could you ask for?

Platform live presents artist talks by Platform artist in residence Amal Laala (Morocco) and Stundars artist in residence Sophie Dvořák (Austria), and Amal Laala's performance "The next man who walks through that door I will marry".

Amal Laala is a socially engaged, site-specific artist, whose work is often temporary and fleeting, revolving around current social issues, experimentation and play. "My current work in progress is “Father, Father, Father” were I am investigating how stories can be told and interpreted, ranging from spiritual, political to personal. During my residency at Platform I will continue developing these central themes of storytelling, family and interpretation. Investigating my Finnish grandparents and their past I am to research elements of their lives using the little information I know."

Sophie Dvořák's work practice revolves around questioning media imagery, such as press photography and visual representations of information or knowledge, used where complex information needs to be explained quickly and clearly. She mainly uses drawing as medium, working in a serial, sometimes even archival way. Often recurring elements are visual devices like charts, diagrams, maps and lists, and elements like lines, boxes, arrows. Her reduced drawings and graphics, sometimes accompanied by text fragments, construct a new “reality-layer”. She interrupts the function and flood of information, in order to deal with different ways of seeing events or things, with perspectives and projections, with assumed knowledge or lack of it in the viewer, sending him on a search for the information that the image pretends to transmit.

And there's also some musical entertainment.

Welcome! Free entrance!

Saturday 22.5. is also a Museum Night at Kuntsi, so the bar (and terrace, weather permitting) is open until midnight. See www.kuntsi.fi for more info about the Museum Night.

CFL was about to do a site-specific project – Cheap Finnish Love – but Eyjafallajökull had a say ...

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Platform, in collaboration with Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art, starts a new series of live art happenings called Platform Live. On the program for this first edition are performances by Tari Ito (Japan) and Irma Optimisti (Finland).

Tokyo-based Tari Ito is one of the most important female performance artists in Japan and East Asia. Her performances deal with feminism and female sexuality, seen through the historical ways of representing womanhood. Ito has performed all over the world, and she has also organised an international network of female performance artists.

Like Ito, Vaasa-born Irma Optimisti is a leading female performance artist, especially in Europe. This time, her performance will have a sculptural dimension. The process will be presented as it is.

Free entrance. Welcome!

Wednesday April 21st at 7pm – Performance artists Tari Ito (Japan) and Irma Optimisti (FI)

Image – Irma Optimisti at mope08. (Photo Joakim Hansson)

Artist Talk at Ritz 5.2.2009 at 8pm.

When making films Jenny performs repetitive actions for the camera, documenting herself carrying out apparently futile yet defiant physical feats. These actions can seem like a romantic response to, or an urge to escape from the space in which they are performed. The works are process based, using the limitations of the equipment or her own physical endurance as a basis and frame in which to be created. The repetitively performed action is often absurd or pointless.

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The project is a site-specific initiative that explores notions about identity, relationship to place and patriotism. The work is an audiovisual interpretation of an experiment where some CFL-members invited persons from different origin that are based in Ostrobothnia to sing the regional Swedish anthem together.

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wolf’s rain, for she had gold in her eyes, as nails up my dick, if they’ve killed him for what he did, I too have to, walk the same way, don’t try to find me, I looked for my boy, I spoke to him as a brother (whom I have pardoned), anyway I’m a lie, wanting somebody to like me, somebody to experience me, desire me, see me, I’m just an idiot who pretended to be in control, of all the worlds I had to see I got stuck in this one & it’s fine, empty be my friend, calm over my ever running feet, what if time goes and that’s it, will you fuck me if I sing a little, will you chase me if I die a little (robin’s belt was undone and her bra was around her neck) don’t try to find me, test the limits of your true devotion we’ve had enough, anyway I’m a lie, a notion of lie, on speed and dark, messy & well produced, sexy but disgusting

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