On Fluid Street

Sit down if you can. Danish artist Jeppe Hein's (b. 1974) white park benches are set out for use by passers-by in the street. However, this is no ordinary seating: Hein has modified stereotype benches in a variety of ways, by bending and twisting them into sculptured forms. But they are intended to be sat on, although perhaps not in a conventional manner, maybe side by side with someone you know or with a total stranger, or they are to be sat on comfortably in a semi-reclining position now that permission has been granted.

The name of the collection "Muunneltu sosiaalinen penkki" (Modified Social Bench) refers to their purpose, to serve as a practical element in a shared public space and to spark off, through the sheer curiosity their shapes arouse, contacts between city folk who do not know each other. The gleaming white seats also denote places where there really could be a permanent bench to rest on or to watch the world go by in a bustling street. When he visited Kiasma in spring 2008, Jeppe Hein explored Kiasma's surroundings and chose what he felt were the most suitable places for his benches. Forming a white chain, they beckon people off the street and into the museum and perhaps also to consider whether a bench is somehow different when encountered in an institutional exhibition space.

Fluidly from Helsinki to the streets of Calcutta

You have bought tickets for a theatrical performance but you are not ushered into a theatre. You are given some keys and you see a door. You open the door and a phone rings in the room. When you pick up the phone, someone speaking English with an accent strikes up a conversation with you.

On the other end of the line is a call centre worker from Calcutta, India. Usually call centre workers and their colleagues sell credit cards and insurance by phone to the other side of the world. Or they offer navigation assistance by phone to cities they have not even visited. But this time you are not obliged to buy anything or to find your way. You stand in front of a window and your conversational partner on another continent points out that there are some interesting looking people walking along on the other side of the road. A story is about to start and you soon notice that the call centre worker and you are the first main characters in the plot.

Call Cutta in a Box is a one-to-one show. The first two parts of the Rimini Protokoll project took place in 2005 as mobile phone theatre tours in Calcutta, India and Berlin, Germany. Kiasma Theatre is producing the third part in Kiasma's lobby as part of the anniversary Fluid Street exhibition. Rimini Protokoll is the brand name for projects by directors Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel.

The street flows into an exhibition

Nomadic contemporary art is constantly on the lookout for new settings, contexts and audiences. The street as a place and a time is fascinating when viewed from different perspectives. A street is a social space, an everyday life situation and as such, a key target of interest for contemporary art - art uses characteristics typically associated with street life as a background and a setting.

A street is part of a city. The sixteen artists in the exhibition wander the streets of places such as Madrid, Istanbul, Vienna, São Paulo, Copenhagen, New York, Berlin, Guangzhou, St Petersburg and Helsinki examining, interpreting and working endlessly flowing moments in a street.

The street is presented and features in the exhibition in differing roles: as a documentary, a backdrop for events, a public space... The Fluid Street exhibition, curated by Maaretta Jaukkuri, works on a metaphorical level that provides encounters and experiences as well as on a theoretical level where we can contemplate the times we live in, both from the perspective of the individual and collectively.

Find your own Fluid Street

People leave their traces in city spaces, whether by accident or on purpose. City spaces and the people in them form daily performances. And a city is not merely made up of the cultural layers built by man - nature, too, also puts out sprouts, rustles and scampers in between the buildings and asphalt. Fluid Street opens up different vistas of the city and its life.

In May, Kiasma Theatre takes audiences on a performance tour to Kivikko, the ancient sea line, and to rooftops in the city centre, the possible seashore of the future as an outcome of climate change. Maus&Orlovski's "A Performance with an Ocean View" is an attempt to create a break - a slow area filled with opportunities - in the middle of a potential catastrophe.

The Meanwhile Elsewhere city tour examines familiar surroundings from new perspectives. The choice of tours includes nature tours, such as "Homo Urbanus - ihmislajin tarkastelua" (Homo Urbanus - an evaluation of the human species) or a track and bug watching tour "Kuka täällä kulkee" (Who Goes There?) as well as tours of city spaces "Välitiloja ja kaupunkikoreografiaa" (Marginal Spaces and City Choreography) and street art tours "Taidetta ja tageja" (Art and Graffiti).

During the summer, you can also combine art with sports by joining in on a gallery jog - a gallery jog is done in a group wearing gallery clothing and jogging from one exhibition space to the next. And for what cause would you like to raise a monument in Helsinki? The Monument workshop builds monuments on wheels and pushes them around city spaces. Or are you brave enough to have a go at the "Uuno Turhabuto" performance workshop that gets its inspiration from members of marginalised sectors of society?

Things will also be going on in Kiasma's yard. What would a Kiasma summer be without skateboarders? This year, the forecourt is getting a new ramp that is being built in cooperation with the Finnish Skateboarding Federation. Besides the opening in June, the ramp will be used throughout the season for skateboarding, skateboarding courses as well as for dancing.

What do Finns do to round off a stretch of hard work? They jump into the sauna! Come and have a steam sauna in Kiasma's yard on the closing weekend of Fluid Street!

fluid + theatre + bench + contemporary art + city + museum + street = Kiasma

Once upon a time, there was a clearly defined world where each individual knew his or her place. Art comprised paintings and sculptures, music was classical or popular and when the curtain went up in a theatre, audiences watched scripted plays. Then came Kiasma and its theatre.

Well, to be exact, not everything started from Kiasma. Back in the day, boundaries between art forms shook up opera and cinema. In the last century, a work of art did not suddenly become a painting on a wall or a piece of sculpture on the floor; rather, it was more an idea of painting or a sculpting event. We began to speak of concept art and performances. Actors began to move misshapenly and spill over from screens and theatre stages into the midst of audiences, out into the streets and into ordinary rooms. Neither was music as it used to be, melody made way for sound and composing to digital audio landscaping.

Art forms lost their extreme limits and broke down into elements perceived by all the senses - colours, shapes, movements, technology, thoughts, materials, sounds, perceptions, words, odours and stories from which new art started to take shape. New art became contemporary: contemporary art, contemporary music and contemporary drama. And it was in this world that Kiasma cam into being.

As a museum of contemporary art and a cultural centre, Kiasma aims to provide the framework in terms of space and resources for current art, whatever its form and whatever elements it may comprise. The complex comprising Kiasma and Kiasma Theatre crystallises in the tenth anniversary exhibition - art overflows from the exhibition spaces through the theatre into the lobby and out on to the city streets, drawing out experiences that are perceived through all the senses.

-Milla Unkila