Helsinki Photography Biennial 2014
27 March–4 May 2014
Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki Photography Biennial is pleased to announce the appointment of Basak Senova as curator of HPB14. The biennial is held next year from 27 March to 4 May. In addition, HPB14 has invited Mustarinda Association (Finland) to develop the theme of the 2014 biennial, which examines causal relations regarding ecological issues, and to build a section presenting critical views on images of nature. Helsinki Photography Biennial is a series of events on photo/lens-based contemporary art, organized every two years in the spring by Union of Artist Photographers in Finland. HPB14 is produced by Union of Artist Photographers / Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in collaboration with The Finnish Museum of Photography.
Basak Senova is a curator and designer based in Istanbul. She has been writing on art, technology and media, initiating and developing projects and curating exhibitions since 1995. Senova studied Literature and Graphic Design (MFA in Graphic Design and Ph.D. in Art, Design and Architecture at Bilkent University) and attended the 7th Curatorial Training Programme of Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam.
Senova is an editorial correspondent for ibraaz.org and one of the founding members of NOMAD, as well as the organizer of “ctrl_alt_del” and “Upgrade!Istanbul.” She is the editor of many publications, including art-ist 6, Kontrol Online Magazine, Unrecorded, Lapses book series, UNCOVERED, Aftermath, The Translation, D-0 ARK Underground.
Senova was the curator of the Pavilion of Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). She lectured as assistant professor at the Faculty of Communication, Kadir Has University, Istanbul (2006-2010) and is now teaching at Koç University. Currently, she co-curates UNCOVERED (2010–2013) project in Cyprus with Pavlina Paraskevaidou and the 2nd Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 ARK Underground (2013) in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Branko Franceschi. Recently, she has been appointed as Art Gallery Chair of Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group (ACM) “SIGGRAPH 2014″ in Vancouver.
For HPB14, Basak Senova addresses the theme of Ecological Fallacy. In statistics, ecological fallacy describes errors due to performing analyses on aggregate data when trying to reach conclusions on the individual units. Errors occur in part from spatial aggregation. In this context, the biennial would like to investigate fallacies of ecological knowledge. Therefore, the biennial seeks correlated artistic approaches and perspectives as a way of producing and processing evident critical, social and cultural discourses on these fallacies. Throughout the course of this process, archives will be the essential tool of the biennial. In this way, HPB14 will foster collaborative connections between ecological data and photography-based archives.
Furthermore, Basak Senova has invited Branko Franceschi (Zagreb) to co-curate a special section for the biennial.
Mustarinda Association initiates four research-based artistic processes to critically examine the development of images of nature, focusing on archives, architecture, forests and energy. The results will be exhibited under the title Focal Views as a part of HPB14. Within these processes, theoretical work is tied to bodily experience through workshops carried out in the Mustarinda House, located next to an old-growth forest in central Finland. This combination opens up the possibility for developing and carrying out focal practices that resist alienation, presenting objects in their specific, non-replaceable and non-abstracted forms.
Mustarinda is a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 in Finland to foster ecological and cultural diversity. Mustarinda investigates the cultural and socio-economical structures of society, largely dominated by different aspects of the ecological crisis. Already during the first years more than one hundred professionals of art and research have taken part in the residency program and in the variety of events and exhibitions organized by Mustarinda. www.mustarinda.fi
HPB14 publishes the preliminary program and names of participating artists in December 2013 on www.hpb.fi.
For further information please contact:
Producer Tiina Salmia: info [at] hpb.fi / T + 358 45 304 55 40
Helsinki Photography Biennial / Union of Artist Photographers
Yrjönkatu 8-10 (courtyard), FI-00120 Helsinki, Finland
