Miroslaw Balka
IHME Project: Signals
April 4–7, 2013
Various locations in Helsinki
IHME Days
April 11–14, 2013
Old Student House, Helsinki
Miroslaw Balka’s IHME Project Signals is made in collaboration with Helsinki residents
The IHME 2013 Project is artist Miroslaw Balka’s Signals. It is an art project carried out together with Helsinki residents. The work is realized as four communication points in four Helsinki districts, events with the important issues of each community at their core. The key issues of the districts are performed as visual signals—semaphore flag signals—in urban space. The issues are also opened for discussion and all the parties concerned are invited to attend. The day will end in an event organized by the participating communities. The project will be realized from 4th to 7th April 2013.
The visual communication system chosen by the artist is a semaphore flag signaling system, which was used by seafarers in the 19th century. The flagged signals were important messages: requests for help or emergency calls. The artist would like to suggest newly deploying the semaphore signals to serve the special needs of communities. In the background also lies a desire to awaken discussion on how today’s society could survive in, for example, an energy crisis when our communication relies fully on electricity and new technologies.
The aim of Signals is to create a possibility for city residents to be heard in issues important to their districts. Balka believes that a democratic society gives us freedoms but also responsibilities. Signals also studies the social dimension of art, the potential of an artwork to produce change.
Workshops, lectures, discussions, and films at the IHME Days
The fifth IHME Contemporary Art Festival takes place from the 11th to the 14th of April 2013. This year’s commissioned artwork for public space, Signals, gives us the space and time to imagine what a change for the better might look like. But does art also engender lasting change? This topic will be discussed on the IHME Days, when an interesting group of Finnish and international curators and artists will gather to outline examples from different parts of the world, including director and chief curator Eyal Danon, curator and author Nato Thompson, visual artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, artist and art educator Pablo Helguera, and museum director Arja Elovirta.
Miroslaw Balka will be present at the IHME Days and will talk about his work with Spanish researcher and curator Juan Vicente Aliaga and the public.
The potential influence of art on society is also a theme of the IHME Days film program, which will offer screenings from the zenith of contemporary art. We will be showing two works by the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, in whose art politics and poetry are uniquely intertwined. The German artist Joseph Beuys discusses his ideas about the creativity of all human beings and art’s contribution to society in a lecture documentary. We also proudly present a full-length feature, Edvard Munch by Peter Watkins, the British director known for his critical approach to the media. In a reprise from IHME 2008, we are showing Jeremy Deller and Mike Figgis’ disturbing The Battle of Orgreave, which relives the English miners’ strike of 1984–85.
The interrelationship between art and politics will also be discussed at what has proved to be an audience magnet, the IHME Marathon, where artists talk about their own working processes. The dancer Hanna Brotherus will explore bodily communication in her workshop Being Held. This year’s IHME Club is planned by musician Tommy Lindgren. On Saturday the Club will continue into the night when a group of artists take the stage, each with their own soundscape.
Admission to all events is free.
Full programme of the IHME Days: www.ihmefestival.fi
Contact:
IHME Contemporary Art Festival
Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Kalevankatu 4, 2nd floor
00100 Helsinki Finland
T +358 45 1240096
info [at] ihmefestival.fi
