Today is our Tomorrow: The Voice That Remains

PUBLICS’s curated program for OPEN UP Nicosia is called “Today is Our Tomorrow: The Voice That Remains,” and is their annual transdisciplinary public gathering, already initiated in 2019. Every year Today is Our Tomorrow supports intersectional ecologies, a diversity of thoughts, practices, identities, and their experiences, every year taking a different form, emphasis, title and location.

This year, Today is Our Tomorrow: The Voice That Remains comprises entirely new works: performances, theatre, soundscapes, symposia, films, lectures, podcasts, a companion publication, a vinyl release, and concludes with the premier of a new soundtrack for an imaginary future festival. 

The series of nine unique artist commissions are shown in Nicosia, each focusing on the current futurity and presentness of the voice in its many sonic forms, vocal modes and acoustic modalities. These artists each explore acts of world listening, live recording and the voice as a body of cohabitation, and mode of living and being together.

Today is our Tomorrow: The Voice That Remains frames much of PUBLICS activities over the last year on the recurrent thematic and evolving concept of the voice. Its gathering of commissions explores the interaction between people and their acoustic worlds. The artists exhibiting are:

PUBLICS Youth
PUBLICS Youth 2022 In Conversation and Harold Offeh on working with PUBLICS Youth, 2022, podcast in two episodes. 
PUBLICS Youth Advisory Board members, artist Harold Offeh & project coordinator Micol Curatolo reflect on the collaborative work necessary to create places by and for young voices in contemporary arts and culture.

Harold Offeh
Lounging Symposium, 2023. Performance. 
A short performance lecture whilst in reclining or lounging pose. The lecture explores the history, cultural context, power dynamics and politics of adopting the selected pose.

KMRU
Stupor: A Soundtrack for a Future Festival, 2023. Performance. 
Stupor was initially commissioned as a musical score for PUBLICS’s annual festival Today is Our Tomorrow, culminating with its premier in Nicosia. The resulting work by KMRU is also released on vinyl with new Helsinki-based label Other Power. Realised in-between Nairobi and Berlin, field recordings, bodily affects and place-bound identities are navigated through interstitial spaces to form a veil of profound stillness. The record is produced by Performa, PUBLICS and Other Power.

Noor Abed & Mark Lofty 
Yours Truly, 2023. Multimedia lecture-performance. 
The artist Noor Abed and the film-maker Mark Lotfy share a public reflection on their three-year research on the private U.S. military engagement in the Middle East.

Shubhangi Singh
Force meets vacuum, 2023. Lecture performance.
The lecture presents connections between extractivism, colonial botany and the conquest of Australia by the European powers.

Sepideh Rahaa
Songs to Earth, Songs to Seeds, 2023. Installation (multichannel video).
Rahaa investigates power structures, ecologies and gender politics, in the poetical documentation of traditional rice production in Northern Iran.

Anu Pennanen
5, 10, 100 YEARS FROM NOW, 2023. Video installation.
A short experimental video essay about the future in an era of resource-based conflict and global environmental crisis. Produced by PALO Art Productions.

Eugenia Lim
Metabolism, 2023. Film-essay. 
A portrait of a living, working ecology and the multi-species it sustains, Metabolism is a film-essay that considers the body-as-land and land-as-body. 

Moe Mustafa (Atheer Soot)
The Topography soundscape of my queer body, 2023. Sound performance. 
A sonic research project that focuses on the artists’ existence within a hybrid masculine system creating an interconnection between memories and sound.

PUBLICS is a curatorial and commissioning agency with a dedicated research library and event space in Helsinki, Finland. Under the artistic direction of curator Paul O’Neill, and team members Annabelle Antas, Valentina Černiauskaitė, Micol Curatolo, and PUBLICS YOUTH. PUBLICS explores a “work together” institutional model with multiple overlapping objectives, thematic strands and collaborations. PUBLICS develops out of Checkpoint Helsinki, a contemporary art initiative established in 2013. Since opening in 2018, PUBLICS was developed by Paul O’Neill and Eliisa Suvanto (2018-2022). PUBLICS is partnering with Saastamoinen Foundation for 2023-25. 

For full schedule and to read more about all our events see: publics.fi