The people are:

Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture, Helsinki/Espoo

Department of Film, Television and Scenography, ELO:
Liisa Ikonen, PI, Professor, Design for the Performing Arts
Maiju Loukola, Postdoctoral researcher
Elina Lifländer, Lecturer, Design for the Performing Arts
Department of Art:
Pia Euro, Artist-in-Consortium, Visual artist and University lecturer at ViCCA
Department of Media:
Harri Laakso, Senior staff, Associate Professor of Photography Research

University of Lapland ULAP: Faculty of Art and Design, Rovaniemi

Mari Mäkiranta, Subproject PI, Senior Lecturer, Visual Communication (and Docent of Art Education and Visual studies, University of Jyväskylä)
Eija Timonen, Senior staff, Professor of Media Studies (and Docent of Narrative Media Research, Aalto ARTS, Department of Film, TV and Scenography ELO)
Jonna Tolonen, Postdoctoral researcher, Photographer

Conference coordinator, web page design: Susanna Suurla

The peripheries in parallax: Matter – Exhibition series is curated by Pia Euro and Tanja Kiiveri, Lecturer, Time and Space Art, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki

Contact:

peripheries2021@aalto.fi

More info:

https://floatingperipheries.fi/about/
https://blogs.aalto.fi/expandedscenography
http://vicca.fi/
https://www.ulapland.fi/…/Yks…/Taiteiden-tiedekunta/Tutkimus

Floating Peripheries ­– mediating the sense of place 2017–2021

The project aims at enlarging the understanding of ‘peripheries’ into areas that are difficult to verbalize. Peripheries are conventionally conceived as marginal geographical locations, whereas our purpose is to look at peripheries as a multifaceted phenomenon – as conceptual, spatial and site-responsive domains, aesthetically and spatially experienced sensory spheres, states of mind shaped by associations and mental images, and activities through different mediums in arts and epistemologies. We aim at producing new art-based strategies for unraveling the spatial and conceptual hierarchies and biased assumptions of what and where the ‘periphery’ is in relation to the ‘center’. Our research is site- and situation-based. In each specific case we ask: How do we define here/now our relation to ‘peripherality’?
 
We live in an age where peripheral cultural phenomena tend to be overwhelmed by centralized systems and mediated global assumptions. Our living environment is a space of political, economical and legal exercise of centralized governing and control. It is strictly operated according to what, where and when is legitimate and to whom. It is substantially a normative space, the uses of which are to a great extent guided through the organization of space.
 
In relation to a wider societal context, we ask: Who and what gets to be objectified as ‘peripheral’ within the social and spatial hierarchies of the society? What are the rights of those who represent the fringes of normativity? Various ‘marginal’ and even ‘extreme’ phenomena have become pressing subjects of debate in the political and social discourse as well as in everyday human interaction. Our premise is that peripheral phenomena have occupied a significant amount of public space today on multiple levels, and hence the need for a multidisciplinary analysis is critical.
 
This multiperspective artistic research concretely moves into the public sphere in the form of artistic interventions, artworks and city-square-events to interfere and interrelate with different peripheral contexts and realities. It tackles art as an active and effective agency of change; art addresses pressing issues directly through the senses and affects us on a deeply emotional level, exceeding the operations of the rational mind and everyday reality. The peripheral phenomena appearing in sub/urban space, social space, media/digital space and nature are the basis for analysis and for artistic production.
 
In our view art not only has the ability to break the normative surface of everyday existence, but it can operate like a secret virus, making peripheral and ‘Other’ hidden spaces and narratives visible, felt and infective. The artistic interventions include interaction with local communities and ordinary people whose personal narratives, images, dreams and experiences of site catalyze the birth of new spatial stories. Our hypothesis is that actual engagement with space adds awareness, attachment and responsibility to both immediate neighborhoods and the environment at large. Similarly, the other side of the coin is acknowledged here: alongside ‘my/our’ narrative always appears the ‘other’ narrative of someone else.
 
The research aims at bringing to the fore the existing, hidden and controversial margins of human life and nature from an equal, ethical and empathic viewpoint. It proposes a more holistic and sensuous vision that adds value to urban and community planning by increasing the potential for more extensive collaboration between artists, urban planners, environmentalists and residents in the future. It brings the practical and theoretical skills and epistemologies that have traditionally belonged to performing arts, visual arts and media art, to be distributed among a wide spectrum of societal forums.
 
When our built and natural environments are planned and utilized according to market value alone, our sense of cultural identity, site-related history and thus our ‘sense of place’ are in danger of disappearing. Everyday practices like work, participation in society, leisure, care and interaction with others are governed, controlled and guided by means of spatial organization.
In our view, our knowledge-based society has subordinated the perceived, sensed and personal to the ‘hard sciences’, banishing these dimensions to the discursive margins. Economically driven decision-making and urban planning alone cannot provide the means for re-calibrating the spatial organisation of society so that each citizen is able to reclaim her/his sense of belonging to sites and places in our living environment.