27th March-1st April 2006, Helsinki

The deep-local Helsinki culture of mobility, systems and networks is manifested at the site of Rautatieasema (Railway Station). With it’s interior, exterior, surrounding subterranean public-spaces, it is a centrepoint of urban Finland; A cartographic and temporal framework for partings, convergences, paths and destinations, all wrapped up in objective data and personal story. The tangible, intangible, physical and informatic.. The static and mobile..

Acknowledging the recent contemporary past, the workshop aims to engage with the Central Railway Station site in Helsinki, and will begin with considerations upon what happened last time at the same site during PixelACHE 2004. On that occasion, approximately 20 international media and performance artists, activists, archaeologists and researchers spent 5 days exploring overlaps in “capture-gathering” methods and site-documentations.

However, this time participants will be given a key to a locker in the railway station. What is found inside, will be something to begin with.

The locker contents will be starting points in the first 3 mornings, towards self-directed individual or collaborative activity during the rest of the workshop week.

Hence the reiteration of the Locative Media Workshop in the context of PixelACHE2006 focuses activity towards devised performance; to ethnographic, storytelling and interpretative approaches; to reiterations and representations.

CALL OF INTEREST

Local, regional and Nordic/Baltic persons are encouraged to apply for participation:

Please send an e-mail with the following information to
locative at pixelache.ac
by January 31st:

Write about your interests and works in locative/site-specific arts (Max. A4).

NB/: Overseas travel arrangements should be made by applicant via Sleipnir

PROGRAMME

As a daily gathering place, the event will be hosted at the Bar Koko, Central Helsinki, although emphasis will be placed in using the 5 days to relate with the railway station site, its inhabitants and staff. The workshop aims to involve local and Baltic Sea region practioners, including a couple ‘luminaries’ from the previous event, and some new interventionists into the locative discourse.

Detailed public information will be posted nearer the time.

CONTEXT

During PixelACHE 2004, a locative media workshop held was held as the first event in the series of 6 ‘Trans-Cultural Mapping’ workshops initiated by RIXC Centre for New Media (Riga, Latvia). Each workshop had a specific focus on outskirts and interregional networking, in the context of an enlarged Europe. The Additional aim was to discover specific, deep and relevant layers of the local cultures, involving specific local communities in the process. For more information of what happened:

Locative Media Workshop.PixelACHE2004

Locative media may be understood to mean media in which context is crucial, in that the media pertains to specific location and time, the point of spatio-temporal ‘capture’, dissemination or some point in between. The term locative media has also over the last couple of years been associated with mobility, collaborative mapping, and emergent forms of social networking.

locative.net

WORKSHOP

A large portion of the scheduled workshop time will be dedicated to exploring the specific site, subterranean and surrounding area of the Rautatieasema. This site may be understood as a ‘boundary object’. A boundary object is interpreted by different communities, with an acknowledgement and discussion of these differences, that allows a shared understanding to be formed. It is a common point of reference for conversation; a means of coordination and alignment; a means of translation.

The participants are encouraged to bring their own desired tools and technologies for gathering data: laptops, pens and sticky paper, digital movie/image cameras, mobile phones, handheld GPS, human voice, microphones and sound recorders, among others.

However, not to be forgotton but emphasised, the participants bring their body to the site of interest. Concerned with positioning, visibility and performance, we locate our physical being among others, negotiating the spatio-temporal context.

As part of this orientation the participants also bring their emotional and intellectual self to the site. Time, space and emotions are invested in fieldwork, connecting the personal, professional and political. Indeed it is difficult to disengage the situated and emboddied self. Those specific identity and context perspectives brought - age, gender, sexuality, history, nationality, class, politic - mingles with the stories, subjectivites, and histories of others present in the field. By documenting other places and the people within, the participants are also writing part of their own story in relation.

As part of the process of developing and expanding the locative media discourse, the workshop design aims to include the situated, the embodied and the temporal.

PARTICIPANTS

TBC …

ORGANISERS

Workshop program designed by Meiju Niskala (Media Lab UIAH) and Andrew Paterson (Media Lab UIAH/M-Cult/HIIT).

Locative media workshop in Helsinki is a part of PixelACHE 2006 Festival, organised by Piknik Frequency and Kiasma Theatre.

For further information contact: locative at pixelache.ac