URB 16

URB Festival

The URB 16 program is a multi-artistic and thematically rich set of dance, theatre, visual arts, cinema and other forms of artistic expression that are more difficult to categorize. The mission of the festival is to bring out and support artists of the younger generation, create local and international collaboration as well as to develop dialogue with mainly young audience.

The festival program includes works and projects that offer the audience several ways to participate in the festival: as a spectator, a contributor who gets to influence the realization of the work or as a learner and creative participant of a workshop.

URB Urban Art festival is an annual produced by Kiasma Theatre.

Programme

Opening night

Kiasma Café and Kiasma Theatre 3.8. from 18 onwards
Screening 5 €

This year’s URB festival kicks off with a lively evening at Kiasma: DJ Aksim spins records and there are two performances in the museum foyer. The evening closes with a movie screening in Kiasma Theatre with two Finnish short film. The feature film is Downtown 81, a cult classic directed by Edo Bertoglio depicting Manhattan in the post-punk era, starring the late Jean-Michel Basquiat.

You’re warmly invited to enjoy a urban summer evening with us! The events outside and in the foyer have free entrance, tickets for the screening are 5 euros (includes a drink before screening). Note that the age limit of the movie screening is 16 years.

Selfies

Kiasma Theatre 4.8. at 14–21
Tickets 10/5 €

What if Selfie, quick self-portrait in social media was a slow self-portrait in a social performance? The artists behind the performance series Selfies are Iida-Maria Heinonen, Hannu Kivioja, Esa Mattila, Jonna Nykänen, Kati Raatikainen and Petra Vehviläinen. They began the series in 2013 and aim to continue it for the rest of their lives.

onemorequestion: R.I.P. SERVICES

Alppitalo (Karjalankatu 2) 4.8. at 19, 5.8. at 19, 6.8. at 18, 7.8. at 16
Tickets 15/10 €

You plan your life. Why not plan your death as well?

onemorequestion’s new performance/installation explores the limits of our self-determination in today’s consumerist society obsessed with optimization and efficiency. Due to the enormous progress in medicine during the last decades, our life can be prolonged in ways that were unimaginable for previous generations. However, we are also forced to take more control over life and death than ever before in history. R.I.P. SERVICES helps you manage the challenges of death and dying in the most enjoyable way possible.

The first performance by onemorequestion, YOYO – You are On Your Own, premiered at URB 14 festival and it was invited to brut Wien (Vienna) and HomeFest (Bucharest) in 2015.

Artists behind R.I.P. SERVICES are Joonas Lahtinen, Luzie Stransky, Mikko Niemistö, Eero Erkamo, Tanja Turpeinen, Jukka Heiskanen, Esther Csapo, and Harald Jokesch.

Supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Finnish Cultural Fund, Uusimaa Regional Fund. In collaboration with Honkasen ruumisarkkuliike.

Summer Job Project: Kultaa!

Stoa – Musiikkisali 5.8. at 18, 6.8. at 14 //
Free entry

Kultaa! (Gold!) asks if society acts like a gold-digger and picks the highflyers among youth. The work aims to capture the societal pressure that is directed at a certain stage of life. Where is the limit between acceptance and rejection? What is radical in the year 2016?

The performers are young summer workers of the city of Helsinki, Iita, Sawuli, Ilmi Pavilainen, Kami Karbalei and Iida Jalola. They have created the contents of the piece together with dramaturge Are Nikkinen and theatre maker Elina Izarra.

HELride

Kiasma skate ramp 5.8. at 18–21
Mini ramp is open for skaters daily during the summer. 

The highlight of the skate summer, HELride gathers skaters in Helsinki during the first weekend of August. On Friday 5 August meeting point is Kiasma’s skate ramp where rule books have been thrown away together with stopwatches. Instead we’re offering good skating, good times and entertainment for all.

Kiasma’s mini ramp was painted by Laura Lehtinen and Helmi Silvo in the beginning of June.

Jessica Warboys: Hoop Eye Dance Trance

SIC 6.8.–4.9. Opening 5.8. at 18–21
Screening and artist talk in Kiasma Theatre 6.8. at 16.
Free entry.

British visual artist Jessica Warboys’ recent production Sanni, filmed in Kiasma Theatre in Spring 2016, combines dance, painting and sound to create a sketch of movement to music. Sanni will be screened as part of Jessica Warboys’ exhibition of painting, sculpture and film, Hoop Eye Dance Trance at SIC gallery.

HIGHER workshop

Stoa-Musiikkisali 8.8.–10.8.
Registration fee 15 €

Michele Rizzo leads the HIGHER workshop that derives directly from the process of making of the show HIGHER, and that deals primarily with the idea of training trance-dancing in a non-clubbing environment. Registration begins together with festival ticket sales later in June.

DOUBLE BILL: Marika Peura, Kaisa Nieminen, Felix Zenger: [pʌls] and Michele Rizzo: HIGHER

Stoa-Teatterisali 9.8. at 19, 10.8. at 19
Tickets 15/10 €

Helsinki-based dance artists Marika Peura and Kaisa Nieminen, along with beatbox artist Felix Zenger, meet on Stoa’s stage. Drawing ideas from urban art forms, the artists investigate the relationship between dance and the beat with their improvisation-based performance.

Amsterdam-based choreographer Michele Rizzo’s performance HIGHER is inspired and based on the experience of club dancing. In the performance club dancing is analyzed in its being a form of prayer and catharsis, trying to manifest the magical essence of the club in the context of the black box.

Ofri Cnaani: ⌘D (Command+ Duplicate)

Kiasma Seminar Room 10.8. at 13–20:30
Free entry

Staged as an ad-hoc image-production station, Ofri Cnaani’s ⌘D (Command+ Duplicate) participatory performance combines items from the visitor’s personal belongings together with objects culled from the artist’s collection of found materials to enact the live creation of a personalized image using a photocopy machine and an overhead projector. The print will be signed by the artist and given to the participant as a unique work of art, or an “original copy.” A continuous projection on the adjunct wall will display the real-time process of assembling the objects on the working station, thus creating a digital reproduction of an image with no coherent source. Employing old devices, Cnaani’s piece, brings back the values of something hand-made and at a slow pace. Her Do-It-Yourself apparatus brings back the playfulness and simplicity involved in composing an image. The photocopier, associated with bureaucracy, is being used as a tool for new dialogs, while efficiency is being replaced by creativity and exchange.

Ofri Cnaani is an artist and educator. In 2015 she presented a live video installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a newly commissioned piece for Inhotim Institute, Brazil and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Cnaani’s solo exhibitions and performances include: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; PS1/MoMA, NYC; BMW Guggenheim Lab, NYC; The Fisher Museum of Art, L.A.; Twister, Network of Lombardy Contemporary Art Museums, Italy; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; and the Herzlyia Museum of Art, Israel.

In collaboration with Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP)

HoME Theater: KoToNA / DoMA / at HoME

Private home 10.8. at 17, 11.8. at 17, 12.8. at 17
Tickets 15/10 €

KoToNA / DoMA / at HoME is an award-winning site-specific performance project that takes place in a different home each time and always reflects the space, themes, neighborhood and pasts of its inhabitants – who also participate in the performance. It is an archaeological, anthropological, intelligent and playful look at urban life. This summer the creators of the project, HoME Theater from Prague, are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the performance (and of the company) at URB festival.

HoME theater is a Prague-based group of international and local artists exploring theater and performance – creating site-specific, participatory, public space, research, and other kinds of devised performances. The group are exploring what kinds of artistic and personal transformations can be achieved through performance by creating confusions about and collisions between private and public space, art and life, hardheadedness and compromise…

The performance takes place in a private home in central Helsinki. The performance will begin at a meeting point near the apartment, but its location won’t be revealed until right before the performance…

Travel supported by Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. Other support: MOTUS at Alfred ve dvore, Prague; Prague City Council; New Web / Nova sit.

In collaboration with Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP)

PME-ART: The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (H5)

Kiasma Theatre 11.8. at 19–22
Tickets 15/10 €

A turn-table and a pile of records. For each record we have a story at the ready. The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (Hospitality 5) explores the way music – and the stories that surround it – infiltrate our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.

Bring your own Record/Listening Party (LP)

Kiasma Theatre 12.8. at 18–19:30
Free entry

The day after the performance, the public is also invited to a special encounter called Bring your own Record/Listening Party, where anyone can bring his/her own record and tell a story of her/his own in a casual atmosphere, raising every kind of questions.

URB in Hyvinkää: Urban Comics in Villa Arttu

Villa Arttu 9.–12.6.

The Art Centre for Children and Young People in Hyvinkää organizes a comic workshop for 15 to 20 year-olds. The theme of the workshop is HOME. The workshop is led by comic artist Hanneriina Moisseinen.