U-Create 2020: Creativity amid Crisis
U-Create 2020 will be organised as an online event and invites keynotes from Aalto University professors and international researchers on the topic of Creativity amid Crisis.
U-create Creativity amid Crisis: Agenda + Speakers day 2 (November 24th, 2020)
Tuesday 24.11.20
Creativity amid Crisis - In the field
Creativity amid Crisis - In the field
10:00 - Tuomas Auvinen, Dean for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University
Opening and welcome words
Tuomas Auvinen, Ph.D. (arts policy and management), EMBA is Dean for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture. He has previously served as the Dean of the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts in 2013–2016 and Rector of Sibelius Academy in 2012, Executive Director of the Finnish National Theatre in 2006–2009 and CEO of the Association of Finnish Theatres in 2002–2006. He led Sibelius Academy’s Arts Management Master’s Programme in 1999–2002. He has also taught creative leadership in Aalto University Executive Education’s Executive MBA and AaltoJOKO programmes. Auvinen is a member of the Board of the Finnish Film Industry, and acts as Visiting Professor of Arts Management at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
10:15 - Avner Peled, Doctoral Researcher, Media Lab, Aalto University
‘Teleported Narratives’
Now, more than ever, we need to be able to tell the local, terrestrial, story - authentically, and globally. Our diminishing material horizons are entangled, and we are losing our capacity to be co-located. I am suggesting to move from REporting to TELEporting. Not a human-interpreted representation of reality, but a cloned copy that carries the material along with the narrative. A narrative that accounts both to human and nonhuman agents. I argue that this transition starts with the use of ubiquitous 3D scanning technologies and situated technological mediums.
Avner is a creative technologist and media artist with a background in computer, human, and natural sciences. At the Aalto Media Lab doctoral program he is exploring the use of telepresence robots for intergroup contact. Avner is also developing 3D web visualizations of big data for the New York Times.
10:40 - Anastasia McCammon, Curator of Performance and Experiential Dance at the Xarkis NGO
‘Everything Flows’ Interactive Online Arts Residency
This presentation introduces the work of Cypriot-based NGO group Xarkis. Anastasia will be discussing Xarkis’ background, as well as their latest project entitled ‘Everything Flows’ (conceived in response to the Covid crisis). 'Everything Flows’ is an interactive digital space, where creative practitioners connect, interact and co-create. By offering a paid online residency program Xarkis aims to tackle some of the consequences of the crisis on the cultural sector. ‘Everything flows’ is essentially a gesture of hope and support, realized through a digital network. The first edition of the ‘Everything Flows Digital Arts Residency and Festival’ will take place from the 26th-29th of November 2020 where the residents will showcase their work, and offer participatory workshops and roundtable discussions.
Anastasia McCammon is Curator of Performance and Experiential Dance at the Xarkis NGO. Growing up in Cyprus, she developed her professional training in dance, theater and somatic practices in California, before completing a Masters in Arts Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute in the Netherlands. Her own research explores performative improvisations.
11:25 - Anna Talasniemi, Executive Director, Kone Foundation
Will the crisis spawn new beginnings? The Kone Foundation home residencies
In her presentation, Anna Talasniemi will talk about the Kone Foundation’s home residencies organised in spring/summer 2020 as a reaction to the pandemic. She’ll start with the survey the foundation made in March, and goes on to describe how the call for home residencies was designed. She will open the process from the foundation’s point of view and describe the experiences of the home residents based on the survey made during the residency period and the reports received afterwards.
Anna Talasniemi works as Executive Director at Kone Foundation, a Finnish private foundation advancing bold initiatives in research and the arts. The foundation awards grants and maintains two residencies for artists and researchers, the Saari Residence and the Lauttasaari Manor Residence. Anna has graduated with a Master’s degree from the University of Helsinki in 2004, majoring in Comparative Religion.
12:15 - Outi Turpeinen, Art Coordinator, Leadership Specialist Services, Aalto University
'Mare Tranquillitatis' by IC98
Outi Turpeinen introduces new public art work 'Mare Tranquillitatis' by artist group IC98
13:00 - Adina Renner, Visual Data Journalist at Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Wall of Silence: Using Creative Data Collection and Visualization to Expose Uncomfortable Truths
The project “Wall of Silence” employs data, text, code and visualization to reveal the systemic conditions in women’s gymnastics that allowed for the abuse of 265 young gymnasts at the hands of their physician, Larry Nassar. In the presentation, Adina Renner walks through the creative process behind this self-initiated project and considers how visualization can expose hidden narratives and reveal invisible connections. She further reflects on other creative ways of data collection and data visualization that are used in her work as a Visual Data Journalist in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Adina Renner is a visual data journalist at the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and an information design freelancer. At the intersection of data, design, and code, she creates stories that connect people and complex subject matters. Adina holds a Master’s degree in Information Design from Aalto University.
13:25 - Gerry Kearns, Professor of Geography, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Risk and Representation: the iconography of epidemiological knowledges under crisis
The way society describes epidemics to itself shapes its priorities in responding. The sinner as the focus in plague and the miasma highlighting environments for cholera, are typical of two strategies that recur in many subsequent epidemics and that may be broadly described as plague and providence: the sinners and the spaces. These distinctive representations of epidemic risk were likewise evident during the AIDS epidemic. It is very early to read the representations of Covid but we can see that there are distinctive forms in evolution, particularly around the development of dashboards. However, the primary arena of disease representation is as a public relations exercise in broadly plebiscitary autocracies.
Gerry Kearns works at the intersection of historical, political and health geographies. Recent publications include Geopolitics and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2009) and as co-editor Spatial Justice and the Irish Crisis (Royal Irish Academy, 2014). He is currently preparing a book on the cultural politics of the AIDS epidemic.
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