~in waves~ intensive residency of feminist curating

Helena Reckitt was one of three workshop leaders for this intensive residency on feminist curating, organised by nynnyt, Orlan Ohtonen & Selina Väliheikki, a Helsinki-based feminist curatorial duo that works from and with the notion of friendship. She combined an introductory talk, close readings, and an exercise in intimate speech, listening, and narration to explore the deficit of care within the cultural sector.

The residency took flight from the notion of waves – waves, as Sara Ahmed(*) puts it, as both a movement that reaches outward through a series of motions and as something that needs to be built into a shelter. Waves can be the indefinite and the nonspecific, the in-between and the billowing. Waves can shape us and become a movement of change, but they can also be painful, they can also be painstaking, as they return to us, return us, make us return.
Together with invited guests and the participants of the residency, nynnyt wanted to think about the essence of waves in relation to both feminism and the curatorial, and to search for connections between questions that come from thinking of waves and those that come from daily practices of curating:
In the face of waves that precede us, how can we act and practice with consistency and renewal?
How to embrace the vague and endure the uncertain?
How can we build shared shelters on the grounds that are constantly shaken?
How to practice what we preach – how to build and not only represent?
If change is a wave whetting a stone, how can we stay with the wave?

Five workshop participants based in Sweden and five in Finland were chosen through an open call (this was a requirement from the funding body of Hanaholmen, in order to promote exchange between the two countries).

The residency opened with a semi-public meet and greet event, where invited guests working in Finland with feminism and curating met the workshop hosts and guests of the residency programme, hoping that this could be a chance to form future relations and alliances, friendships and dialogues. The evening included a performance from artists Anne Naukkarinen and Maarit Mustonen called WATER FALL 7.