The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York's Exercises in Togetherness program continues with an online listening session on the Withstanding podcast platform, and in the company of curator Alaina Claire Feldman, artist and musician Miho Hatori, artist Josefina Nelimarkka and host Elina Suoyrjö. Aligning with recent and on-going work of the speakers, the session focuses on the practices of listening to nonhuman entities below and above sea levels. The discussion is a collaboration with the Mishkin Gallery.
How can we draw on non-visual observations of nature and science to register and account for the non-human and our inevitable coexistence? What kinds of listening practices can bring us closer to understanding and empathizing with various non-human beings and entities around us?
This episode is accompanied by Josefina Nelimarkka's essay Listening to the nonhuman: Sounds of air. In her essay, Nelimarkka elaborates on the topics of the podcast discussion in relation to her artistic practice and research. Please find the essay here: https://bit.ly/3FxNP7r
Exercises in Togetherness is kindly supported by New York State Council on the Arts.

Exercises in Togetherness: Listening to the nonhuman

Withstanding is a podcast, sound art and essay series produced by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York. As we slowly approach a post-pandemic era, Withstanding looks into what lies ahead for the field of visual arts together with invited art professionals. What do we want to take with us to the future? What to leave behind? What to cultivate?
 
Each podcast episode features a sound-based art work, including new commissions. Find out more and read the accompanying essays at fciny.org/projects/withstanding

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In this episode, our guest host Ervin Latimer, fashion designer and founder of label Latimmier, leads us to a conversation on sustainability in the fashion industry, with specific focus on the perspective of the body and questions of gender and size. He is joined by fashion designer Henna Lampinen, the winner of the Finnish Young Designer of the Year Award in 2023, and Steven Cox and Daniel Silver, designers behind the New York fashion label Duckie Brown.
Together the designers raise topical questions regarding social sustainability and responsibility in the fashion world: what kind of bodies does the high fashion industry serve? How to bring a variety of bodies into the forefront? How to work beyond the gender dichotomy traditionally defining design work?
The episode features the sound piece Prelude to Extinct by artists Teo Ala-Ruona and Tuukka Haapakorpi. The collaboratively created and emotion-evoking piece directs our attention to the body as a processual being with its cavities, hollows and unmapped regions.

Season 3, Episode 4: On Social Sustainability in Fashion

In this episode our guest host, curator and writer Eileen Isagon Skyers, leads a conversation about the dynamic interplay between artificial intelligence and contemporary art. We hear from artist Sofia Crespo, renowned for her mesmerizing generative art using neural networks, and artist Tuomas A. Laitinen, whose recent artistic practice includes an in-depth study of octopus intelligence. The episode delves into how AI redefines the boundaries of creativity, touching on the impact of machine learning on artistic expression, its ethical considerations, and the role of AI as both tool and collaborator in the creative process. Join us for an exploration into the evolving dialogue between art, technology, and the natural world. 
The episode features an excerpt of a sound piece by Robert M. Thomas, based on his close collaboration with Sofia Crespo on her piece Structures of Being at Antoni Gaudí’s famed Casa Batlló in Barcelona earlier this year. Mapping and zooming in on the micro life forms found at Casa Batlló, the piece is an immersive invitation for audiences to think about the life cycles and life forms we are necessarily a part of. Thomas formed the musical piece by writing generative algorithms that made intricate harmonic textures evoking natural growth and the stages of Gaudi’s life and development as an artist. 

Season 3, Episode 3: On AI and Artistry

In this episode, we delve into field of community activism in New York and Helsinki, through a discussion led by Ella Kaira and Matti Jänkälä from the Helsinki-based architectural practice Vokal. They are joined by organizer and activist Annie Carforo and curator, organizer and activist Monxo López to discuss both urgencies and longer-term goals of working towards a more equitable urban space. What kind of impact can community-led grassroots organizing have in a city like New York? What are the most urgent matters on either side of the Atlantic? What kind of recent triumphs and challenges to bring forth?
As the sound piece of this episode, we present two tracks, when the saints (interlude) and when the saints (reprise) by artist E. Jane’s alter ego MHYSA. Included in MHYSA’s album NEVAEH (2020), the tracks are a cover of an extended and prophetic version of the familiar song When the Saints Go Marching In. For the artist, this not-quite-as-familiar version of the song symbolizes people imagining a radically different world, and trying to call it into being through music.

Season 3, Episode 2: On Community Activism

The new season of FCINY’s Withstanding podcast begins with a deep dive into sound. Each Withstanding episode functions as a platform not only for discussions on urgent topics in the post-pandemic world, but also for sound-based artworks.
In this episode, we discuss sounding, listening and hearing with sound artist, composer and activist Antye Greie-Ripatti and multidisciplinary artist LaMont Hamilton. What kind of a material is sound for an artist? How to adjust oneself to practices of attentive listening? And what kind of social and communal potential lies within sound? Join in as we discuss various aspects of sound and listening, alongside Greie-Ripatti’s and Hamilton’s practices within sound-based art.

Exercises in Togetherness: Listening to the nonhuman

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