toinen kerros – NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS
Nokiantie 2–4, Helsinki, Finland
toinen kerros – NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – the table of contents:
NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – a preliminary manifesto
NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – a short history
NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – the plan
NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – a preliminary manifesto
A new community-driven, low threshold, DIY space for presenting, practicing, and encountering sound based art practices.
- The space is a platform for community building, commoning practices, and co-curation, open to the field of sonic arts at large.
- For the first three years, the Äänen Lumo association takes the responsibility towards the fundings it has received to make the space possible. The association does not intend to “manage” the space in the traditional sense, for which there is also no budget at this point. Rather the association has a role of facilitator for the functioning of the space, a guarantee towards these principles, as well as a role of coordination.
- The space is generally given for free to official and unofficial groups and communities for them to organise and take care of several activities.
- Any activity that is marginal in nature and revolves around or identifies with sound-based artistic practices in a broad sense, is welcome to be represented in the space. In a non-exhaustive list, these can include concerts, exhibitions, workshops, jam sessions, study moments, discussions, symposia, meetups, as well as initiatives of leisure for the same communities.
- The space could, should the need arise, and the managing communities agree with it, be used towards sporadic crowdfunding events, as long as these don’t otherwise limit the availability of the space for its core uses.
- The operational structure of the space is tested in “seasons”, and different strategies are explored during the first three years.
- A system of safeguards and strategies will be identified during these initial years to set the basis for future possible new iterations.
- The space works on the basis of safer space, for safer space guidelines see for example: https://www.kulttuuriakaikille.fi/about_us_safer_space_policy
NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – a short history
Äänen Lumo was born in 1995 as an initiative of a small group of sound artists and experimental musicians. Naturally the shape of the association reflected the context in which it was formed as a vessel to curate and diffuse Finnish sound art. In 1995, the field was still strongly related to classic ideas of public/artists distinction, as well as top/down curatorial practices. Now almost 30 years later, the association, still an important reference point within a much more articulated field, has initiated a long-term project of reform, in order to shift the emphasis, from traditional curatorial and diffusion practices, to those of community building and intra-communities networking. Some of the guidelines of this reform, as threads detected within the field itself have been: questioning power structures and gate-keeping practices, commoning, removing access obstacles to non-mainstream artistic activities with loose distinction between “producers” and “audiences”, horizontal knowledge sharing in the form of workshops and other peer learning events etc.
NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – a short history – the three stages
The precursor II – Ääneen Sonic Arts Month
The next stage – THE NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS (Nokiantie 2-4)
The precursor I – NeuroVerkko
In 2017, Äänen Lumo’s project NeuroVerkko (www.aanenlumo.com/neuroverkko) was financed by Kone Foundation with the goal to create a network between different sonic arts communities of Helsinki and beyond. The first move was to reach out to other associations as well as single professionals to understand how the actors in the field have changed in the last years, what were their interests, needs and struggles, and ultimately how could Äänen Lumo rethink its function to keep it meaningful after twenty years since it was founded.
The first step of this project was to call the meeting “Let’s talk about Sound Art and Experimental Music” held at the Kuusi Palaa project space, on the 19th of June 2018. The open meeting was attended by twenty representatives from several Helsinki-based operatives. Additional meetings with other representatives from Helsinki as well as other cities were also carried out during 2018 to define the strategies of operation, and a shared season of concerts was initiated, to mix audiences and starting to create a broader feeling of participation to a common project. On the 23rd of February 2019 a second, bigger meeting was organised at the Kone Foundation’s Kamari space, in order to start a common path towards the future of this network.
The main findings of those activities revolved around the notion that although Helsinki is culturally a very lively place, hosting a rich constellation of small realities producing and diffusing sonic arts in all possible acceptations of the term, at the same time, many actors often tend to involuntarily “compete” with each other, subdividing resources. Most of the subjects manifested a need for more (material and immaterial) resources for independent, experimental projects, to keep operating outside of the commercial logic. Some of the common lamentation converged around the lack of visibility, lack of lasting traces of what is done in this small scale, with years of ephemeral work disappearing undocumented. Others complained about the inability, for financial reasons, to be able to access professional equipment for production, distribution or documentation of new works, often resulting in a certain degree of forced amateurism, which in turn, reduces further the reach.
Artists are often felt to be confronted with the difficult choice to abandon experimentalism to develop and be able to grow professionally, or risk to operate in a very narrow space. To oppose this was felt a shared need to reformulate the duality “professional/amateur” on the one hand, and to rethink the historical opposition between audience and artists.
It was strongly felt, finally, that the sonic arts fields need to cooperate more in order to make its actors stronger and more visible, as this visibility in turn can help them to reach a wider artistic and potential audience. First this needs to happen on a regional level, then gradually, on national, Nordic, European and global levels, to reduce the isolation of the Finnish scene.
The precursor II – Ääneen Sonic Arts Month
An initial small scale initiative that was born out of the findings of the NeuroVerkko process was the first edition of Äänen Sonic Arts Month organised in February 2021 as a joint initiative between Äänen Lumo and the Media Artists’ Association MUU ry. The whole month at the MUU Helsinki gallery was dedicated to sonic arts, involving the big network of sonic arts communities that Äänen Lumo haa been establishing within the two years-long NeuroVerkko project, in a collaborative and engaging effort.
During the summer 2020 amidst the pandemic, Äänen Lumo prepared an open call for co-curation directed towards associations, communities, institutions and even single artists with the idea of putting ideas, knowledge, and resources in common. The aim of this call was to involve sonic communities to co-curate this festival, experimenting with collective and inclusive curatorial practices, circulation of and access to resources and power, with a blurred distinction between producers and audiences. The open call got many exciting proposals. The festival program, throughout February 2021, was finalised in the shape of four thematic weeks, each providing a different approach to the field as well as rotating responsibilities and duties.
The next stage – THE NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS (Nokiantie 2-4)
After the experience gained through the NeuroVerkko process and the Ääneen Sonic Arts Month, the Äänen Lumo community felt the next organic step would be to establish a physical, more permanent venue, suitable for concerts, exhibitions, residencies and communal activities to take place. A venue open to the communities of both artists, curator and audiences allowing for co-organised events with a non-profit, DIY profile, could be the answer to provide what is now out of reach for any of the actors alone. In 2023 Äänen Lumo received a grant from the Kone Foundation to try out how this kind of space could work. With this funding Äänen Lumo is determined to initiate a new phase in the next three years in order to facilitate and, in the long run, to create the conditions for more stable structures to emerge.
Conscious of the complexity and fragility of such a process, the members of Äänen Lumo want to implement a three-year miniature version, that could try answering some of the questions at stake within a manageable scale, and on the other hand to provide an open place to reflect without prejudices on the process itself. It could constitute a shared model for the more permanent structure to come, as well as offer a tangible example for future financiers, who are usually not taking the risk with not yet existing structures.
In 2024 Äänen Lumo has rented and renovated a large space ~185 sqm at Nokiantie 2-4 in the old industrial area in Vallila, Helsinki to establish the first prototype of a collective communal sonic arts space: a venue providing a structure for active, independent organisers, performers, artists and public alike to create, share, promote and document such arts, as well as just a place to participate and hang out. A place that could be at once a concert venue, a production facility to host residencies, a sonic arts workshop, a library and an archive, a living room, and a place for encounters and discussions.
The new sonic arts space aims to involve sonic communities to experiment, within a common infrastructure, with curatorial practices, circulation of and access to resources and power, with a blurred distinction between producers and audiences. A physical, non-privatized context where professionalism and quality are not tools to create and reinforce hierarchies, but shared resources to allow the sonic communities, in all their diversity, to grow in a democratic, self-organised, sustainable, diverse and inclusive way.
The project is developed along three axes:
- Money/funding – To imagine a structure allowing the communities to join efforts to access bigger funding opportunities, to share resources and help the community to grow in a more horizontal (solidaristic) way. – Counteract the “winner takes all” philosophy: where the success stories circulating only isolate the other numerous subjects that don’t get anything. – Avoid small associations to lose money, guarantee money to pay artists, and to rent or buy professional equipment. At same time devise common strategies to negotiate with the Culture and Leisure division of the city of Helsinki for funding to sustain the created network, reaching the international potential, access to EU funding etc.
- Advertisement/press/documentation – To imagine and experiment with a unified communication/advertisement channel to: inform about, share and document the activities. Promoting and developing press coverage of concerts, presentation of activities, a common website – Shared event calendar, to keep the community uptodate with the events, as well as avoid organisers congesting the same day with events – establishing a shared, self-managed open-source radio/label to document and make available the activity from the scene, also from a perspective of archiving Sonic arts, which often stays ephemeral.
- Rethink community organisation and democratic safeguards – Starting from the experience of places such as Temporary/Kuusi Palaa in Helsinki, Fylkingen in Stockholm or Teatro Valle Bene Comune in Rome, Äänen Lumo iswe are thinking of a place to allow activities to scale up by sharing resources, knowledge, facilities, but at the same time a space to communicate and reflect, to rethink alternative power structures (funding, distribution, selection criteria, visibility, etc.) and to create the conditions for more diverse independent approaches: democratic, self-organised, sustainable, diverse, inclusive, imagining democratic safeguards together.
Keywords: Safer space, Responsibility, DIY, Marginality, Community, Commoning, Experiment, Co-curation
NEW SPACE FOR SONIC ARTS – the plan
Three years (May 2024 – May 2027) are reserved to experiment with different formats as well as to allow for reassessments and adjustments to be made.
Some of the key activities this project would promote:
- Rethinking cultural policies: initiate a public dialogue on how to include experimental and “other” music into the funding system, involving the public sector to help them better acknowledge the activities of the field.
- A website: build and keep available a website infrastructure.
- A sonic arts library/archive: start to collect the existing documentation from various sources to create the first sonic arts archive collection. The collection would be open to everyone.
- A net radio/label: create a virtual platform to make available the different existing productions, as well as to discuss and raise questions, to share the documented activities.
- A shared calendar: a shared calendar with easy access to different realities to post their activity and avoid overlap / maximise visibility.
- Study models: engage in research and meetings with representatives of similar international networks and initiatives to understand victories and failures.
- Institutional outreach: create partnerships with the city of Helsinki and other public and private institutions to sample the possibility of available spaces in the short and longer times, as well as advocate for the needs of the community.
- Reflection/discussion: engage in regular meetings, seminars and discussion, to start identifying possible organisational strategies.
- Commoning: experiment with ways to decentrate power and involve as many people as possible in shared, circulating administrative and upkeeping duties.
- Shared activities: organise shared activities, with diverse line-ups, an inclusive atmosphere, seeing the experimental sonic arts scene as an umbrella term for a wide range of practices, such as impro-based jam sessions, concerts, installation and hybrid forms, as well as parties and low-thresholds events.
- Learning together: organise workshops, peer learning events to recirculate the knowledge outside of discipline boundaries and academic exclusions.
- Self-growth: organise periodic meetups from within the community to assess and discuss the network itself.