Taking over the Lasipalatsi Square, To The Square 2 connected central Helsinki to artistic and political movements on several continents:
From Tunis to Tahrir Square, Cairo
From Occupy to Wikileaks and Blockupy ECB
From Gezi Park to Bolotnaya Square in Moscow …
After the protest movements which broke out in capitals across the world from 2011 onward, we live in a period of regressive politics and at times violent repression. The question today is, what would it take for people to go To The Square 2 – to go to the streets again? Perhaps it requires new extremes of economic inequality? Or massive ecological catastrophes or raw racism? Or an infinitely bigger “big brother”? For where did it all come from, and where does it go — that revolutionary energy?
To The Square 2 featured installations, performances, street art, screenings, workshops and discussions by artists deeply involved in forms of resistance and movements “to the square”. The goal was to mobilize people with art.
The invited artists were Egypt’s famed and much-loved street-artist Ammar Abo Bakr (Luxor/Cairo), the renowned Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar (Ramallah), whose new public intervention seeks 50 volunteers to match the 50 army-uniforms he will include in an installation, political and satirical artists Vladan Jeremić & Rena Rädle (Belgrade), Nikolay Oleynikov (Nizhny Novgorod/Moscow), whose mobile broadcast station Radio Pravda roamed the streets, squares and airwaves, the Berlin-based urban transformers Raumlabor, and the sincerely hilarious ZIP Group (Krasnodar) and its “wild constructivsm” in the centre of Lasipalatsi Square.
The project was accompanied by The Square Newspaper, designed by Tzortzis Rallis (Occupied Times). The paper includes art by Ganzeer, Federico Geller, Vladan Jeremić & Rena Rädle and articles by Michel Bauwens, Feminist Pencil, Grey Violet, Núria Güell, G.U.L.F., Occupy Museums, Teivo Teivainen, Telekommunisten and Nadya Tolokonnikova of Zona Prava / Pussy Riot.
To The Square 2 was curated by Marita Muukkonen and Ivor Stodolsky of Perpetuum Mobilε as a part of the international Re-Aligned Project. It continued the themes of Back to (The) Square 1 exhibition presented in March 2014 at Gallery Forum Box.
The Project was a part of Helsinki Festival 2014.
Thank you:
HIAP - Helsinki International Artist Programme