Everyday Priorities—Art, Technology and Accommodations is a series of gatherings and new artistic commissions that explore, experiment with, and put into action alternative ways of commissioning, producing, and presenting artistic work, media art as well as dialogic and performative practices. The programme prioritizes equity, making space, and access (needs and desires).
As a collective (un)learning process, the project enhances the critical and speculative use of new technologies, different forms of hospitality, and access toolkits. In the piloting phase during 2025, the project centres artists Flis Holland and Joy Mariama Smith’s practices, and hosts their new commissions. The project is curated by Amal Alhaag, Artistic Director of Metro54 and Jussi Koitela, Director of M-Cult, and organised in collaboration with the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux.
The histories of disability justice within arts and culture have been continuously marked by an ebb and flow of attention toward disability arts, without centering the urgent need to maintain access beyond the changing tendencies. Even as cultural organizations begin to recognize that disability equity requires ongoing, transformative (un)learning and infrastructural change, fundamental questions remain: how is space made to uphold the right to mobility and access to information and technologies for radical expression by artists and their communities?
Building upon and working alongside the efforts of those who have long been engaged at the intersection of art, technology, body politics, and transformative disability justice, the programme asks in what ways are artists, activists and thinkers addressing the material and accessibility problems that are deeply rooted in the violent logic of hegemonic power structures—which erases certain bodies deeming them disposable?
Everyday Priorities—Art, Technology and Accommodations is an invitation to collectively examine technologcies that mirror racist, colonial, and ableist power structures and histories while also considering their potential to reshape conditions for everyday life.
The project hosts two workshop gatherings, the first on the 25th of March and the second on the 22nd of May 2025, and presents new artworks in Amsterdam at Metro54 and in Helsinki later during autumn 2025. Information about participation will be available soon.
Participating artists
Flis Holland (UK/Finland) tracks the collisions of trans and celestial bodies. Working with video installations, apps, and audio tours, Holland tries to loosen the link between seeing a body and knowing it. Holland’s solo exhibition “Off-Colour” was at Helsinki Art Museum in 2023 and developed as HIAP artist in residence 2022-23. Recent group shows include Oulu Art Museum, Pori Biennial,Titanik Gallery, exhibition platform Pitted Dates and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and screenings at Helsinki International Film Festival Love & Anarchy, Kasseler Dokfest and Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival.
Joy Mariama Smith (US/Netherlands) is an installation and movement artist, activist, educator, and architectural designer with interest in the interplay between the body and the physical environment. Their work has been performed internationally, including at If I Can’t Dance Edition VI – Event and Duration, Amsterdam; SoLow Festival, Philadelphia; Ponderosa Movement & Discovery in Stolzenhagen, Germany; Freedom of Movement: Municipal Art Acquisitions 2018, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Currently, they teach at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam.
Hosting organisations
M-Cult is a Helsinki-based non-profit organisation founded in 2000 to develop and promote media art and digital culture, with a focus on cultural, social and participatory aspects of media and technology.
m-cult.org/
@mcult.helsinki
Metro54 is a space for global sonic, cultural and artistic practices, gathering(s), (un)learning, histories, grassroots community work, spatial politics and transformative justice. Together with artists, thinkers, activists, neighbors, writers and hustlers, Metro54 organizes pluriversal programs, exhibition projects, weekenders and research projects.
metro54.nl
@metro54
The Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, based in Brussels, creates sustainable connections and work opportunities for culture and art professionals between Finland and the Benelux countries, and promotes the visibility of Finnish culture in the Benelux region.
finncult.be
@finncultblx
Everyday Priorities—Art, Technology and Accommodations is supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland and the Mondriaan Fonds, Netherlands.
More information:
Laura Boxberg, laura.boxberg@finncult.be
Ela Suleymangil, ela.suleymangil@finncult.be
Images:
Left: Joy Mariama Smith. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Maarten Nauw.
Right: Flis Holland. Courtesy of the artist.
