pARTir – Creating a Cultural Roadmap Towards Responsible International Mobility

pARTir is a new collaborative project between the Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes (SKTI) and ten Finnish cultural institutes operating abroad. The project aims to promote the sustainable and long-term internationalisation of Finnish art.

Scheduled to run until 2025, the project promotes cross-cultural exchange and facilitates the international mobility of artists through the production of approximately 30 sustainably created performances, exhibitions, and other artworks. These works are commissioned and developed in collaboration with various international art organisations. The programme is designed to strengthen and establish ecologically and socially sustainable practices for international mobility, cultural export, and exchange.

The project operates through a network model, with the Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes umbrella organization (SKTI) serving as the main coordinator in Helsinki. The ten Finnish cultural institutes involved collaborate with intermediary cultural organisations in their respective host countries.

Participating in the project are the Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes: FinnAgora – The Finnish Institute in Hungary, The Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, The Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland, the Finnish Institute in Japan, The Finnish Institute in Madrid, the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute FINNO, Institut finlandais – the Finnish Institute in France, Finnland-Institut – the Finnish Institute in Germany, and the Finnish Institute in Estonia.

The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture awarded a special grant of €726,000 to the pARTir project as part of the European Union’s cultural and creative industries structural support (Rescue and Recovery Facility RRF) in the fall of 2023. The RRF is one of the programmes under the European Union’s Next Generation EU recovery instrument.

 

Our 2025 Programme

Our 2025 pARTir programme culminates in three exceptional projects across the Netherlands. It begins with Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen’s thought-provoking exhibition When I grow up, I will become a coat rack at 1646 in The Hague. In May, two highly anticipated Dutch debuts follow: Teo Ala-Ruona and working group present Parachorale at Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art in Middelburg, and the multidisciplinary Helsinki-based collective WAUHAUS brings Renaissance to SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht.

Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen: When I grow up, I will become a coat rack

Disability activist Gunilla Sjövall lies back with a book on their chest. They are wearing brightly coloured, red clothes and have a pair of sunglasses resting on their forehead. Their beautiful long grey hair is spread out on the pillow. Gunilla Sjövall gives the middle finger to the camera.

Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, How Great is Your darkness, 2024, still from 2-channel video installation- 5min 22sec. Image by Rasoul Khorram. Courtesy the artist.

Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen’s exhibition When I grow up, I will become a coat rack invites visitors to explore the consequences of excluding disabled people from decision-making and technological innovation. Through her playful and futuristic works, Wallinheimo-Heimonen challenges societal norms and highlights the need for inclusive practices in both technology and daily life. As an artist and activist, she emphasizes the importance of shifting away from traditional views of disability, advocating for a future where quality of life and joy take precedence over profit and ableism. The exhibition takes place 7.2.2025 – 13.4.2025 at 1646 Experimental Art Space, The Hague.

Learn more about the exhibition When I grow up, I will become a coat rack.

Read this beautiful reflection by Josefien Cornette (BE) in conversation with Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen (FI), as they discuss accessibility, community, and the role of humour, offering a compelling vision for a more inclusive cultural landscape beyond the constraints of an ableist world.

 

A gothic carnival of flesh and voice: Teo Ala-Ruona’s Parachorale debuts in the Netherlands in May

Left: Quote by Laura Boxberg, Director, Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux. Right: Teo Ala-Ruona performs Parachorale at Baltic Circle 2024. Photo: Tani Simberg.

Teo Ala-Ruona arrives in the Netherlands straight from the Venice Architecture Biennale, where he and his working group are featured in the Nordic Pavilion.

Vleeshal contemporary art center’s late-medieval architecture sets the stage for the powerful new performance Parachorale, spinning a web between the tattooing of skin, choral singing, and an audience fed with spun sugar. Ala-Ruona crafts a performance that is not only of the flesh, but for it. Parachorale, which premiered at Baltic Circle, Helsinki and previously also has been shown at XS-festival, Turku, continues Ala-Ruona’s series of works addressing the psychosomatic extremes of transcorporeality and paranormal potential. As the sequel to his solo Lacuna (2021), it speaks to the experience of inner dissonance. At its heart lies the desire to share an under-the-skin world and to create a new understanding of reality with the audience.

The Dutch programme is curated by Vleeshal curator Jim van Geel and produced in collaboration with Vleeshal and the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux.
The performance takes place at Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art in Middelburg, The Netherlands on 17 and 18 May 2025.

Read more about Parachorale at Vleeshal.

 

Unveiling Renaissance: WAUHAUS’ Dutch debut at SPRING festival

Five people lie on their backs on a blue stage, evenly spaced and facing upward. Above them, a cloud of fog or mist hovers in front of a blue, vertically pleated backdrop. The lighting is dramatic, with the surrounding area in darkness, drawing focus to the figures and the central cloud.

Renaissance by WAUHAUS. Photo: Katri Naukkarinen.

The Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux is proud to support the highly anticipated Dutch debut of WAUHAUS, a groundbreaking arts collective from Helsinki, at this year’s SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht. They bring their work Renaissance, a one-hour performance exploring transformation, radical imagination, and pleasure.

Change is always relational; it unfolds through making and remaking connections.
In Renaissance, the audience is invited to surrender to wonder, change, and play—an ode to dreaming and the power of the unknown. The messy alienation, animality, and sexuality of human beings burst through. Bodies become streams or fountains, endlessly gushing forth or bleeding dry. Something is destroyed, while something is born and transformed anew.

Distinctive, meticulously crafted, and movingly performed. [Renaissance is] boundary-pushing performance art, characterized by choreographic thinking that is as eclectic as it is elastic.
– Jan-Peter Kaiku, Hufvudstadsbladet

WAUHAUS is a Helsinki-based multidisciplinary arts collective founded in 2016. Their work moves between different artistic genres and has been presented in a wide range of venues, from galleries and intimate black box theaters to urban spaces, large stadiums, and the main stages of renowned theater houses.
Known for their comprehensive audiovisual aesthetics and collaborative creative process, WAUHAUS consists of scenographers Laura Haapakangas and Samuli Laine, director Juni Klein, sound designers Jussi Matikainen and Heidi Soidinsalo, choreographer Jarkko Partanen, and managing director Julia Hovi.

The performance takes place at Theater Kikker in Utrecht as part of SPRING on 30 and 31 May 2025.

Discover more about WAUHAUS at SPRING. 

 

 

2024 Programme

A Black woman in colourful clothing sticks out her tongue while standing next to a tower of speakers, on top of which she holds her left hand. A Black man with his mouth wide open stands on the other side of the tower of speakers, with his right hand placed on the speakers. He is dressed in yellow and black.

ONE DROP performed at Take Me Somewhere 2023, Photo by Tiu Makkonen.

Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux – Brussels

ONE DROP continues Sonya Lindfors‘ series of works dealing with power, representation, and Black body politics. This is the second time Lindfors presents at Beursschouwburg in Brussels, following ‘Cosmic Latte’ in 2019. The work’s title refers to two frameworks: the “one drop” rhythm, a reggae-style drum beat, and the “one drop rule” of the Race Separation Act in the United States from the early 1900s. According to this rule, a single drop of “Black blood” made a person “Black” despite their appearance. Through these starting points, the work interrogates the ghosts of the Western stage and its entanglements with capitalism, coloniality, and modernity.

The dance performances took place Friday, 18.10.2024 followed by a talk and Saturday, 19.10.2024 at Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Belgium.

Discover more about ONE DROP.

 

 

Our pARTir Partners

Institut finlandais – Paris

At the end of May, the Ensemble ! Block Party festival in Paris features the performance Something Like This by choreographer Sonya Lindfors and a street dance event led by Akim Bakhtaoui, Linda Ilves, Ramona Panula, and Sophia Wekesa.

 

Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland – London

The Vapaa Collective (Iines Karkulahti, Meri Wiikinkoski, and Charlotte Nyholm) present their series Architectural Acts of Care, as part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture.

 

Finnish Cultural Institute in New York

After London, the Architectural Acts of Care series will continue to New York in the fall for the Archtober festival, in collaboration with the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York.

 

Finnish Institute in Estonia – Tartu

In Estonia, the pARTir journey begins with the CPPM Manifestal theatre and performance festival at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, featuring Katia Skylar‘s work Mundane.Magic. In July, the European Capital of Culture Tartu will host Elina Brotherus‘s residency at the Villa Tammekann, designed by Alvar Aalto.

 

“By focusing on collaboration with local partners of the institutes as well as with artists and organizations operating in Finland, we aim for a more impactful cultural export with long-lasting effects compared to one-off events. The project also designs and experiments with various methods of mentoring and networking, aimed at enabling deeper and ongoing dialogues. This approach is also reflected in the internal cooperation and development within the institute network, for which large projects like pARTir provide a special opportunity,” shares Asta Teräväinen, the project manager of pARTir.

 

Sustainability

 

Learn more about sustainability at the institutes in a recent interview featured on vihreataide.fi. Annu Webb (SKTI), the network specialist and coordinator of sustainability, Director Laura Boxberg from the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, Monica Gathuo (Finnish Cultural Institute in New York) the head producer of the Together Again project 2022–2023, and Iiris Tarvonen, the producer of the Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute answer questions about environmental and social sustainability work of the institutes.

 

Visit the pARTir website to learn more about the project. 

Next Generation EU logo and pARTir logo

 

Unveiling Renaissance: WAUHAUS’ Dutch debut at SPRING festival

Unveiling Renaissance: WAUHAUS’ Dutch debut at SPRING festival

Experience Renaissance by WAUHAUS, the acclaimed Helsinki-based arts collective, in their Dutch debut at SPRING Performing Arts Festival. This powerful 60-minute performance ritual explores transformation, queer futures, and radical imagination. 30.-31.5. at SPRING, Utrecht.

Sonya Lindfors returns to Beursschouwburg with ONE DROP

Sonya Lindfors returns to Beursschouwburg with ONE DROP

Confronting the echoes of the ‘one drop’ rhythm and the ‘one drop rule’ with power, anti-racist love and resistance, Sonya Lindfors’ dance performance ‘One Drop’ comes to Beursschouwburg, 18 & 19 October 2024.