The project Everyday Priorities – Art, Technology, and Accommodations supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux hosts its second gathering on Wednesday 6.5.2025. The event is held in-person at Metro54 in Amsterdam and at Ars Longa Artist House Kalasatama in Helsinki. There will also be online access available via YouTube for remote participants.
Date: May 6, 2025
Time: 19.30 EET /18:30 CET
Location: Helsinki, Amsterdam and Online
Language: English
Entrance: Free
With: Flis Holland, Joy Mariama Smith and others to be confirmed.
With this second gathering, we zoom into relations between bodies, access needs and technology—centering technologies’ alleged promises on comfortable and livable lives in the contemporary city. In this part of the programme we focus on the work of artist Flis Holland with contributions from artists Joy Mariama Smith, and others to be confirmed.
In Flis Holland’s current work, the time-saving devices of a hyper-efficient “smart city” are co-opted by users with slippery relationships to the clock, such as the neurodivergent and chronically ill. By opening up their work we will start to tackle the broader questions of our project: How is space made to uphold the right to mobility, information, and technologies for radical expression by artists and their communities? How do hegemonic power structures erase certain bodies, deeming them disposable?
Second gathering with Flis Holland, Joy Mariama Smith and others to be confirmed
Programme
18.30 Amsterdam / 19.30 Helsinki event starts
18.40 / 19.40 Introduction and info of the hosting location in Helsinki
18.50 / 19.50 Intro to collective note making / collecting comments
18.55 / 19.55 In conversation with Flis Holland
19.25 / 20.25 break
19.30 / 20.30 Responses from Joy Mariama Smith and Amal Alhaag
19.45 / 20.45 questions and comments from audience / going through collective note board
20.00 / 21.00 Final wrap-up of comment (participant to be confirmed)
20.15 / 21.15 Event ends
Everyday Priorities—Art, Technology and Accommodations is an invitation to collectively examine technologies that mirror racist, colonial, and ableist power structures and histories while also considering their potential to reshape conditions for everyday life. Programme is created and curated by Metro54 and M-Cult and is supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux.
This gathering will open the conversation that will unfold throughout the programme, setting the stage for future workshops and new artistic commissions by Flis Holland and Joy Mariama Smith.
Read more: Everyday Priorities—Art, Technology and Accommodations
How to participate?
To attend in Helsinki, Amsterdam or online, please sign up for the event through this registration form.
Location
Helsinki: Ars Longa Artist House Kalasatama, Tukkutorinkuja 6, 00580 Helsinki
Accessibility info: Ars Longa Artist House is fully wheelchair accessible
Amsterdam: Metro 54, Westerdoksdijk 597, Amsterdam
Accessibility info: That gathering space at Metro54 is located on the ground floor. The doorway is 100 cm wide. The doorway to the toilet is 80 cm wide. However, the toilet doesn’t meet the requirements to be deemed wheelchair accessible.
Online event: For the online event, live captioning will be available. The online event will be streamed on M-Cult’s YouTube (m-cult.helsinki) and there will be a chat open for discussion. youtube.com/@m-cult.helsinki
Documentation: Video stream will be saved and shared to the participants afterwards. We will take some photographs at onsite events in Helsinki and Amsterdam, please indicate in the beginning of the event if you don’t want to appear in the photographs.
About the 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.