IHME Helsinki podcast: Contemporary Art, Neoliberalism and Environmental Crisis

The collaboration between IHME Helsinki and Helsinki Open Waves continues with a podcast, in which Executive Director and Curator Paula Toppila and the Kurdish artist and musician Hiwa K discuss the connections between neoliberalism and the environmental crisis. Chicago Boys – While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming, initiated by Hiwa K in London in 2010, was IHME Helsinki Commission 2023. In the podcast, Paula and Hiwa discuss the factors that influenced the creation of the work and its simultaneous enactment in Helsinki and Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. Hiwa unpacks the impact of neoliberalism on the environmental crisis and how the 2003 Iraq war can be seen as a neoliberal project comparable to the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. Hiwa K lives in Berlin and Sulaymaniyah, where he returned three years ago having lived in Germany for twenty years. Hiwa K’s artistic work reflects an ongoing critique of the art-education system, art practices defined as being professional, and the myth of the artist. As a result, many of his works are powerfully communal and participatory. They re-evaluate the processes underlying teaching and learning systems, and rely on ordinary life and people as the most important site for learning. IHME Helsinki is a contemporary art commissioning agency that annually commissions a work by an international artist in public space and produces a series of events intended to give rise to vision and hope amid the environmental crisis. IHME Helsinki Commissions combine art, science and climate work. Through them and other events IHME Helsinki promotes the cultural change needed to tackle the environmental crisis.

In this sixth episode one of the IHME’s Advisory Board members, artist, researcher Antti Majava will discuss energy humanities, the role of art in energy identities and energy regimes with researcher at Finnish Institute of International Affairs Emma Hakala and Professor at the Aleksanteri Institute – Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen. Tynkkynen specialises in ecological energy transition in Finland and Russia, and Hakala has studied securitisation of the environment, climate security and sustainable energy.

In this fifth episode IHME’s Advisory Board member Professor Jussi Parikka discusses with artist, researcher Samir Bhowmik. In his work Bhowmik unpacks the concept of material and cultural extraction in the context of media culture and art, in order to open up, on the one hand, understanding of the exploitation of natural resources and, on the other hand, of the changes occurring in the environment as consequence of it. In this podcast Parikka and Bhowmik continue their on-going conversation around different topics such as artistic practice, architecture, cultural institutions, energy as well as material and cultural extraction.

In this fourth episode IHME Helsinki’s Advisory Board member, Professor Jussi Parikka discusses with artist, researcher Susan Schuppli. In her work the Britain-resident Susan Schuppli studies the material evidence of conflicts, environmental destruction and climate change. In this podcast she will talk about her latest research and her works, which deal with research on the subject of frozen water and the politics of “cold”.

“Working with the future doesn’t have to be escapist. It should be something that helps to pull us there.” - Tracey Warr In the third episode of Art, Science, Ecology podcast IHME’s Advisory Board member, Hanna Johansson the Dean of Fine Arts Academy of University of Arts in Helsinki will have a conversation with Tracey Warr Head of Research for Dartington Arts School about what does ecological transition mean in the context of an art school.

“A word that comes to stand for this injustice has been ecocide … How do we contribute to this by doing what we do as artists, activists, researchers, spatial practitioners, architects? What could be the new ways of telling these stories?” – Nabil Ahmed In the second podcast member of IHME’s Advisory Board, Professor at Nanyang Technological University and Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore Ute Meta Bauer will discuss with artist and researcher Nabil Ahmed, who together with Olga Lucko runs Interprt studio, which uses design and spatial analysis to work for environmental justice and to make Ecocide an international crime.

“We can’t just provide the content anymore. We have to influence how things are done.” – José Roca In the first podcast IHME’s Executive Director, Curator Paula Toppila and the Artistic Director of the Biennale of Sydney José Roca discuss the ecological transition that is taking place in the making of the forthcoming 2022 biennial.