Art came to Otaniemi
05.07.2011
"The Hall of Arts" (Taiteiden talo) started its operations at the end of the spring in Lämpömiehenkuja, Otaniemi. The hall is located in a building which is designed by Alvar Aalto and which has been previously housed the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
– The Department of Art of the Aalto University School of Art and Design has previously lacked workspaces, the Head of the Department, Professor Helena Sederholm, recognizes. In fact, the new facilities are more than needed.
The building is still quiet, but in the autumn, with new students and professors, operations will properly start. Project facilities can be harnessed for teaching, research and study use.
The department's four Master's Degree Programmes will be located in the Hall of Arts: the programmes in Fine Arts, in Environmental Art, in Curating, Managing and Mediating Art as well as in ePedagogy Design.
– These facilities have been built for multidisciplinary work. We will start lobbying also for students of technology, and the aim is that in the autumn we will be able to launch our activities properly, Sederholm sheds light on the plans for the Hall of Arts.
Activities launched with the Future Art Base project
Activities of the "Future Art Base" are located in the Hall of Arts, especially some of the work facilities of BioArt. BioArt is a multidisciplinary field where organic substances are used as materials. It overlaps both art and sciences, especially natural sciences.
The Future Art Base programme itself is divided into two streams: art and the economy as well as art and technology. The orientation of arts and the economy is theoretical, and it will reflect on alternative, socially-founded operating models for the economy. Art and technology, on the other hand, focuses particularly on BioArts. The idea is to launch functioning cross-disciplinary projects.
– Networks are being set up right now, and I myself have already been familiarized, for example, with the world of nano-microscopes, says Sederholm.
Autumn brings world-class bio-artists as guests
In the autumn, Oro Catts and Ionat Zurr, from SymbioticA, the BioArts institute of the University of Western Australia, will take possession of the facilities. The two world-class bio-artists are visiting the Aalto University as artists-in-residence.
– One of the business ideas is that international artists should feel welcome to come to work on their own art – the facilities of the Hall of Arts are specifically meant for collaboration, Sederholm mentions. A visualization laboratory is to be brought into the premises to support this.
The building will be even more widely available for the use of arts in the future, among other things, as working spaces for students. In addition, there will be, for example, five professors, a head of the department, a lecturer, research staff, visiting scientists, artists and teachers working in Otaniemi.
Text: Minna Pasanen, and Annika Artimo
For more information:
Helena Sederholm
Professor
Aalto University School of Art and Design,
Department of Art
phone + 358 50 3141 546
helena.sederholm [at] aalto [dot] fi