IHME Contemporary Art Festival 2012: Collecting and the Archive
IHME Project 2012: Christian Boltanski, The Heart Archive 12.3.–1.4.2012
The IHME Contemporary Art Festival in March 2012 will give the public a chance to experience French artist Christian Boltanski’s The Heart Archive. This is a project begun in 2008, commissioned by the Benesse Art Site Naoshima. In this work Boltanski’s aim is to collect the sounds of human heartbeats for a communal archive on the island of Teshima, Japan. The project is gathering around it a global community linked together by the heart archive. The archive grows each time the project is carried out in a different part of the world. Heartbeat sounds have already been collected in Sweden, France, the UK, Australia, the USA, Korea and elsewhere.
Each installation of The Heart Archive takes the form of a space where recordings are made of human heartbeats. This year, The Heart Archive expands the scope of the IHME Contemporary Art Festival to four cities in Finland. The project is staged in Helsinki, Joensuu, Rovaniemi and Vaasa, simultaneously. Heartbeats will be recorded in all of these cities 12.3–1.4.2012. The sites chosen for the project are libraries: Rikhardinkatu Library in Helsinki, Joensuu Regional Library, Rovaniemi City Library and Vaasa City Library.
Workshops, lectures, discussions, films and a concert at the IHME Days 23–25.3.2012
The main themes of the fourth IHME Contemporary Art Festival in Helsinki are collecting, the archive, memory and temporality. These themes will also be the focus of the IHME Days, 23–25.3 2012 at the Old Student House, in Helsinki. On the IHME Days there will be films, discussions and workshops. Entrance is free. New additions to this year’s festival are a participatory work to be produced on the IHME Days, and collaborative projects with people working in art education. The IHME Club also has a new face as a concert: it is being hosted by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra.
From Thursday 22.3 onwards, the public can join in Jaakko Niemelä’s shadow artwork Shadowplay. It can be experienced at Kamppi in Helsinki and at Myyrmäki in Vantaa, 22–24.3 at 19–24. The work is being realized with the support of the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.
The IHME Days begin at the Old Student House on Friday 23.3 with Frenchman Chris Marker’s classic film La Jetée. The film season also includes the Czech Jan Švankmajer’s first surrealist film The Garden and Peter Greenaway’s short film Intervals.
The visiting speakers at the IHME Festival include: Catherine Grenier, Director of the Musee national d’art moderne (Pompidou) in Paris; artist, Professor Marysia Lewandowska from Stockholm; and Akiko Miki Chief Curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Finnish guests include: Professor Marja-Liisa Honkasalo; philosopher Susanna Lindberg; writer Sirpa Kähkönen and the film historian Peter von Bagh. The IHME Marathon on Sunday 25.3 gives the stage to ten contemporary artists, who will talk about their working methods and their attitudes to collecting.
IHME Contemporary Art Festival – full programme: www.ihmefestival.fi
Contact:
IHME Contemporary Art Festival
Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Kalevankatu 4, 2nd floor
00100 Helsinki Finland
T +358 45 1240096
F +358 9 2783388
info [at] proartefoundation.fi
