The 2025 Uniarts Helsinki Research Pavilion
The sixth Uniarts Helsinki Research Pavilion in Helsinki marks the tenth anniversary of the Research Pavilion project, an international and cross-institutional platform for artistic research. RP#6 presents a string of events that highlight the rich variety of research activities in the field of arts during the summer and autumn of 2025.
The RP#6 programme will expose art-as-research via research exhibitions and performative presentations. Discursive and conceptual dimensions are fostered within symposia, workshops, publications and discussion events. A year-long artistic research seminar nurtures the pedagogical rooting of artistic research, while a field trip and outdoor events are organised to delve into its material entanglements, and language-based approaches explore its textual opportunities. This string of eleven events engages with the intrinsic polymorphic vitality of artistic research.
The current condition of artistic research calls for a pluriformity of approaches and manifestations, while eluding attempts towards a uniform definition. RP#6 aims at intensifying the fruitful moments of insight that artistic research can offer, especially the possibility of producing other imaginaries and alternative futures. The sixth Uniarts Helsinki Research Pavilion invites everyone to celebrate the current polyphonic, contradictory and lively state of artistic research!
Events and timeline
Entire academic year 2024–25: Idiorrhythmic Imaginaries. A doctoral seminar led by Henk Slager for researchers from Uniarts Helsinki, Estonian Academy of Arts, University of Lapland, Tampere University, Valand Academy Gothenburg, and Vilnius Academy of Arts.
June 2–3, 2025: Research retreat to the Finno-Russia frontier, led by Jaakko Ruuska, studies the tensional space of the border as a site of encounters between the actual and virtual, discursive and non-human, memories and utopia.
August 20–23, 2025: Artistic research supervisor summer school is an event dedicated to doctoral supervision in the arts, with a specific focus on questions of quality: What constitutes the quality of a supervision process in the arts?
September 11–12, 2025: A line drawn on water—adventures and exchanges at the art-academia interface. This symposium brings together researchers and artists working at the art-academia interface to co-explore the prospects and challenges of creative modes of academic research as well as academic modes of artistic creation.
October 9–10, 2025: Kirjoittaminen taiteellisena tutkimuksena / Writing as artistic research (event in Finnish and Swedish). Yhteispohjoismainen seminaaritapahtuma kutsuu ajattelemaan kieltä ja keskustelemaan kirjoittamisesta monikriisin ajassa. Convenors: Lena Seraphin ja Antti Salminen
November 2025: Synzoochory. This mobile exhibition and series of mini-symposiums will convene a wide range of perspectives on human-plant-animal relationships through utilising strategies of the curatorial. Curator: Nina Liebenberg
November 2025: 19, Publishing Artistic Research: concepts, opportunities and challenges. The event discusses topical problems related to publishing artistic research with local and international experts in the field. Convenor: Alex Arteaga
November 21–22, 2025: Syvälle, folk music improvisation laboratory (in Finnish). Tapahtumassa koetaan musiikkia ja keskustellaan pitkäkestoisen improvisaation kokemuksesta sekä tunnustellaan musiikin olemusta teoskeskeisen ajattelun tuolla puolen.
December 4–5, 2025: Aesthetic, Poetic, Performative: Artistic Thinking and Practices of Writing. This two-day event introduces, through practice and conceptualisation, a variety of artistic and scholarly practices of writing forwarded in the field of artistic research. Presenters and facilitators: Emma Cocker (Nottingham Trent University), Maria Fusco (University of Dundee), Katrina Brown (Falmouth University), Alex Arteaga, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Pilvi Porkola, Leena Rouhiainen (Uniarts Helsinki).
December 2025: Idiorrhythmic Imaginaries, a research exhibition at Kuva/Tila, curated by Henk Slager, resulting from the eponymous seminar, which focused on the following questions: How can we imagine the future in a time that seems determined by various crises? And what will be the role of artistic research in this? With keynote contributions from Amanda Beech and Christian Nyampeta.
December 11–12, 2025: Discursive programme within the Idiorrhythmic Imaginaries research exhibition, in cooperation with Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts Research Days.
All Research Pavilion events are free of charge. Each RP#6 event has its own modalities of participation. While exhibitions and performances are open to the public, workshops and participative settings may require prior registration or application.
