Summer is for group residencies

May signifies spring and, for the Saari Residence, the beginning of group residences. Olento and Strawberry Jam are the first to start these group residences this year.

The annual activities of the Saari Residence fall into a rhythm according to individual and group residences, and May is the time for the latter. The groups working at the Saari Residence now are the Olento collective and Strawberry Jam. The Olento collective is a small group of artists and creative individuals (Jani Hietanen, Matti Hyvönen, Jaana Ristola and Ismo Torvinen) whose ambition to produce an artificial intelligence (Olento) capable of learning via a modicum of multi-modal information streams, with an intent to deploy iterations of it in environments ranging from academic to artistic. Olento is an artificial intelligence, and the group’s aim is to further develop its emotional structure and aesthetic possibilities during this residency, together with dancer Anne Naukkarinen and singer Veera Hirvaskero. Strawberry Jam consists of scriptwriter/producer Petar Mitric and artist Bojan Radojcic, who are spending their time at the Manor working on a film that deals retrospectively with the former Yugoslavia region in 1992. The protagonist is fleeing the war but is never able to feel again like he belongs anywhere.

During the summer, there will also be international assemblies consisting of the Mansion’s alumni working at Saari, including Group of 8 (LINNA: Island of Sorrows) and Lähde (Lähde / Source, contemporary art with water), as well as Pauliina Kinnunen (planning the works for SIRI – Fairy Tales as Pain Relief in the Hospital World), the Feminist Secret Society of Helsinki (safeguarding the continuation of the society’s activities, seeking collective working methods and ensuring norm-critical initiatives in the field of Finnish performance art), the interdisciplinary and international Romantic Melting Pot (The Black Goat of Summer), Anna Breu & Samet Yilmaz (collaboration between Finnish and Dutch-German artists’ collectives), Pakistani Shanzay Subzwar and group (Log Kya Keheinge / What Will People Say?) and the international Webcoms United (cartoon/manual on how marginal creators can find a channel for their works online).