Residency artists and researchers Media and video art Visa Knuuttila visual artist Visa Knuuttila is a visual and performance artist and a visual designer. During his residency in the Saari Residence he works mainly with the visualization process of the Plato’s Symposium mystery play. Plato’s Symposium approaches the contemporary political situation through an in-depth transformation of the individual. Its central assumption is that the platonic metaphysics is true: that beauty exists, and that the world we perceive is merely made of shadows flickering on the cave wall. Plato’s Symposium first started as a part of the 2012 research plan of the Helsinki-based Reality Research Center collective, under the theme of Utopian Reality. The aim was to create a method to approach absolute beauty, deriving from the origins of Platonic philosophy and the ritualistic traditions of Ancient Greece, as well as utilize the roots of theater and Western civilization as means towards personal and cultural emancipation. Plato’s Symposium premiered in New York, 2013, as a part of the Theater as Theory conference. The primary structure of the piece was a ritualistic path leading towards the experience of beauty, traveled subjectively by each participant – or “protagonist” – during the week-long duration of the play. The second edition of 2015 concentrates at a further deepening of the sensory and corporeal power of the play. The piece will be built throughout the year, culminating at the premiere in December. Knuuttila’s work at the Saari Residence will be mostly concerned with the visual and graphic design of the second edition. The other members of the group, artists Tuomas Laitinen, Maria Oiva and Jani-Petteri Olkkonen will also visit the Residence in April. In the beginning of the residency period Knuuttila also completed a series of video projections for the concert of Sound and Fury -jazz band in Savoy theatre, 24 March 2015. The orchestra, consisting of nine top Finnish jazz players, played a series compositions by the late, great Edward Vesala, and the show was a grand success. Heartfelt thanks to Kone Foundation are in order, for the working environment and the surrounding nature, which proved priceless in the visualization process.