Rauma Biennale Balticum
Crime Scene
Rauma Art Museum, 14.6. – 14.9.2014
Entitled Crime Scene, the biennial exhibition presents phenomena of crime, violence and power, and activism and anarchy as means of realizing and implementing art. This exhibition explores the contradictions of society and the life of the individual and turns the gaze towards the boundaries and limitations of organized society regulating human activity. The artists take up the drawbacks of our society, traumas and marginal phenomena or the abuse of the environment. They also address creative processes and other tools with which art can promote change in society. How can the boundaries of dissent and the law be re-interpreted? What is ultimately crime?
A part of this year’s exhibition at the Rauma Art Museum is a laboratory workshop of contemporary art belonging to a series of three workshops organized by the Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) community. Nothing similar has previously been arranged in Finland. The other laboratories of the series will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland and Kaunas, Lithuania. In these laboratories of science and art, the Crime Scene theme of the Rauma Biennale Balticum will be explored in relation to activism and the practices of participation in communal contemporary art and new models of action will be considered. Each laboratory will last a week, containing lectures for the public and a multidisciplinary and critical approach to the theme through the experimental and innovation of perspective of MigAA. The laboratory will be held during the first week of the Rauma Biennale Balticum. In connection with this event, the UG exhibition facilities for experimental art in the vaulted basement of the art museum will be taken into use.
Participating artists: Aram Bartholl (DE), Cooltūristės (LT), Inga Erdmane (LV), Evgenia Golant (RU), Group Helm (EE), Geir Tore Holm & Søssa Jørgensen (NO), Stine Marie Jacobsen (DK), JP Kaljonen (FI), Karel Koplimets (EE), Haidi Motola (FI), Dorota Nieznalska (PL), Nug & Pike (SE), Pouk Theater (FI/FR), Lauri Rotko & Jukka Rapo (FI), Telekommunisten (DE).
The exhibition is compiled by a working of curator Laura Kokkonen, museum director Janne Koski and curator Henna Paunu. In addition to the curatorial team, the social-psychologist and visual artist Gerardo Montes de Oca (Mexico/Austria) will serve as the project coordinator of the Crime Scene laboratory of the international Migrating Art Academies series of events.