AGF: kuu-tee listening sessions

Oulu Art Museum will start developing its programming around collaborative, durational exhibition productions. The first partner will be artist AGF (Antye Greie-Ripatti) with her kuu-tee listening sessions. Between 2024 and 2025, we will work with AGF on a total of eight sessions open to participants, which will culminate in an exhibition at the Oulu Art Museum.

In 2024, we will meet four times according to the seasons. Please note that the language of these events is English.

The themes of the 2024 sessions will emerge from dissonance, disagreement and discord. What does it mean to listen in a time when there is a variety of information on the go? And what does it mean to listen and to be heard? What kinds of voices are generated by dissent? Can we find common ground?

The sessions are hosted by artist AGF (Antye Greie-Ripatti) and will include listening exercises, presentations, and workshops. In addition, each session will have a visiting artist and a theme.

Community listening sessions for all ages are in English and can be attended with a museum ticket.  Informal interpretation is available in Finnish. Each meeting lasts 1.5 hours, after which we can enjoy a topical tea together.

Listening sessions in 2024:

1. Sound & listening as practice – intersectional feminist. Introduction to the pioneers of electronic and experimental music

Visiting artist: Ajak Majok
Thu 22nd of February at 4.30 pm –6 pm
Satula space

Ajak Majok (she/her) is a Helsinki-based & Oulu-raised go getter, artist and a memelover who likes to dance at work & for leisure. During February of 2023 Majok selfpublished her debut collection of poems by the name of Kins keeper. Majok will be doing spoken word from her book at the listening session.

2. Non-hierarchical listening curriculums

Visiting artist: Jessica Ekomane (Berlin)
Thu 16th of May at 4.30 pm – 6 pm
Satula space

Jessica Ekomane, based in Berlin, Germany, is an electronic musician and sound artist. Her quadraphonic performances seek a physical affect through the interplay of psychoacoustics. Her ever-changing and immersive sonic landscapes are grounded in questions such as the relationship between individual perception and collective dynamics or the investigation of listening expectations and their societal roots.

Her work has been extensively presented in festivals, venues, contemporary art spaces and museums across the world such as Hamburger Bahnhof, Reina Sofia, Kanal Pompidou, Art Basel, Villa Massimo, CTM festival and Cafe OTO. She was one of the composers chosen as collaborators by Natascha Sadr Haghigian for her installation Ankerzentrum at the German pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2019, alongside Maurice Louca, DJ Marfox, Jako Maron, Tisha Mukarji and Elnaz Seyedi. She is currently one of the fellows in residence for the villa Romana Prize 2023 in Florence.

Visit artist’s website.

The event is a co-production of the Oulu Art Museum, HaiArt in Hailuoto and the Museum of Impossible Forms in Helsinki. The event is supported by the Finnland-Institut.

3. Listening, body and movement

Visiting artist: Eija Ranta (Hailuoto)
Thu 29th of August at 4.30 pm–6 pm
Satula space

How do we listen with our bodies? How do we place ourselves within sound?

Eija Ranta is a movement artist creating movement performances, interventions, video and sound works. Her works are built around the relationship between the performer and the viewer from a bodily perspective. Her work has been presented in galleries and museums in Finland and abroad.

Ranta’s background is in theatre and dance. She holds a Master of Arts from Aalto University School of Art and Design in Helsinki and Master of Performing Arts from St. Petersburg State Academy of Theater Arts in Russia. She has studied physical theatre at The Commedia School in Copenhagen, and modern and contemporary dance at Dance New Amsterdam in New York. Eija Ranta lives and works in Finland and Italy.

4. Aural and sonic histories and changes in the soundscape

Guest artist: Elle Kokkonen
Thu 7.11. at 4.30 pm–6 pm
Satula space

The final listening session of 2024 will feature a lecture performance by Elle Kokkonen: a micro-historical study of Partakko’s soundscapes, as well as a presentation on different ways of listening in a changing world. The themes of the meeting are identity, belonging and home.

“Partakko/Päärtih/Bárttet is my home village and I want to speak about its sonic history because it, as an environment and a cultural condition, has formed my aural thinking. Through Partakko’s sounds we can learn something from Sápmi, Finnish settler colonialism and rural remote communities in the contemporary Arctic in the midst of changes.”

Elle Kokkonen is a newly Oulu-based multidisciplinary freelancer artist from Partakko, Inari. They have studied dramaturgy and sound design in the Theatre Academy of  Helsinki and worked for example in Rovaniemi Theatre. In their work, Elle is interested in the cultures of listening, microhistories and the changes of our environment.

Secure your place by registering online.