Autumn Programme 2025

In September you’re invited to explore anthropomorphic signs at Helsinki Central Park’s paths  — and if you’re in Riga, welcome to join what might resemble a celebratory funeral march, investigating late-capitalist attention economy with a twist of dark humour. 

In November, we’ll be tuning into interstellar signals, hierarchy of the senses and colonial histories through two new performances premiering at Baltic Circle and Metro54. 

Closing the year, the Minna Tarkka Lectures bring us back to collective reflection and gathering voices and visions for the present and the future of media culture and art. 

Read on to get the details of M-Cult’s autumn programme.

Protocols for Melting 

Joonas Hyvönen & Līga Spunde in collaboration

25.9.2025 Maunulatalo & Helsinki Central Park, Helsinki
27.9.2025 Great Cemetery, Riga
Language: English
Entry: Free with registration

Protocols for Melting by artists Joonas Hyvönen and Līga Spunde launching in September with collective walks and artist talks.

Protocols for Melting is a site-responsive augmented reality (AR) walk that takes place in two cities, Helsinki and Riga. Guided by a custom-built animated avatar, walkers follow a looping path punctuated by geolocated digital interventions — AR trail signs that come alive in a darkly comedic tragedy of wayfinding under the late-capitalist attention economy. 

The focus of Protocols for Melting lies within park areas in the midst of gradual or rapid social and ecological alterations and in the importance of those areas to local communities. The artwork can be experienced as part of guided collective walks during the launch events in both cities, and afterwards independently via project website which will launch alongside the work.

Read more

Unansible & Untitled [Scents Sense]

Flis Holland and Joy Mariama Smith

1.11.2025 Metro54, Amsterdam
26.11.2025 Baltic Circle, Kanneltalo, Helsinki 
Language: English, Multi-lingual
Entry: In Helsinki with tickets from Baltic Circle website, pay what you can tickets available

In November we will enjoy evenings of two performative works by artists Flis Holland and Joy Mariama Smith, presenting new commissions produced in the context of Everyday Priorities - Art, Technology and Accommodations project during 2025. 

In Unansible Flis Holland disturbs the normative ideal of clear, efficient, error-free communication by misusing an interstellar transmission device. Joy Mariama Smith’s Untitled [Scents Sense] investigates anosmia (‘smell blindness’), colonial histories, diasporic identities, and the hierarchy of the senses. 

Together, the performances invite questions of connection, collectivity, and liberation — whether through an interstellar signal or the refusal of dominant sensory hierarchies.

This time, along with our partners Metro54 and the Finnish Institute for the Benelux, we at M-Cult are very happy to collaborate with the Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival.

Minna Tarkka Lectures

Starting from 2.12.2025 Helsinki
Language: English
Participants: TBA
Entry: Free

It is our pleasure to partner with Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma & Aalto Media Lab for the second edition of Minna Tarkka Lectures which will take place in the heart of winter in the beginning of December. 

Inspired by the legacy of Minna Tarkka, this annual programme series celebrates critical, community-based approaches to media culture and art. Grounded in collective dialogue and continuing the mission of supporting socially-engaged art and media culture, this year's programme will build from the Open Advisory Session for The Minna Tarkka Lectures held last spring. With juicy thought sharing, we were able to highlight current relevant urges for the state of the media art and culture together with participants. It was an honour to host a gathering with so many new and familiar faces. A sneak peak of the gathering: Documentation for the Open Advisory Session.

Registration for the lectures will open later this autumn.

Unboxing the Archives

Every 3rd Thursday at 14:30 on M-Cult’s YouTube channel. 
Next stream 11.9.2025.

As the evenings get colder it is time to grab your favourite cup of tea, put candles on and snuggle with your blanket to unbox media culture archives. This season our Unboxing the Archives series reflects on M-Cult’s impact on media art and culture for example at ANTI-festival in 2011, as well as other events in the past.