Date: May 6, 2025
Time: 7.30 pm (EET) 6:30 pm (CET)
Location: Helsinki, Amsterdam and Online
Language: English
Entrance: Free
With: Flis Holland, Ren Loren Britton and Joy Mariama Smith
With this second gathering, we zoom into relations between bodies, access needs and technology—centering technologies' alleged promises on comfortable and livable lives in the contemporary city. In this part of the programme we focus on the work of artist Flis Holland with contributions from artists Ren Loren Britton and Joy Mariama Smith.
In Flis Holland’s current work, the time-saving devices of a hyper-efficient “smart city” are co-opted by users with slippery relationships to the clock, such as the neurodivergent and chronically ill. By opening up their work we will start to tackle the broader questions of our project: How is space made to uphold the right to mobility, information, and technologies for radical expression by artists and their communities? How do hegemonic power structures erase certain bodies, deeming them disposable?
Second gathering with Flis Holland with Ren Loren Britton and Joy Mariama Smith
Programme
Note: Timeline in Finnish time (EET)
At Amsterdam programme starts 18.30 (CET) and finishes 20.15
19.30 Event starts
19.40 Introduction and info of the hosting location in Helsinki
19.50 Intro to collective note making / comments collecting.
19.55 Flis Holland in conversation with Ren Loren Britton
20.25 break
20.30 Responses from Joy Mariama Smith and Amal Alhaag
20.45 Questions and comments from audience / going through collective note board
21.00 Final Wrap comment
21.15 Ending of the event
Everyday Priorities—Art, Technology and Accommodations is an invitation to collectively examine technologies that mirror racist, colonial, and ableist power structures and histories while also considering their potential to reshape conditions for everyday life. Programme is created and curated by Metro54 and M-Cult and is supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux.
This gathering will open the conversation that will unfold throughout the programme, setting the stage for future workshops and new artistic commissions by Flis Holland and Joy Mariama Smith.
Read more: Everyday Priorities—Art, Technology and Accommodations
How to participate?
To attend in Helsinki, Amsterdam or online, please sign up for the event through this form.
Registration by 4.5.2025.
Location
Helsinki:
Ars Longa Artist House Kalasatama
Tukkutorinkuja 6, 00580 Helsinki
Accessibility info:
Ars Longa Artist House is fully wheelchair accessible
Amsterdam:
Metro 54,
Westerdoksdijk 597, Amsterdam
Accessibility info:
That gathering space at Metro54 is located on the ground floor.
The doorway is 100 cm wide
The doorway to the toilet is 80 cm wide. However, the toilet doesn’t meet the requirements to be deemed wheelchair accessible.
Online event:
For the online event, live captioning will be available.
Online event will be streamed on M-Cult’s YouTube (m-cult.helsinki) and there will be a chat open for discussion.
Documentation:
Video stream will be saved and shared to the participants afterwards.
We will take some photographs at onsite events in Helsinki and Amsterdam, please indicate in the beginning of the event if you don't want to appear in the photographs.
Participating artists
Flis Holland (UK/Finland) tracks the collisions of trans and celestial bodies. Working with video installations, apps, and audio tours, Holland tries to loosen the link between seeing a body and knowing it. Holland’s solo exhibition “Off-Colour” was at Helsinki Art Museum in 2023 and developed as HIAP artist in residence 2022-23. Recent group shows include Oulu Art Museum, Pori Biennial,Titanik Gallery, exhibition platform Pitted Dates and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and screenings at Helsinki International Film Festival Love & Anarchy, Kasseler Dokfest and Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival.
Ren Loren Britton is a trans*disciplinary artist-designer reverberating with trans*feminism, technosciences, radical pedagogy and disability justice. The hir-story of cyberfeminism informs their focus on trans*, as in, transgender and trans*, as in, crossing contexts with feminist concerns. They are interested in how socio-technical systems make lives accessible and pleasurable. Disability justice operates in their practice towards upholding and valuing all non-normative bodies and minds. Ren holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art and a Bachelor of Arts and of Fine Arts from Purchase College both USA. Ren loves towards ending imperialism in Berlin, Germany.
Joy Mariama Smith (US/Netherlands) is an installation and movement artist, activist, educator, and architectural designer with interest in the interplay between the body and the physical environment. Their work has been performed internationally, including at If I Can’t Dance Edition VI – Event and Duration, Amsterdam; SoLow Festival, Philadelphia; Ponderosa Movement & Discovery in Stolzenhagen, Germany; Freedom of Movement: Municipal Art Acquisitions 2018, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Currently, they teach at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam.