OPEN CALL
deadline 9.9.2024
Nordic Baltic Analogue Adventure
OPEN CALL
Since 2010, Filmverkstaden has been a vibrant hub for analogue film and photography, and our artist residency program has been sparking creativity since 2018. Located in the heart of Vaasa in the Funkkis building of the former Opistotalo, we provide opportunities for artists to work with analogue media. We have extensive experience with innovative workshops, hosting international crowds of specialists, expanding knowledge and inspiring many others to push the boundaries of these media.
We’re thrilled to announce an open call for 5 artists from the Nordic or Baltic countries to join us for a three-month residency in Vaasa, dedicated to analogue film or photography.
Film is not dead—it’s evolving. This residency offers the opportunity to dive into the media of analogue film or photography, to experiment, to innovate and to let these media evolve into a sustainable future.
What do we ask?
We are looking for innovative proposals that question, challenge or change the conventional ways of working with analogue film or photography. As the residency focuses on innovative projects, cross-media research, productions or collaborations are also welcomed. The process of working with analog film or photography is time intensive. We aim for 3-month residencies to achieve an optimal workflow that will lead up to new works, new working methods or research.
During the residency, the public is kept updated about the process, as the residency artist publishes regularly on our social media, Facebook and Instagram. At the end of the residency, the artist makes a presentation, which can be a lecture, film screening, expanded cinema performance or exhibition of the new work.
The guest artist writes a report on the stay, the research, the process and the result.
What do we offer?
- An individual residency of three months including accommodation, 24/7 access to Filmverkstaden facilities and a grant of 1000€/month. The grant is intended to cover the cost of living.
- A material grant: A grant of 500€/month is offered to cover material costs.
- Grant for slow travel: Residents are encouraged to opt for slow travel. Slow travel means avoiding flying and other ecologically unsustainable means of transport.
- Accommodation: Filmverkstaden offers a 30m2 apartment in an old wooden building in a quiet area in the centre of Vaasa close to Filmverkstaden. It is possible to bring family or a friend to join or visit during the residency.
- Working space: Filmverkstaden offers 24/7 access to its facilities. There are fully functioning dark rooms with equipment. The general workspace is shared with others.
- Peaceful working environment: Filmverkstaden is based in Vaasa, the sunniest city of Finland. The small and friendly city with the peaceful rural surroundings provide a productive setting for focusing on your work.
- Workshop: Each artist invited to the residency is offered a tailor made workshop in the beginning of their residency. The workshop kick-starts the research and production and is tailored to the proposed work plan offering new techniques and knowledge. The workshops are led by internationally renowned artists.
- Assistance: Senior members of Filmverkstaden are employed as technical assistants, contact persons and/or guides embedding the guest artists in a local context.
- Possibilities for presentation of the project.
Who can apply?
For the AA residency, we welcome applicants who are a professional visual artist based in one of the Nordic or Baltic countries, except for Finland. The program welcomes applications from artists at an established point in their practice, although not necessarily working predominantly with audiovisual art. No previous experience with analogue film or photography is needed.
When?
We have 5 time slots available:
October-December 2024
January-March 2025
April-June 2025
July-September 2025
October-December 2025
Application
- Workplan
- CV
- Portfolio
- Free formulated letter of intent stating preferred timeslot.
- Bundle all documents into one pdf, with your firstname_lastname as title.
- Send in your application on September 9th or before to mail@filmverkstaden.fi
Inquiries mail@filmverkstaden.fi
Generously supported by
Nordic Culture Point
Konstsamfundet
Artists-in-Residence
2023
Valter Kuni
Valter Kuni works with technology and natural laws to push the boundaries of our experience of reality.
His work at the moment examines on the concrete level the pattern that arises in a viscous liquid that has been pressed between two sheets of glass and then separated from each other.
The starting point is to influence how the pattern is formed through surface preparations and by varying the liquid's molecular composition.The project partly consists of an experimental investigation of viscosity and surface tension on the chemical plane, but is also an investigation of hubris, man's relationship to control and difficulty perceiving chaos.
Valter is artist-in-residence of the Analogue Adventure program.
Kindly supported by Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Svensk-Österbottniska Samfundet, Gesellius Fond, Nygréns Stiftelse, William Thurings Stiftelse and Svenska Kulturfonden.
Lesia Diak
Lesia Diak is a Ukrainian documentary film director.
With a Master's degree in Communications and a background
in Journalism, in 2017 Lesia graduated from the Serhiy Bukovsky
Film Program in Kyiv. Before shifting to film directing, she worked
as a freelance journalist in several Ukrainian media like Ukrainska
Pravda, TheUkrainians, Hromadske.Ua, Korydor, Ukrainer.
In 2017 she directed her 16-min debut film entitled Strong,But Not Steel at the IndieLab Young Film Makers' workshop in Kyiv. This documentary was selected to the Global Short Doc Forum for the 2018 Ed. of One World Media. In 2022 she
completed studying Documentary Film Directing through the international masters program DocNomads.Besides receiving a special mention at The Golden Fruit Planwork-in-progress platform as part of the Golden Tree International Documentary Film Festival, Dad’s Lullaby was alsoselected for the Film Mentoring Program of CinéDOC-Tbilisi 2022 and DocCeleratorStory by Paradiddle Pictures. Still in 2022, she received a grant from Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival for the short film Under The Wing Of A Night.
Lesia’s films are sensitive, intimate but uncomfortable as she frequently explores themes such as mental health and healing, the fragility of family relationships.
This residency has been made possible with support of The Ministry of Education and Culture and Artists-at-Risk.
Heidi Piiroinen
Heidi Piiroinen is a photographer and a filmmaker. She worked as a press photographer for the Finnish daily paper Helsingin Sanomat until February 2022. She graduated from the Turku Arts Academy in 2002 and studied photojournalism at the Lahti Institute of Design in 2002-2004. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Berkeley, where she studied documentary film 2015-2016. Her debut film Black Hole Mama premiered at
DocPoint in 2017. Recent solo exhibitions: Galleria Uusi Kipinä, Lahti
(2020), The Invisibles -story of a beggar family, Finnish Museum of Photography (2018). Recent group
exhibitions and festivals: Drift, Museum of Impossible Forms (2021), Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art, Vaasa
(2021), Photographic centre Nykyaika, Tampere (2022).
https://www.heidipiiroinen.com/
Heidi is artist-in-residence of the Analogue Adventure program. During her residency, she will work on the project Vapaita huoneita / Available Rooms, which will be shown at Rauman Taidemuseo in 2024.
Kindly supported by Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Svensk-Österbottniska Samfundet, Gesellius Fond, Nygréns Stiftelse, William Thurings Stiftelse and Svenska Kulturfonden.
Hanna Koikkalainen
Hanna Koikkalainen is a photographer who deals with collective memory, memories, landscape change, relationship with nature, folklore and stories. She has a MA and graduated from Aalto University's School of Art and Technology in 2010, majoring in photography, and she has also studied documentary film, photojournalism and cultural history. She has published two photo books: "Lakkauttu kylä" and "Raja". The photo book "Border" about the border regions of Finland and Russia was chosen as the most beautiful book of the year 2016. Koikkalainen works and lives in Uusimaa and South Karelia.
http://www.hannakoikkalainen.com/
Hanna is artist-in-residence of the Analogue Adventure program. During her residency, she will work on a project about photographer Julia Widgrén, in collaboration with the prison of Vaasa, making use of wet plate photography.
Kindly supported by Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Svensk-Österbottniska Samfundet, Gesellius Fond, Nygréns Stiftelse, William Thurings Stiftelse and Svenska Kulturfonden.
Mariia Dovhan
Inspired by visions of her childhood home of Kherson, retrospective from a radically altered Ukraine of today, Mariia Dovhan distills substance from personal observations and captures the emotional uncertainty of ever-shifting memories. This is achieved through the intimacy of drawing, the actuality of photography and rearranging concepts through collage.
https://mariiadovhan.com/
@greatseaoftheunconscious
This residency is kindly supported by Artists at Risk, Perpetuum Mobile, and The Ministry of Education and CultureOleksii Karpovych
Karpovych has worked in the field of cultural journalism since 2007 as photographer, editor and writer for publications such as Afisha, Ukrainian Pravda, Life, ACC (Architecture. Criticism. Culture), Cultprostir, Jazz Forum in Poland, and I Rock Jazz in the US. He is founder and art director of the Ukrainian online platform for improvisational music Meloport, since 2017. Since February 24th 2022 he has been working as a photographer for projects such as Ukrainer, and as a fixer and local producer for international media such as BBC and Aljazeera Arabia.
Currently, the main thing for Oleksii is reportage, photographing current events during the war and in the socio-cultural field, volunteering, military topics with military personnel, which he cannot publicly exhibit at the moment. This is not related specifically to conceptual photography, but for now it is the accumulation of images and on film with the subsequent creation of a series and stories that will unite it.
This is a challenge and a difficulty for Oleksii, because there is a lack of knowledge somewhere, resources somewhere, for example, using color film is simply expensive. To use different methods of development and printing, this is very lacking, and therefore certainly the possibility of a residence can solve these issues.
@oleksii_karpovych @o.karpovych.photo
This residency is kindly supported by Artists at Risk, Perpetuum Mobile, and The Ministry of Education and CultureEtienne Caire aka Riojim
Etienne Caire (France) is a filmmaker working with photo-chemical processes and live, expanded cinema projector performances, often under the pseudonym RioJim.He is particularly attracted to abstract animation, the pleasure of physically modifying images on the film via twisted and other chemical treatments frowned on by professional labs. The material produced in the laboratory becomes a work of improvisation integrating all the parameters of projection. By means of prepared projectors, he applies severe treatment to the projector and plays with the film and the homemade optical sound on film to create a real visual music.Involved in experimental film for 20 years, Riojim have been a member of the 102, a venue dedicated to experimental arts, as well as co-founder of one of Europe’s first artist-run film lab MTK in Grenoble.
This residency is kindly supported by Taike and is part of the Spectral
Mariangela Pluchino & Helena Aleksandrova
Helena Aleksandrova and Mariangela Pluchino are Helsinki-based filmmakers, part of the collective Film Tonight!. They have been collaborating on multiple art projects, being moving-image their foremost medium. They rediscovered their passion for analogue cinema back in 2019 at Filmverkstaden, since then they have been using 16mm in many projects. Now they are back for more analogue adventures!
During the residency they will work with in-camera VFX, chemical experimentation, old horror cinema and performance.
Mariangela and Helena are our fifth and last guests of the Analogue Adventure residency program series.
4.3-4.4.2023
Natalia Kozieł-Kalliomäki
Natalia Kozieł-Kalliomäki was born in Bydgoszcz, Poland on 16th of January 1987. Recently she is living, working, having fun, wondering and inventing in Helsinki, Finland.
As a visual artist she has been mostly
working in the expanded field of painting and printmaking. In her practice she is handling big size
canvases, graphics-sculptures, spatial projections and live cinema performances. She brings
together film footage, use of montage and collage, non-camera film and printing methods.
Natalia is our fourth guest in the Analogue Adventure residency program.
3.2-4.3.2023
Azar Saiyar
Azar Saiyar (b.1979) is a filmmaker and a visual artist who often spends time with different kinds of archive materials.
She plays with images and words of both collective and private memories to look towards the ways of looking, speaking, remembering and telling stories. Her art has been shown in film and media art festivals, galleries, exhibitions, museums and television.Azar is our third guest in the Analogue Adventure residency program.
3.1-30.1.2023
2022
Elvira Akzigitova
Elvira Akzigitova (EE/DE) is an experimenter who spends long hours in the dark with a red light, trying to capture the trace of light and its tactile essentials. In addition to traditional analog photography tools and light sources, she also has a rather unusual tool called Violet Wand in her arsenal. By electrifying organic matter with this secret weapon, she succeeds in revealing what is otherwise hidden to the eye, but visible on light-sensitive materials. According to the artist, she works on the edge of photography and painting, just where these two practices meet and blend. Alternative, and at times, antique processes, abstract - inward looking images - Elvira decisively replaces the humanist documentary with a display of photographs presented as themes or events in themselves.
http://chelovekvsobake.tumblr.com/
25.2-12.3.2022
Armands Andže
Armands Andže (LV) is a member of Baltic Analog lab artists collective from Riga, Latvia. He is practising analog photography for more than 14 years, and last 7 years focusing mainly on large-format photography, recreating various historic photographic techniques and processes. Mainly working with silver/gelatine emulsions, and dry plate making.
15.3-15.4.2022
Surabhi Nadig
Surabhi Nadig (FI/IN) moved to Helsinki for MA studies in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University. Nadig’s mediums of research-based storytelling have been with photography and writing. Her interests lie in the interconnectedness of culture, economics, and politics of sustainability. In 2021-2022 she has been a participant of AMPI where she started to make films to expand on what photographs cannot capture.
Surabhi is our first artist-in-residence of the Analogue Adventure program.
18.8-15.9.2022
Paola Guzmán
Paola Fernanda Guzmán Figueroa is a visual artist that mainly works with film, installations and time based arts. Her works reflect and raise themes connected to time changing, migration and transnational objects. When she departed from her home country Colombia to Finland, she left an aquarium at home. Since then, Paola has experimented and included it in her art as a tool for visual and experience encounterings.
Her works have been reviewed by newspapers like Helsingin Sanomat (2021) and Hufvudstadsbladet(2019). She has performed “Timetravel” in Bogotá, Madrid, and Helsinki. Paola is one of the Co-Founders of the artist film collective Kino Club Helsinki that has been running since 2017.
Paola joins us for the Analogue Adventure program.
https://www.paolafernanda.com/
1.10-31.10.2022
Dmytro Starusev
Dmytro Starusev, born in Makiivka, Ukraine, in 1984. In 2012, Dmytro Starusev graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (majoring in film direction), and in 2018—Rodchenko School for Photography and Multimedia.
In his artistic practice, Dmytro engages with analogue and hybrid photographic processes, their sense of unpredictability, tactility and handmade character that allow the viewer to perceive each work
as a physical object. The fixation of the emotional dimension of reality, as expressed in abstract compositions and through the medium of photography, is of primary importance.
Dmytro creates large-scale analogue photographic prints on different structures and surfaces actualizing the discussion about the very essence of the photographic medium and its autonomy.
The layers of memories, images drawn from reality, images resulting from the developing process, longitude of exposure, natural chemical reactions, penetrate each other, creating a special indivisible fabric that preserves the trace of the emotional state at a certain moment. Trying to return to a negative, to a rough print, he focuses on the uniqueness of the moment and proposes an experience of a unique non-reproducible print.
This residency has been made possible with support of The Ministry of Education and Culture and Artists-at-Risk.2021
Inger Lise Hansen
Ruth Aitken
2020
Ieva Balode
Claudia Hausfeld
Contact Us
mail@filmverkstaden.fi
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