Polyphonic Entanglements is a discourse series taking place on June 16-17 and September 1-2 at the Stoa and Caisa Cultural Centres. These locations move the Helsinki Biennial off-centre, engaging it with two heterogeneous sites of encounter in the city – Itäkeskus and Hakaniemi. The programme brings together lectures, screenings, sonic interventions, performances and gatherings as an evolving assemblage that contextualises and expands on the diverse practices and debates present in this biennial. It proposes a way of thinking-with and through island ecologies, Baltic contamination, radioecologies, desertification, practices of healing and collective resistance to pose questions not about what will come but rather focusing on ways to learn and reset paths-of-entry into spaces of plural transformations.

Museum of Impossible Forms MIF is a cultural centre located in Kontula, East Helsinki, and the coming together of communities of art and cultural workers invested in building anticolonial, antipatriarchal and non-fascist practices and futures. Over the past six years, MIF has unfolded as a heterogeneous platform to engage with experimental, marginal, and migrant forms of expression, and as a laboratory for experiences, critical thought, and radical imagination. MIF is a collaborative project that seeks to defy prejudices of otherness and structural asymmetries, working for dignity, diversity, equity, allyship and solidarity, and towards developing and strengthening a plurality of knowledges and practices in the arts.

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Programme 16-17 June
at Cultural Centre Stoa

Curated by Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Museum of Impossible Forms
Helsinki Biennial 2023 Discursive Programme by Museum of Impossible Forms

Read the whole programme and bios of participants here

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!Polyphonic Entanglements
at Stoa (Turunlinnantie 1)

16 – 17 June
A two-day gathering convening lectures, conversations, screenings, and sonic interventions curated by Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Artistic Director of Museum of Impossible Forms for Helsinki Biennial.

Friday 16 June
Discursive Programme, at Theater Hall, Stoa

10:00-12:00
Lecture | Fleeing the Human by Akwugo Emejulu
Conversation | I Can’t Take This Step For You with Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley

13:00-15:00
Screening | Chornobyl 22, 2023 by Oleksiy Radinsky (Red Forest)
Lecture | Nuclear Terror: The Modern Logic of Radioactive Colonialism by Svitlana Matviyenko

15:30-17:00
Presentation and conversation | Transitional and Climate Justice in the Colonial Present by Nabil Ahmed and Olga Lucko in conversation with Matti Aikio

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‍Saturday 16 June
Discursive Programme, at Theater Hall, Stoa

12:00 – 13:40
Screening | Burial, 2022 by Emilija Škarnulytė
Screening | Aphotic Zone, 2022 by Emilija Škarnulytė
Screening | Mining the Abyss – Blue Peril, 2022 by INTERPRT

14:00 – 16:00
Conversation and listening session | Spectral Listening in the Shallows of the Baltic Sea with Taru Elfving, Ville Raasakka, Kati Roover and Anna Törnroos-Remes

16:30 – 18:00
Screening | MOBY DICK; or, The Whale, 2022 by Wu Tsang