Vartiosaari Artists ry - VARTIOSAARI ARTISTS HOUSE OPEN STUDIOS 2025

VARTIOSAARI ARTIST RY PRESENTS:

Vartiosaari Artists House 2025 Open Studios / August 30th - 31st.
Saturday, August 30th 13:00 - 23:00 /
Sunday, August 31st 12:00 - 19:00
Vartiosaari Island, (Reposalmentie 1), Helsinki, FI

Vartiosaari Artists house would like to warmly welcome you to celebrate the end of this beautiful summer with us on Vartiosaari island.

Along with our ongoing studio arts public workshops, performances, exhibitions, and screenings we have recently initiated a guest studio and residency program with the support of The Saastamoinen Foundation & Goethe Institute - Finland. This Open Studios event will welcome our newest guests / Nigerian dancer Femi Adebajo & French artists Lefebvre Zisswiller.

Continuing from last year we will host two screening programs with artist members, resident artists, and guests located in our newest variable project space Media Barn.

Other activities include launching an experimental book focusing on dance & catalogue showcasing media, performances, workshops, and residency documentation from the Artist House covering 2024-2025.

As well there will be a unique dance / video production by Femi Adebajo. Gelede Beyond Binary is a solo dance performance inspired by the Yoruba Gelede masquerade, blending traditional movement, contemporary dance, video, and sound to explore gender fluidity, ancestral memory, and transformation.

This year we will open our Artist House activating a temporary gallery showcasing experimental 2d & 3d works in a variety of mediums. There will also be sculptural & fresco projects located in outdoor spaces.

We will also have special times over the weekend socializing over a community potluck lunch where cakes and savory dishes created by members of the Artist House will be available.

Vartiosaari artists house is a place for artists to contemplate and to produce experimental visual, media and performative projects. Currently there are 13 artists working in the house. In 2022 Vartiosaari Artists Ry started to organize workshops and art for the public and the Open Studios will be an ongoing support event to secure the future of the Artist house.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30th

13:00–14:00 POTLUCK LUNCH & communal welcome
Bring your food & drinks to share, we will prepare soup and bread

(donations welcome) With Jakub Bobrowksi

15:00
OFFICIAL OPENING of the Exhibition!

15:00-19:00 Media Barn - Screening is looped

Speculation (Elation 13): Scienterrorifica
Curated by Torsten Zenas Burns

HALFLIFERS
Terrence McKenna
Sirja Moberg
Julia Lohmann & Anna van der Lei
Torsten Zenas Burns
to kosie & Natalie Seifert Eliassen
Femi Adebajo
Gesa Piper & Jude Walton Lefebvre Zisswiller Monika Czyżyk with Femi Adebajo

15:00–16:00
GUIDED EXHIBITION TOUR with Participating Artists
Monika Czyżyk, Neil Luck, Torsten Zenas Burns, Sirja Moberg, to kosie, Oskari Ruuska, Andrey Bogush, Julia Lohmann, Arya So / Konvolv Collective, Iulian Vitalis Cojocariu

CATALOGUE & BOOK LAUNCH
VARTIOSAARI(WUNNDERKAMMERNAUTICA) episode3, 2025

by Torsten Zenas Burns WITH-NESS, 2025, by Gesa Piper & Jude Walton

Torsten Zenas Burns FASESKIFT series, 2025, inkjet prints

Julia Lohmann / Department of seaweed. 2025, Seaweed and rattan sculpture

Sirja Moberg Light Geomancy, The Vartiosaari series, 2025, Pigment print

Lulian Vitalis Cojocariu Structures 1, 2000, natural oxides on canvas, 60x60cm

Oskari Ruuska Permanence (Sketch for an Object to Be Temporarily Installed) 2025, Beeswax sculpture

to_Kosie Welcome hug, 2025, Textiles and seaweed sculpture

BASEMENT

KEENK & Arya So / Konvolv Collective Hamistagan, Shaheed 2017-2023 stereo soundscape representation of generative spatial soundscape of an interactive installation.

Andrey Bogush Sculpture, part of the installation called: Speculative Absences as Queer Care (An Invitation).

BY THE BUILDING NEXT TO ARTIST HOUSE

Monika Czyżyk Ant inside 3rd eye of Harman skull, 2024 Bird Man, 2024 Bells of Kukeri, 2024 discovering Thracian channels, 2024

DOWNSTAIRS STUDIO

Sky Burial (fire element), fresco, styrofoam, mdf board, polyurethane foam, concrete, slaked lime, sand, wild clay pigments, aluminum, 2025

Monika Czyżyk & Neil Luck - ALMANACH - 4K Video - stereo - 35:00 - 2025

16:15–17:00
PERFORMANCE - Gelede beyond binary by Femi Adebajo
Gelede Beyond Binary is a solo dance performance inspired by the Yoruba Gelede masquerade, blending traditional movement, contemporary dance, video, and sound to explore gender fluidity, ancestral memory, and transformation.
*Torsten will bring the audience at 16:00 from the Artist House to the performance which will take place in a red barn at the end of the allotment gardens.

17:30–18:00 Coffee, tea, cake, and soup (donations welcome)

19:00 Last ferry departs

SUNDAY, AUGUST 31ST.

12:00-19:00

EXHIBITION OPEN & MEDIA BARN screenings are looping all day.

Speculation (Elation 13): Scienterrorifica
Curated by Torsten Zenas Burns

HALFLIFERS
Terrence McKenna
Sirja Moberg
Julia Lohmann & Anna van der Lei
Torsten Zenas Burns
to kosie & Natalie Seifert Eliassen
Femi Adebajo
Gesa Piper & Jude Walton Lefebvre Zisswiller Monika Czyżyk with Femi Adebajo

13:00–15:00
EXHIBITION TOUR with Participating Artists
Monika Czyżyk, Neil Luck, Torsten Zenas Burns, Sirja Moberg, to kosie, Oskari Ruuska, Andrey Bogush, Julia Lohmann, Arya So / Konvolv Collective, Iulian Vitalis Cojocariu

CATALOGUE & BOOK LAUNCH
VARTIOSAARI(WUNNDERKAMMERNAUTICA) episode3, 2025

by Torsten Zenas Burns WITH-NESS, 2025, by Gesa Piper & Jude Walton

Barbecue dinner around the fire
Bring your food & drinks to share, we will prepare food as well (donations welcome) with Jakub Bobrowksi

19:00
Last ferry departs

MEDIA BARN & GALLERY SCREENING

& DESCRIPTIONS

Artist house downstairs gallery - Video looped - running time: 35:00

Monika Czyżyk & Neil Luck - ALMANACH - 4K Video - stereo - 35:00 - 2025 Almanach: A published volume that collates information about a particular subject - texts, charts, tables, figures, facts, warnings, stories. A menagerie of individuals who transform natural, elemental materials into music are choreographed in a hypnotic, shamanic dance of bodies, sounds, and landscapes. Through long-honed skills of playing stone, shells, clay, wood, and air, these characters act as connecting nodes between traditions, histories, craft practices, and nations. In Almanach phenomena are gathered to reverberate together in a hypnotic and constantly expanding audio-visual composition.

Media Barn - Screening Speculation (Elation 13): Scienterrorifica. Curated by Torsten Zenas Burns

HALFLIFERS - Harvest - HD video - stereo - 9:00 - 1999

An alternate earth music video - an epic last stand - a portrait of two utilitarian workers engaging in a collaboration with karen manifesting improvisational geographic friendships...

Terrence McKenna - Language Elves - Variable date & time

Sirja Moberg - A childhood dream-meteorites - video - stereo - 11:00 - 2023
A microscope films thin sections of a meteorite from Kumpula geological collection.

Julia Lohmann & Anna van der Lei - Echoes of Undercurrents - 15:00 - 2025

Filmed at Sleepy Islands, Iceland, a cluster of 63 islands nestled in Breiðafjörður, where the tides replaced time. This artistic film explores the rich seaweed forests. At low tide, we wade through exposed seaweed forests. As the tide rises, we snorkel, immersing ourselves in vibrant underwater gardens, exploring the rhythmic beauty of these shifting seaweed worlds. We are at home, and yet, we are so out of place.

Torsten Zenas Burns - eat me alive so that I may see you on the inside video - 12:00 - 2025

The manifestation of clear oozing Grand Hyatt evocational plasmic discharge attached to a willing participants flesh while at the same time a communicorporeal exchange is happening between a humanoidal squid, mirrored face Boris character and unknown fictional science land-pilot A third entangled vehicle crawls from a pond in Upstate NY and undergoes augmentive medical procedures-we see plastic-like membrane elements slit open at the chest cavity to reveal ambiguous re-imagined biologics. Jellyfish, lizards, and octopus eat the stories.

to kosie & Natalie Seifert Eliassen - get wet and sparkle! - 11:09 - 2024
a video performance exploring fluidity of gender and sexuality, evoking the hues of the queer flag and the sea's transitional essence. Enchanting local mermaids, the artists depict a world of inclusive sexuality and harmonious existence underwater.

Gesa Piper & Jude Walton - Sacre du Printemps/Saule Pleureur - 5:45 - 2023 Made in 2023, during an artist residency at Jardin Botanique, La Maison Verte, Marnay-sur-Seine. Concept, choreography and performance: Gesa Piper / Videography, choreography and edit: Jude Walton.

Femi Adebajo - Yin Yang - Video - 7:50 - 2025
Firstly ,Yin means ( Darkness) while Yang means (light) This dance film was created to depict a crossroad of choices and options to humans journey of thoughts, This is also to place more relevance on the other part of human reasoning as we can not just have white as pure good and black as pure bad. This film opens a new note of saying there are Good white and Bad white as we have Good black and bad black.The concept of Yin and Yang is the idea of complementary forces describing how obviously opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. The usage of different colors is a very deliberate act, we discovered that we can’t have other colors without the mixture of the neutrals, using this Colors to portray different race of the world having this two interdependent option as a crossroad of decision making with historical significance. This inherited racial biological foundation manifests itself primarily in physical phenotypes, As it occurrence is permanent to Every human being decision.

Lefebvre Zisswiller - État du langage - film - color - stereo - 13:00 - 2025 Language is a visible organic material. This substance -detached from its emitter- has the particular feature of being transparent and of allowing a passage through. Language as a material unfolds in its own environment and on its own scale, in a back and forth motion between its different states: either as a magma or as hard hollow crystallized shapes. During the process, a prosody emerges from this matter which attempts to manifest, to extract and to define itself. Examining these attempts is the issue.

Participating Artists in the 2025 Open Studios Include:

Torsten Zenas Burns is a visual artist and media arts educator living in Helsinki.

Burns has created video, photographs, sculptural installations, and electronic publishing projects exploring re-imagined educational practices, speculative body improvisations, experimental space programs, post-humans, zombie / afterlife relationships, humanimal stories, and ecological fictions.

Monika Czyżyk is a Polish visual artist based in Helsinki whose work moves between video, VR, clay paintings, and performance to explore elemental relationships and collective processes. Working with what she calls “dirty media,” she gathers materials—both digital and organic—to channel and transform energies across places, people, and technologies. Her practice is shaped by travel-led and site-specific research, anchored in Vartiosaari Island, which she considers a collaborator. Drawing on synchronicity and sensory experience, her installations and time-based works act as subtle bridges between cultures and beings, exploring how shared rituals and material gestures can foster connection across perceived divides.

Arya So / Konvolv Collective has, over the past decade or so, observed power structures under the scope of surveillance capitalism, sousveillance, far- and alt-right movements, hate speech, tech oligarchs, and militarisation, inter alia, through a lens of emerging technologies, social media, human-computer interaction (HCI), and postphenomenology. These interactive, and often participatory, installations combine sociopolitical narratives, generative spatial soundscapes, and light, together with raw materials such as glass.

HALFLIFERS is an ongoing collaborative project created by longtime friends Torsten Zenas Burns and Anthony Discenza. The HALFLIFERS create video, photographs and installations exploring speculative fictions including zombie/afterlife relationships, rescue-rituals and psychic manifestations. https://www.vdb.org/titles/halflifers-complete-history-1992-2010

Gesa Piper (Ger/FIN) and Jude Walton (Eng/Aus) have collaborated for over 10 years. They make mainly ephemeral works that involves dance and the human body as a mediator for ecological and feminist contemplations. Cross-generational collaborators who rarely ever think about age, but rather rejoice in the vast amount of experiences that have touched them. Migratory nomads creating places for the heart to take refuge. Their book “With-ness” gives a glimpse into some of their works through an art historical perspective.

Sirja Moberg works with experimental photography, installation, bioart, video and sculpture. The themes of Moberg's work are deep time hidden in the landscape, such as meteorite lakes and trace fossil stones, the history of forest soil, animistic connection to nature and the consciousness of nature through photography and bioart. The combination of art and science collaboration is a characteristic feature in her work.

to kosie's work engages with underwater life through a queer-feminist lens, embodying concepts of fluidity, curiosity, constant interaction, and transformation. Their sculptural forms and videos propose utopian aesthetics that cultivate soft forms of abstract thinking—urgently needed in times of rigid, hierarchical social structures.

Oskari Ruuska works primarily with sculpture and video, often incorporating technological elements and sensitive materials to engage viewers in tactile, sensory experiences. In his recent material processes, Ruuska has explored themes of intimacy and belonging.

Lefebvre Zisswiller is a duo of French visual artists and filmmakers composed of Camille Zisswiller and Nicolas Lefebvre. Their expanded visual practice oscillates between documentary and speculative forms, exploring the relationships between individuals and their environments in the context of the growing fragility of ecosystems. They are joining Vartiosaari Artists ry as part of the Guarding the Baltic Sea residency.

Julia Lohmann Maggots. Sheep stomachs. Seaweed. German-born designer and researcher Julia Lohmann investigates and critiques the ethical and material value systems underpinning our relationship with flora and fauna. She is Associate Professor of Contemporary Design at Aalto University, Helsinki. In 2013, she founded the Department of Seaweed, an interdisciplinary community of practice exploring the sustainable development of seaweed as a design material.

Femi Adebajo is a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, and Artistic researcher, born and raised in Bariga, Lagos, Nigeria. Rooted in Yoruba heritage and urban experience, his work spans dance performance, visual storytelling, and socially engaged art often grounded in rigorous research and driven by a deep engagement with history, memory, and culture.   https://femiadebajo.com/

DJs - maija & vorony - https://soundcloud.com/stydno

Andrey Bogush probes the unstable nature of image production by transferring digital images onto various analogue materials. Often taking photographs from their personal archive and from resources online, they develop pictorial compositions using digital manipulation and CGI technology. Manifesting these works from computer screen to exhibition space, their work often results in highly sculptural forms.

Jakub Bobrowksi is a visual / performance artist and currently the residency Coordinator for (HIAP) Helsinki International Artist Programme located in Helsinki.

Anna van der Lei is a designer and lecturer at Aalto University whose work centers on raw materials and their origins, combining product design, filmmaking, performance, and bio-based material studies through a research-driven, material-focused approach.

Natalie Seifert Eliassen is an artist from Oslo, Norway. Natalie graduated from The Art School in Stavanger 2016 and received a BFA from the Academy of Fine Art, Bergen in 2019. Natalie works with masks, costumes, performances, ceramics, installations, sound and videos.

Neil Luck is a musician based in the UK. His work often explores the pathos and interaction between live human performance and multimedia, and attempts to frame the act of music making as something curious, or weird, or useful, or spectacular in and of itself. Neil’s work takes a range of forms from music-theatre, to concert works, radio, public projects and recordings.

DIRECTIONS TO VARTIOSAARI ISLAND / HELSINKI
The ferry is operating from: 10:00 - 23:00 on Saturday, August 30th
10:00 - 19:00 on Sunday, August 31st.
https://aurinkolautta.fi/ - price - one way 3€
Ferry leaves from this location: Reposalmentie 1 / 00840 Helsinki