Wear and Tear is a workshop that collects an archive of objects and things that are important to people, that have seen their best days but are still being preserved. The use of objects and the way they wear and decay leave traces that carry weight in our memories. What kind of spiritual legacy is loaded onto our objects, and what intimate individual gestures and actions resonate with them even after we are gone?
In the workshops, people bring their own important object or physical thing and approach it from different angles, reflecting on the memories, sensations and traces it evokes. The object is drawn, recorded, worked with physically and photographed.
The material generated in the workshops will be used to build up an archive of personal memories, the traces they leave and the wear and tear that will live on in the next part of the project. You don’t have to give up your object, you can keep it after the workshop.
Wear and Tear is a three-part artistic project initiated by Emma Fält and Sonja Jokiniemi that explores wear and tear, preservation, memory and death through the accumulated things and objects in our lives.
In the second and third parts of the work, artists Emma Fält, Roberto Fusco and Andrea Mancianti explore the things and spaces in which the past and lived life are preserved. The second part of the work, an extended participatory workshop, is presented at Hangö Teaterträff, while the third part, an installation, takes place at ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival.
Emma Vilina Fält (b. 1983) is a multidisciplinary artist working with drawing, installation, performing arts, and participatory practices. Her main interests are in live acts, contact and the togetherness of drawing. Fält is inspired by the body, its boundaries, and possibilities to connect with the world. Fält seeks to expand and stretch the understanding of drawing and the ways to present it.
Her work has previously been presented at Mänttä Art Festival, Lonely in the Rain, Draw to Perform, ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival, ITAK – Stage, M_itä? Biennale of Contemporary Art and Kuopio Art Museum, as well as galleries and festivals in Finland and abroad. Emma teaches at Art School MAA, Helsinki. She works as a coordinator of Thinking through Drawing, an international group of drawing researchers.
Roberto Fusco (b. 1980) is an Italian media artist based in Helsinki. At the intersection of physical and computational processes, his artistic research focuses on the possible dialogues between art and science. By using data, his works oscillate between the scientific, objective, and reductive description of phenomena, and the non-scientific, subjective, and felt knowledge. In his practice, the use of technology, capable of recording, reconstructing, modelling, and simulating reality, is significant both as a tool as well as the material and subject of his investigation. In the form of installations or audiovisual performances with real-time and interactive elements, he exposes the role of technology and computation as an instrument that mediates our perception and experience. Fusco combines material and digital elements towards the creation of hybrid forms in which the processes of negotiation with technology become manifest and the materiality of the world, with its complexity and unpredictability, transcends what is computable.
He has been collaborating and presenting joint work with live artist Emma Fält and co-founded with Andrea Mancianti the audiovisual duo and media art studio QUIETSPEAKER.
Andrea Mancianti is a composer, performer and sound artist mostly devoted to experimental sonic arts. He studied composition with Rosario Mirigliano in the Conservatory of Florence. Mancianti holds an MA in composition and music technology from the same conservatory (2012) and a Bachelor in Philosophy from La Sapienza, Rome (2006).
His artistic work, in the intersection between music, sound art and electronic lutherie, includes compositions, installations and mixed media performances, involving interconnected audiovisual ecosystems, where material phenomena extend in the virtual digital world and complex feedback networks are established between the two realms.
Artist: Emma Fält
Light design: Roberto Fusco
Composition and sound design: Andrea Mancianti
Supported by: Finnish Cultural Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland
Wear and Tear is part of Kulkue, a joint project between three Finnish art festivals. ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival (Kuopio), Hangö Teaterträff (Hanko), and Baltic Circle (Helsinki) create an exceptionally large-scale series of Finnish co-productions along with related tours. The project’s central goal is to promote the accessibility of the festivals and to prolong the life cycle of the performances. The project is financed by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.