Tulevia tapahtumia Suomessa / Upcoming Events in Finland: Helsinki Street Festival & Bridge IV (by Victor Amoussou & Leea Pienimäki-Amoussou)

Tänä lauantaina kannattaa suunnata Narinkkatorille kello 13 alkaen! Helsinki Street Festival -tapahtumaan nimittäin osallistuu paljon villakarolaisia: World Music System eli Georges Agbazahou, Camilla Heidenberg, Faride Lala, Jeanette Heidenberg ja Sara Estlander esittävät musiikkia, tanssia sekä pitävät työpajoja. Graffitikilpailussa mukana ovat puolestaan Leea Pienimäki-Amoussou, Victor Amoussou ja Anu Nirkko!

Ja ensi viikon tiistaina 5.6. avautuu lisäksi Victor Amoussoun ja Leea Pienimäki-Amoussoun näyttely SILTA / BRIDGE / PASSERELLE IV: Hwénouho (Auringon puhe / The Talk of the Sun / La parole du soleil) Rööperin taidesalongissa. Avajaiset ovat tiistaina klo 17-19 ja näyttely on avoinna heinäkuun alkuun saakka. Tervetuloa!

Kutsu / Invitation to SILTA / BRIDGE / PASSERELLE IV

Welcome to Narinkkatori, Helsinki, next Saturday at 1pm and after: Villa Karo -people will be performing at Helsinki Street Festival! Georges Agbazahou, Camilla Heidenberg, Faride Lala, Jeanette Heidenberg ja Sara Estlander will be playing music, singing, dancing and organizing workshops as World Music System. And Leea Pienimäki-Amoussou, Victor Amoussou and Anu Nirkko will be participating in graffiti contest!

Victor Amoussou and Leea Pienimäki-Amoussou will also be opening their new exhibition at Rööperin taidesalonki on Tuesday 5th June from 5 pm to 7 pm. The exhibition will be open until 1st of July and it’s called SILTA / BRIDGE / PASSERELLE IV: Hwénouho (Auringon puhe / The Talk of the Sun / La parole du soleil) . Welcome!

Villa Karo in May

One more month before it’s time for the last scholarship holders to leave Villa Karo’s residency and return to Finland. It’s been a good year with, as usual, many moments of happiness and times of being lost in translation, cultural faux-pas’ and moments of mutual understanding in Villa Karo. But it’s not the end of the year yet! Here’s what’s happening in the times to come.

This year’s second last sholarship holder translator, researcher Simo Määttä will reach Grand-Popo by the time I post this writing. He’ll be working at the residency for five weeks with a research project before coming back to Finland. Beninese painter Yves Midahuen, the last scholarship holder of this year, will arrive in Villa Karo on the 4th of May and stay there for four weeks. At the end of his stay he’ll put on an exhibition in Villa Karo’s Lissa Gbassa for the month of June. It’ll be this springs third and final exhibition in Villa Karo.

Fisher men by Yves Midahuen

Teni-Tedji, a marionette group, will be holding a workshop in Villa Karo for the children of Grand-Popo on the first weekend of May. We shall get back to you about this with pictures.

Villa Karo’s own multitalented board member Anna Ovaska and curator Tintti Timonen will be working on a new museum exhibition in Villa Karo’s museum during the month of May. The exhibition will open in September of this year to the people of Grand-Popo, scholarship holders and passing tourists. At the same time Anna will be laying down the foundations of Villa Karo’s upcoming first virtual exhibition. Yes, you heard me right! You’ll get to see what Villa Karo’s collections and the new exhibition has to offer even if you aren’t able to go and see by yourself! At the same time, hopefully, VK’s homepage’s appearance and content will be finally updated. The project is trarting now and will be finished by the end of the year.

But not all upcoming events are taking place in Benin. The 2nd of June Villa Karo will take part in a festival that will take place at Narinkkatori, in Helsinki. The other organisers are Walter ry, radio SPIN FM, 09 Helsinki Human Rights, Namika, Funk on ry and FIDA among others. We’ll have there our former scholarship holder Camilla Heidenberg performing and holding a workshop with her husband Georges Agbazahou. Also five artists affiliated with VK will take part in charity event with five graffiti painters. A big plate of street culture and sports with a flavouring of Villa Karo will be offered to you on Narinkkatori that day.

During the months of summer, although it’s quiet in VK, we’ll have a big piece of the centre’s heart here in Finland with us as VK’s director Kwassi has kindly agreed to lend us here our chère Georgette and cher Richard from VK. They will come here in July to meet friends and acquaint and learn from their Finnish colleagues in August. Welcome Georgette and Riku!

World Music System at Feeniks club

Next Thursday (October 6th) is a great occasion for lovers of really good music around Helsinki. Camilla Heidenberg (FINLAND, former scholarhip holder of Villa Karo) and Georges Abgazahou (BENIN) are giving a concert at Feeniks club.
As the artists put it, prepare yourself “for a soulful mixture of afro, pop, jazz and classical music with piano, vocals, djembe, percussion”.

The group has been performing all over Finland and in France this past summer. As George’s stay in Europe is, for now, coming to it’s end in a few weeks, this will be one the last possibilities to hear their music live in Finland this year. Don’t miss it!

World Music System at

Musiikkitalon klubi, Mannerheimintie 13A

Tursday 6th October at 10pm.

6296 Kilometers up North

Being in Finland doesn’t necessarily mean being so far away from Villa Karo, Grand-Popo and Benin. This was noticed again yesterday, when Helsingin Juhlaviikkoklubi was filled with people who came to listen Beninese musician Alpha Omega singing and playing djembes and balafon. Familiar African rhythms and songs filled the club of the National Theater and in the end people were dancing as if they were in the coast of Golfe de Guinée, sand in their feet and warm wind blowing in the air. If we Finns are like jars with their lids still tightly closed, as Alpha had said (and we are, I completely agree), music and dance are most likely the best ways to open up those jars. And now, when autumn, winter and cold are approaching, it is good to gain energy through art and exchange of cultures – to be ever more able to open up to others.

The dialogue between Benin and Finland can be experienced right now also in Kiasma in the works of Romuald Hazoume and Georges Adéagbo who have been invited to participate in the Ars 2011 exhibition.

Last time I saw Hazoume’s work, I was in Porto Novo, where Hazoume’s recycled statues of petrol canisters stand in the yard of the palace of King Toffa (now Musée Honme) and tell the story of modernization, changes in environment and in traditions.  In Kiasma Hazoume exhibits his recycled masks and a large snake made of used tyres. Snakes are considered holy in Benin, and the idea is, that they don’t harm people unless they are harmed. The same philosophy expands to technology and markets, which are neither good nor bad in essence, but whose use is becoming more and more problematic all over the world.

In another room in Kiasma, Georges Adéagbo forms a dialogue between political histories of Benin and Finland. A room-sized collage consists of objects Adéagbo has collected in both countries, from fetish-statues to books and newspapers. To those, who happened to be in Benin last spring, familiar objects include the electoral poster of Yayi Boni, the president of Benin, and also a page of a report of an art workshop which took place in Villa Karo in January and was lead by Finnish-Beninese group of artists and art educators (Pekka Lehtimäki, Victor Amoussou and Leea Pienimäki-Amoussou, see Ateneum).

As it happens, also Victor Amoussou’s and Leea Pienimäki-Amoussou’s work can be seen soon in Finland, when their exhibition opens on 3^rd September in Hämeenlinna. Like Hazoume’s, Amoussou’s work treats the subjects of modernization and change. His perspective is optimistic and two-fold: looking back to the traditions and history and trying to build bridges in time and between cultures. His animistic and environmental ethics is well visible in his work, as well as his ability to form a dialogue between African and European traditions and philosophies and make the connections more intelligible.

Anna Ovaska

Alpha Omega playing with Georges Agbazahou at Juhlaviikkoklubi, Helsinki. Photo by Pekka Lehtimäki.