An affective encounter – Art and research in the neoliberal setting

This panel brings together artists, cultural workers, artist-researchers, and researchers to discuss the ways in which sensibility and affectivity lead their artistic and academic inquiry in creative and unforeseen pathways, in seemingly contradiction to the certainty assuredness demanded by funding agencies.

Panelists: Miia Säppi, Jaana Denisova-Laulajainen, Nick Haswell and Camila Da Rosa Ribeiro

Chairs: Fath E Mubeen and Riikka Era

Academia and the arts are increasingly uniting to answer the profound questions and challenges of our times. Art, research, and art-research are, for example, used in the context of migration issues to bring to light questions and seek solutions. However, social scientific research and the arts have been approximated also in terms of increased precarity and economic scarcity, on local and global terrains. While traditional boundaries between research and art are being erased to produce artistic and scientific knowledge in synergy, there is also increasing pressure for these outcomes to align with global market pragmatic rationality.

Tampere Intercultural Art (TIcAS) is a culture cooperative established in 2023 with a dual mission. TIcAS supports foreign-born artists and creative professionals in advancing their careers in Finland, while also working to make cultural offering in the region more accessible to diverse audiences and promoting intercultural dialogue. Since August 2023, TIcAS has been running its cultural space in Tampere at Pirkankatu 10.

Tampere Intercultural Art poster. White text on green base on the left side, decorative symbols on the right

Miia Säppi is an art educator with significant expertise in drama pedagogy. She focuses her practice on supporting intercultural dialogue and two-way integration, working to improve newcomers’ access to culture, work life and communities, as well as using creative methods in language-learning. She is a founding member and the chairperson of the board of Culture Cooperative TIcAS.

Picture of Miia Säppi: black polo shirt, glasses. A white background

Jaana Denisova-Laulajainen is a cultural producer, project coordinator, and Diversity Agent. Her educational background is in linguistics, EU studies, and cultural management. Jaana has extensive experience in fostering intercultural dialogue and promoting diversity and inclusivity in the arts. She has worked with foreign-born and refugee artists through her involvement in Culture Cooperative TIcAS, as well as work in Ukraine Solidarity Residencies Programme and Helsinki International Artist Programme.

A picture of Jaana Denisova-Laulajainen. Long brown hair, black polo shirt and white background.

Nick Haswell (Master’s in Teacher Education) is a researcher at Tampere University, working on several projects concerning the education and wellbeing of children and adults with refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds. As an experienced artist and trained art teacher, he is interested in the ways that expressive arts and story-making can be used in research contexts. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Tampere University with the aim to investigate the nexus between wellbeing and environmental relations in the lives of young refugees in Finland, Norway and Scotland. In addition to research activities, Nick co-runs a creative working group, We Who Smile, which organizes art projects for children in reception centres around the Finland.

A picture of Nick Haswell. Brown hair and beard, orange jacket and a forest in the background

Camila Rosa explores the intersections between performance and philosophical research. She is currently a PhD candidate in Education at Tampere University, Finland. Her academic and artistic works create strategies for the collective project of decolonizing knowledge and pedagogy, devising performativity through collective practices of memory storying.

A picture of Camila Da Rosa Ribeiro. Purple, curly hair, a green shirt and white background.

Fath E Mubeen works as a researcher at Migration Institute of Finland and a PhD candidate at Tampere University. As a refugee herself, she has been engaged in the projects that addresses the issues regarding the inclusion of young refugees and Muslim women in Finnish society. She is now researching how the relational wellbeing of young refugees develops and sustains over the time in Finland. Exploring through art-based methods she aims to reach the cultural and contextual depths of the narratives which otherwise can be missed. Through her research she aims to bring attention and set foundation to Impact change towards peoples and society’s attitude towards young refugees.

A picture of Fath E Mubeen, a colorful headscarf and gray shirt, dark background

Riikka Era is a doctoral researcher in Social Anthropology, engaged with issues of equity and migration within Finland and the broader EU context. Their PhD research delves into the everyday lives of young children residing in a Finnish reception centre. Riikka explores how the use of creative and artistic methods within their research assemblage enrich ethnographic fieldwork with multilingual groups of children.

A picture of Riikka Era, short blonde hair, red glasses and green shirt, nature in the background.

Friday 8.11. at 13.00-14.30
Väinö Linna room, Linna building

Panelists from TIcAS

Panelists

Chairs