Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities is a four-day annual gathering in October in Helsinki, Finland, connecting artists, curators and other practitioners within the field of contemporary art. This year’s programme focuses on practices that deal with the redistribution of power, wealth, and resources within the art field and society at large. Registration is now open here.

In 2022, the gathering will take place from 5 to 8 October, hosted by LAPS – Live Art and Performance Studies onsite at the Theatre Academy of Uniarts Helsinki. The co-curators of the programme are artist, curator and storyteller Farbod Fakharzadeh, LAPS – Live Art and Performance Studies at the Theatre Academy of Uniarts Helsinki, artist Iida Nissinen and art educator Kaura Raudaskoski, and Steve Maher, producer of Pixelache (2019–2021) together with Mary Conlon, Artistic Director of Ormston House in Ireland, and Frame’s Head of Programme, Jussi Koitela.

The programme highlights institutional, curatorial and artistic practices that go beyond offers of hospitality, and transgress unbalanced forms of power distribution, such as those instilled in host and guest dynamics. Rather than simply working through “inclusion” and “invitation”—which often privileges the host—we imagine what the decentralisation and redistribution of institutions, land and public life and the power they hold, might do to support a more equal and just arts ecology, and world. How might redistributing power and wealth remove some of the access barriers which block marginalised communities from participating in and (re)forming the fields of arts and culture?

Invited contributors include Marwa Arsanios, Anastasia Artemeva & Arlene Tucker (Prison Outside/Free Translation), Federica Bueti, Birgit Ærenlund Bundesen, Florian Carl, Dahlia El Broul, Ida Enegren, Johanna Hedva, Sigrid Holmwood, Isa Hukka, K-oh-llective (Nada Elkalaawy, Engy Mohsen, Mohamed Al Bakeri, Soukaina Joual, Rania Atef), Pilvi Kalhama, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Kaisa Karvinen, William Keohane, Raija Koli, Eva Koťátková, Jenni Laiti, Anissa R. Lewis, Jemina Lindholm, Gemma Medina Estupiñán & Alessandra Saviotti (Arte Útil Archive), Massimiliano Mollona, Eoin O’Dowd, Paul O’Neill, Farid Rakun (ruangrupa), El Reid-Buckley, Anna Rieder, Sandra Ruiz, Ailie Rutherford, Station of Commons (Grégoire Rousseau, Minerva Juolahti & Eddie Choo Wen Yi), Anna Talasniemi, Minna Tarkka, Meenakshi Thirukode, Hypatia Vourloumis and Mike Watson.

For further information on accessibility, how to participate, how to give feedback, the Visitor Programme, and Rehearsing Hospitalities Companion 4 co-published with Archive Books, please visit Frame – Contemporary Art Finland here. Image: Uniarts Helsinki by KMM Architects, photograph by Tuomas Uusheimo ©