Borderlines Program

Wed, Otakaari 1X (A235)

13:00 Sepideh Rahaa: A Dream That Came True
13:30 Lauri Laine: The heroic myth of entrepreneurship
14:00 Aaron Tobey: The Weight of a Line: Global Shipping and its Spatial Imaginations
14:30 David Flood: A Place Like All Other

***

A Dream That Came True?

Sepideh Rahaa
Wed 13:00, Otakaari 1X (A235)

A Dream That Came True? focuses on the reality of life of female individuals from Middle-East who have migrated to Finland a decade ago. My highest objective is to increase social awareness and to tackle existing stereotypical models or perceptions based on culture, gender and race which leads to discrimination and undermining minorities in our society. Video series A Dream That Came True? intends to go beyond the existing stereotypical perceptions based on gender or culture and to tackle it. This project is an attempt to create a dialogue between people in the society regarding the critical issues existing in it, and by exploring the possibilities of going beyond the boundaries which are caused by one’s own culture, or sociopolitical structure of the place she lives. These series of work reflect on life of people who cross the border between the traditional and postmodern type of life. This project portrays reality of life and resistance from perspective of women and girls who have experienced concept of migration and living in Finland, and it aims to portray different life experiences of individuals with a poetic context.

Bio
Sepideh Rahaa (1981, Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Helsinki. In her artistic practice, body, its transformation and performativity through time and spaces are significant elements of her work. The creation of spaces for artistic encounters and discussion is part of her practice. Her works has been exhibited in Asia, West Asia and in Europe. Rahaa holds a BA in painting and visual arts, MA in art and research from Shahed University in Tehran and MA in Fine Arts and contemporary art at Aalto University. Currently she is pursuing her doctoral studies in contemporary art at Aalto University investigating concept of identity and its hybridity with the emphasis on how female body becomes politicized.

The heroic myth of entrepreneurship

Lauri Laine
Wed 13:30, Otakaari 1X (A235)

In what Zygmunt Bauman called “liquid modernity”, there is an emphasis on entrepreneurship as a career and lifestyle choice that accelerates economic growth and technological as well as social progress and self-empowerment. In this talk, I seek further inquiry into the suggestion put forward by seminal thinkers on entrepreneurship and mythology that the mythical hero is embedded in the cultural narrative of entrepreneurship.

Bio
Lauri J. Laine. A PhD candidate in Aalto University’s Entrepreneurship unit. Currently engaged in developing a philosophical understanding of entrepreneurship as a process and archetypal phenomenon. This work entails a metatheoretical perspective on the current scientific understanding of entrepreneurship as well as ethnographic research in community entrepreneurship.

The Weight of a Line: Global Shipping and its Spatial Imaginations

Aaron Tobey
Wed 14:00, Otakaari 1X (A235)

Conventionally understood, shipping containers are a potent metaphor signifying the potential capacity of global trade. As digital-physical apparatuses, they have profound, often unseen, spatial effects altering the social and physical geography of the world through their aggregation. Beyond deconstructing this conventional understanding, might we also ask in what ways the material and connective action of the shipping container can be a device for collective storytelling and solidarity building?

Bio
Aaron Tobey is a Ph.D. student at Yale University studying architectural history and theory. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design for his Master of Architecture, receiving a grant to conduct field research aboard the container ship, ZIM San Francisco. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in Architecture at the University of Cincinnati during which time he also attended the École Spéciale d’Architecture. He has worked for a number of architecture and visualization firms in the United States.

A Place Like All Other

David Flood
Wed 14:30, Otakaari 1X (A235)

A Place Like All Others addresses the representation of urban space within the context of globalised economies and increased capital flows between nations. Drawing on ethnographic practices, interviews taken from the field-sites the Docklands in Dublin and Pasila in Helsinki were combined with still and moving images to investigate how new urban spaces are framed through images and controlled by the camera. The work examines how these visual techniques are deployed in the processes of making urban spaces more globalised.

Bio
David Flood is an image-maker and researcher working between Finland and Ireland. He has recently completed a practice led MA at IADT Dun Laoghaire on the role of globalised capital and urban topographies. He also holds a qualification in Visual Education and has taught photography in the Gallery of Photography and Dun Laoghaire College of further Education in Dublin, Ireland, currently he teaches photography courses at the Espoo Adult Education Centre, Finland.