The AREA doctoral school organizes its first event bringing together all those interested in artistic research at Aalto University. The event explores the role and celebrates the history, presence, and future of artistic research at Aalto University, in all its diverse processes and materialities. AeRaTe offers a platform for researchers from different disciplines and research groups to come together and share their approaches to artistic research.

To aerate is to breathe, activate, ventilate, protect, and nurture, bringing to life that which is dormant. Aeration is a transformative process, always in motion, creating fertile soil for novel artistic practices, growth in artistic research, and pollination of unprecedented notions and theories.

Hold / 2024 / 35x35x220cm / Broken electric cabling from Aalto University: the AV Takeout, Mechatronics, Behavioral Lab, the Health Technology building, and Fab Lab.

The process takes broken cabling and uses simple self-taught basket weaving techniques to transform a two-dimensional landscape into something three-dimensional. Weaving was used as a starting point from a cultural aspect as I am half Finnish but did not grow up here or grow up being close with grandparents (who could pass on these techniques for example). Deleuze and Guattari refer to weaving as the most striated - or controlled/measured - form of “nomad art” as there is no space to aerate within the confines of a tightly woven square. Nomad art applies the characteristics of land and space they discuss to art. The series aims to reclaim what is described as a striated space and transform it into something smooth or nomadic where it can be permeated. The materials address a feeling of artificiality or alienation from one's culture as one attempts to self-learn one's culture through digital means (YouTube videos on weaving).'

Exhibition: MAY 5-12th, 2025 @ Marsio Event Studio 

Symposium: May 5th 2025, 9:30 - 17:00 @ Marsio Stage  

Closing Gathering May 12th 2025, 17:00-19.00 @ Marsio Event Studio