The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (FRAME), in cooperation with the Academic Bookstore, will organize a fax art happening with artists in Helsinki and New York.
Concept and Theme
A trans-Atlantic happening in which artists based in Finland cooperate with artists based in New York with the help of telefax as a medium of communication during three hours. The goal of the happening is to promote interactive art and communication beyond the boundaries of space and place, to experiment with the communication media, and to study alternative applications of telefax.
The act of making art is part of the happening: works are to be created during the happening. Artists add on top of each others works and comment on both the individual works and the surrounding environment. Photographers, who document the happening in both cities transmit impressions of the situation and atmosphere over the Atlantic. Authors and poets who present their works during the Night of Arts are welcome to participate in the fax happening. The artists work collectively in small groups. Trans-Atlantic working groups are encouraged.
Time. Place. Context.
Thursday the 25th of August, 1994 is a special night in Finland. The Helsinki Festival organizes together with the Academic Bookstore the Night of Arts. Most galleries, museums, theaters and shops in the city center keep their doors open until late into the night. Painters, graphic and performance artists, sculptors, singers, musicians, authors and poets perform for free in the streets and in the places mentioned above. In Helsinki the Fax Art happening is organized in cooperation with the Academic Bookstore from 10 pm to 1 am. Respectively in New York the happening will take place between 3 pm and 6 pm in an artists’ studio house.
Participating Artist
Novelists and poets, photographers, and 8-9 visual artists in each location.
The Medium and Necessary Equipment
Three telefax machines, two copy machines, two overhead projectors and a computer with a fax modem. Basic equipment will be provided by the organizers, however, artists are welcome to bring their own materials.
Bulletin
FRAME will document the happening in the form of a bulletin. It will be printed in five hundred copies and distributed to selected museums and galleries all over the world. The bulletin will consist of graphic, literature and photographic art works created during the happening.
Curators
In New York: Juulia Kauste, M.A. in Sociology of Art and Culture, M.S. in Urban Studies. She works as an Executive Director for the Finnish Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York.
In Helsinki: Visa Norros, graphic artist. Studies at the A. Tuhka Printmaking School in Helsinki; and at the Graphic Studio in Jyvaskyla, Finland. Internship at the Lithography Studio of Auguste Clot et Bramsen in Paris, France.
Sponsors and Organizing Parties
FRAME, The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, was founded in 1992 to make Finnish Art and photography better known abroad. FRAME operates under the Fine Arts Academy Foundation. The Foundation’s board consists of twelve members. Three are appointed by the Ministry of Education, one by the City of Helsinki, three by the Fine Arts Association of Finland, and one each by the Artists’ Association of Finland, the Finnish Painters’ Union, the Association of Finnish Sculptors, the Society of Finnish Graphic Artists, and the Union of Finnish Art Associations.
FRAME works in collaboration with the key art museums and galleries, art organizations,and individual artists in Finland. FRAME also carries out special projects in collaboration with foreign exhibition organizers.
The Academic Bookstore is characterized by large figures: a sales area of 2,800 square meters on three floors, 8,000 meters of shelf space, some 140,000 items, a stock of over 400,000 book titles from 23,000 different publishers in the computerized register, over a dozen different languages, more than a million books in all … All of this is managed by four hundred people. These figures make the Academic Bookstore one of Europe’s largest and most diverse booksellers.