Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum is an amazing collection of 200-year-old wooden cottages that stand on their original sites. You wander around the streets and are transported back in time. Some of the buildings date to the 1780s.

In 1827 The Great Fire of Turku destroyed two-thirds of the city but the Luostarinmäki area remained intact. When the city authorities decided to create a new town with fire safety at its core, Luostarinmäki was condemned and abandoned. It lay dormant for nearly 80 years before a plan was put in place for its preservation.

The cottages were restored and turned into craft worker’s homes and workshops, often furnished by master crafts people. The Handicraft Museum opened to the public in June 1940.

Wandering through the streets time is reoriented and it is very easy to imagine what it would have been like generations before. There are many so called ‘living museums’ around and they can often feel a bit crude and theatrical but Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum has managed to strike a very even balance between heritage, preservation and recreation.

One of the most interesting parts of the experience of visiting are the details of the wooden architecture.

There is a tendency to over-control the aesthetic at times. Everywhere you look could be a page from a glossy ‘shabby chique’ picture spread from an interiors magazine.

But the old worn surfaces, especially of the wood, are extremely inviting.

This is a nice contraption. It’s an angled mirror positioned at a window, so that the ‘curtain twitcher’ can see who is coming down the lane without having to press their nose against the glass.

It is perhaps the examples of traditional Finnish building techniques and use of timber which are most seductive. Inside the the cottages there are also wide-ranging displays of crafts and skills from lithography to tobacco rolling. Here is the Glovemaker:

The Potter:

The Cobbler:

The Tinsmith:

The Basketmaker:

The Bookbinder:

One of my favourites was the studio which took responsibility for the interior decor of all the Luostarinmäki cottages. Pigment ground to make paint and stencils cut. Part of the concept of the museum is that the upkeep is made with traditional skills made on the site. So they weave the cloth and make the clothes that they will ultimately wear. Here the stencil designs and paints will be used for the upkeep of the rooms.

Almost everywhere you turn there is something interesting to look at.

Here the traditional Finnish bread is strung on poles underneath the rafters.

I particularly enjoyed the textile designs, again all handwoven on site.

Each space is illuminated by the natural light that creeps in through the window. These beautifully glazed frames demand the spectator to look anew at the world outside.

“It’s been such a wonderful summer in Helsinki this year.”
“Was it on Tuesday or Wednesday?”

Well during the end of May and beginning of June the joke was on the joke, as Finns basked in uncharacteristically hot weather. Bright skies and blistering sunshine in the 20s. There were a lot of ‘once before’ worn clothes on the streets of the capital and plenty of cut-off jeans, as citizens tried to adapt their wardrobe to the Mediterranean weather. “We fought hard for this with a fierce and long winter,” one of my hosts cries, while another, hand on sweating forehead laments, “I had to take Wednesday off with a migraine; it’s just too hot.”

I am here in Finland for two entirely separate but happily neatly consecutively scheduled events. The first week in Helsinki I was facilitating a workshop for professional artists, which explored different ways to work with audiences. The second week I took a train west to Turku for the New Performance Festival. Tomorrow I am presenting a, erm, new performance.

While in Helsinki I was staying in a very interesting place.

Villa Eläintarha was built in 1889, and is one of the surviving Linnunlaulu timber houses. The building enjoys protected status by the National Board of Antiquities in Finland. Since 2000, the City of Helsinki Cultural Office has maintained the villa as a residence for foreign artists. The ground floor is open to the public as a permanent exhibition of an upper-middle-class home from the late nineteenth century. So basically it’s like living in a ‘museum of the olden days’, which I have to admit is a kind of long standing fantasy of mine.

There isn’t a huge amount of difference between the ‘period’ rooms in the museum and the ‘artist’ rooms above. So here you see the period living room and bedroom:

And here you see the artist’s communal living room and my bedroom:

The renovation has been done sensitively and in some parts they have left the original painting right next to the newly restored, as a kind of  ’before and after’.

The main staircase is painted with trompe l’oeil wooden paneling and plaster work.

This staircase only goes as far as the first floor. To get up to the top floor you need to go through a little side door and use the servants’ staircase, where the wooden walls are exposed, and the balustrade is far more simple. Actually I much prefer it.

This is how it looked in the early 20th Century.

And here is the original owner, the very handsome Oscar Blum.

The city bought the property in the 1990s. It had been derelict for sometime. They understood that it was important to register the architectural heritage of the city and to preserve and protect at least some of these old 19th Century buildings. It was carefully restored but at first it was unclear exactly what to do with it.

Since 2000 it has operated in part as a museum and in part as accommodation for visiting artists.

When you ask people in Helsinki where they would like to live, a wisecrack response is often, “In a villa. In the centre of the city. With a view of the harbour.” Such properties have almost all been demolished to make way for apartment blocks. Those that remain are really only for the super rich. It was a privilege to be able to stay in one for a few days. And here is the harbour view from the balcony.

Another amazing wooden building in Helsinki is the Kampii Chapel of Silence located in the Narinkkatori square, one of the main downtown thoroughfares. Designed by Kimmo Lintula, Niko Sirola and Mikko Summanen of K2S Architects Ltd., the Chapel was built as part of the World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 programme. It is intended to be a place where people can have a moment of silence away from hectic and noisy city centre. I first read about this new building in an inflight magazine on some journey or other and I was keen to take the opportunity  to visit it. I had understood (as it happens incorrectly) that it was a kind of secular space for quiet contemplation. Although it is partly run by the Social Services Department of the City of Helsinki (I love that Social Services would consider this a worthwhile investment) its activities are also determined by parish unions. Although religious symbolism is low key, it is there, and while no church services or holy events will be organised, regular ‘moments of prayer’ are planned. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed that what I had taken to be a wonderful non-religious space, is ultimately a place for Christian worship.

It is still a very interesting space. Stepping inside, the sparse Finnish interior is flooded by natural light and the sounds of the busy city centre are left behind. I had heard that it is often busy with tourists, rendering its initial purpose somewhat ineffective. For the first moments of my visit however, I was splendidly isolated all by myself.

Before leaving this accidental theme of wooden architectural constructions, I thought I would share the amazing wooden scaffolding for a new bridge here in Turku. Apparently the old bridge failed and this new one is being built to replace it. As I understand it, the final thing will be concrete. Before they pour it, an extraordinary wooden mould is built. The support struts are incredibly sculptural, creating a beautiful geometric pattern, that will, alas, be lost.

Pattern is a big deal here in Finland and nowhere is this more apparent than in the epidemic of Marimekko products at every turn.  It actually starts before you even get here. On the Finnair flight, your cup of airplane tea is served in a Marimekko branded paper cup with matching serviette in a contrasting colour.

Despite its ubiquity, I have to say that I have a lot of retinal energy for the brightly coloured block patterns so reminiscent of the 1960s and 70s. My trip to the flagship store in Pohjoisesplanadi was a bit like a pilgrimage.

Stepping into the fabric room produces a rush of blood to the head as I get the same thrill of ‘potential’ as when entering a good stationery shop or art supply store.

My own recent ‘textile’ project, has been the creation of my costume for Object of Love which will be shown at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art from tomorrow. I have hand sewn over two-and-a-half-thousand (written out in full for dramatic effect) gun metal jump rings onto a body stocking, secured the knots with textile glue and then attached over two-and-a-half-thousand hand dyed cable tidies, one to each jump ring. When I embarked upon this Sisyphean task late last year, I thought it would be nice to have ‘something to do with my hands’, being as I was, overburdened with administration and concept making. I hadn’t quite imagined that it would take quite so long.

I attached the last cable tidy yesterday evening. This afternoon I delivered the costume to the gallery. Tomorrow I shall put it on in a giant glass box and invite member of the pubic for a one-to-one coaching session to resolve the troubles of their heart.

As part of our investigation into improbability, we will be running a series of test-drives from 29th June to the 7th July. We are looking for proposals of what to do with the car that stretch probability: unlikely, implausible, incredible ideas that will give the car a new use and a new future.

How can I get involved?
The first thing you need is to have an idea of what you would do with the car. The more improbable – the better. Then you need to be available to make a test drive with us at some time between 29th June and 7th July. You also need to be available on the evening of Friday 12th July and be ready to drive the car away if you win!

Contact us with your proposal: improbability@berlinerfestspiele.de

You can also simply turn up on Friday 12th July at Berliner Festspiele at 7 p.m. and vote on which proposal wins.

Why are we doing this?
Over the last five years, many luxury limousines have been abandoned in the desert close to Dubai airport. They are gathering dust. At the threat of bankruptcy, their owners have fled. During the last five years all kinds of improbable events have taken place: mighty institutions have fallen, millions of people have called for change. Here in Berlin, in central Europe, nothing much has altered: no new chances, no redistribution of wealth, no rethought rules. What maintains the regime of probability, the status quo that persists to govern the everyday? geheimagentur and Joshua Sofaer have brought one of the discarded limousines from Dubai to Berlin, to turn this leftover of failed capitalism into an improbability drive. Citizens and visitors are invited to take a ride and create a new, improbable, future.

Following on from the long history of the ‘readymade sculpture’ in the gallery, Sofaer brings his training as a coach directly into the museum with his unique kind of ‘readymade performance’. Sofaer’s performance asks us to consider the relation between art and everyday life and the way in which visiting an art gallery or museum can be beneficial to how we live our relationships with others. Sofaer’s performance is part of the New Performance Turku festival but takes place also as part of the Greatest of All is Love? exhibition in the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art.

This isn’t the first that Sofaer has provided one-to-one coaching to members of public. 2002′s The Crystal Ball consisted of interactions between audience members and experts in fortune telling, finance and psychology, combined with dancers on the stage. In professional consultations the participants had the possibility to have their destiny revealed.

Allowing these noses to smell fresh air for the first time on the occasion of The Nose at the Wellcome Collection in London, this impressive wall of photographs allows us to poke our noses into Joshua’s collection. What someone collects can often tell us as much about that person as the object but here, with the collector staring uniformly back at us, animating the noses in the process, the viewer is moved to question their own identity, or even their own nose.

By reconfiguring familiar forms such as museum collections and displays, Joshua’s artistic practice makes us reconsider what is often right in front of our noses and, as with this work, to find the smile just below it.

Briefly glimpse all 452 images in this animation or browse the selected 50 in the gallery.

The Nose was curated by Simon Gould.
With thanks to Jenny Jopson and the Wellcome Collection staff.

Project summary: 6 mid-career artists working under the umbrella of Live Art are given the opportunity to make bespoke context-specific proposals for Soho in London.

A site visit will include:
• a tour of key historic places
• a talk on contemporary challenges for the area
• an introduction to organisations, spaces and opportunities
• a brief account of planning requirements and event law

Artists will develop proposals specifically for the area individually, and at a later date will present their ideas to The Soho Society, Artsadmin and key local organisations (depending on the needs of specific proposals). Artsadmin will give follow-up support to individual artists in order to move proposals towards the production phase.

Soho is laden with possibilities for the kind of live, interactive, and ephemeral interventions that have come to be understood in the UK as Live Art. It has been the playground of the nation, key in the development of music and fashion. It also has sex shops, cuisine from all over the world, the centre of the UK gay scene, and houses people from all kinds of economic and social backgrounds. In recent years, partly because of foreign investment, Soho has become an area of boutique shopping, expensive cake shops, and High Street stores. This gentrification is not all bad but it does threaten the character of one of the most interesting and historically rich areas of central London. It is the aim that one or more of the ideas will actually be commissioned and that the work produced will reinvest Soho with the ‘edginess’ characterised by Soho’s history.

All participants must commit to the entire process, both meeting days, and be willing to discuss their developing proposals with peers (subject to intellectual copyright). Modest bursaries will be provided for out of pocket expenses.

Dates, times and location(s):
Day 1: Friday 30th August, 12pm-9pm, Site Visit, Soho
Day 2: Friday 11th October, 3pm-8pm, Ideas Presentation, Soho
Full proposals must be submitted by Friday 1st November.

Application procedure:
A maximum of 5 mid-career artists (self-identified but as a guideline minimum of 8 years professional experience) will be selected through application. Joshua Sofaer will participate as the 6th as well as facilitating the group. Application is by CV and covering letter, assessed by The Soho Society, Artsadmin and Live Art Development Agency. Please include weblinks where appropriate. (If your work is not adequately represented online you may submit up to 5 images as jpeg or pdf files and/or up to 5 minutes of video up to a combined total of 5mb but please do not reproduce what is available online.) Please feel free to ask any questions. Scroll down and use the contact button below. Applications must be received by Thursday 30th May 2013, emailed to info at joshuasofaer dot com.

This project forms part of DIY 10, a Live Art Development Agency initiative developed in collaboration with the following partners: Abandon Normal Devices (North West), Artsadmin (national), Buzzcut with Imaginate (Scotland), Cambridge Junction (East), Chapter Arts Centre (Wales), Chelsea Theatre (London), Colchester Arts Centre (East), Compass Live Art (Yorkshire), Duckie (London), Fierce Festival (West Midlands), Forest Fringe (Scotland), In Between Time (South West), Live at LICA (North West), National Theatre Wales (Wales), Norwich Arts Centre (East), Platform (national), The Showroom, University of Chichester (South East), Sound and Music (national), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (Yorkshire), The Works: Dance and Theatre Cornwall and University College Falmouth (South West). With additional support from Create (Ireland).

‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’ takes its name from the famous love (and betrayal) duet in Act II of Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns. It addresses one of the key moments in opera when the mezzo-soprano, as Delilah, needs to convince Samson that her love is real and that she will not betray him. At the same time, the singer needs win the audience. Even though we know that she is setting a trap for Samson and that she will betray him, we should wonder at her motive, suspect that she might really love him, and we need to love her ourselves, if only for a moment, to believe that we too might be swayed to reveal a fatal secret by the power and beauty of her song.

‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’ engages the audience to be tearful at a sound they know to be ‘untrue’ – a lover falsely pleading to be requited. Yes, we might cry for our own need to be loved and our own sense of betrayal but the emotional response that we might hope for from the music, is non-cognitive and non-rational, it reverberates through the nervous system which acts as a sounding board.

The opera is also a product of its time. It is perhaps unavoidable that the message of Samson et Dalila is chauvinistic: woman hating and exaggeratedly patriotic but it is also nevertheless the case that Dalila is an object of both desire and identification for the audience. We are prey to her passion and we want her strength. In this way Saint-Saëns reverses the gender dynamic of almost all classical 19th Century opera. It is Dalila who precipitates the narrative. Samson, the strong man, is passive and reactive until all but the last moment before the curtain falls. It is she who is active, seeking, moving, plotting, scheming. It is no surprise that it was her name alone that Saint-Saëns originally gave to the opera, and her name that he continued to use when referring to it: Dalila.

Mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Miura delivers Joshua Sofaer’s carefully researched text on the social, political and historical implications of this love duet and the biographical situation of its composer, Camille Saint-Saëns, illustrated by nearly 100 images from art and cultural history. At the end of the lecture she segues into a rendition of the song, moving the audience from rational comprehension to emotional response.

Concept, script and direction by Joshua Sofaer
With the love duet from Act II Scene III of Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns (Libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire)
Performed in Swedish in a translation from the English by Magnus Lindman
Musical Arrangement by: Joakim Unander
Conductor: Florian Benfer

Delilah: Jacqueline Miura
Samson: Fredrik Strid
Bodybuilder: Sammy Zabel

Orchestra: Carolina Anterot, Henrik Berg, Andreas Carpvik, Martin Eriksson, Ingegerd Fredlund, Helena Gabrielsson, Lena Haag, Jaroslaw Libert, Maria Lindal, Åke Lännerholm, Stefan Moberg, Tomaz Nilsson, Kina Sellergren, Ronny Stensson, Joel Sundin, Ulf Tilly, Birger Thorelli, Elin Willert

Folkoperan:
Pia Kronqvist, Managing Director
Mellika Melouani Melani, Artistic Director
‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’ was produced by Jonas Palerius, Linda Beijer and the Folkoperan team.

As part of The Nose at the Wellcome Collection, Joshua Sofaer will be showing over 450 self-portraits wearing his collection of false noses.

Explore the transformative power of the false nose.
Dare to smell a chemist showman’s little bottles.
Pick up a new skill and learn to play the nose flute.
Discuss nose jobs and more with a plastic surgeon.
Tour through art history’s most remarkable noses.
Discover why only some plants make us sneeze.

The bar will be open all night. This event is free, so drop in any time from 19.00 to 23.00. Tickets for talks will be available on the night of the event from 19.00.

What are the hidden powers at play in this most seductive of love duets?

Performance / Audience / Film aims to look at the different relationships that are established between the artist and the audience within the realm of performance art, examining the role of the audience in relation to the completion and meaning of the work.

The exhibition will include early work from the 1970s, involving pieces that played with the ideas of how artists and audiences interact, before tracing the influence of those experiments on subsequent artists and how they have also approached the idea of ‘audience’.

The question of ‘audience’ of course permeates every corner of artistic practice. Every time a piece of work is seen or experienced by a person, it has ‘an audience’. The selection of works in this exhibition aim to give a small insight into various ways in which artists have looked at the idea of ‘audience’, and the relationship that is created between a performer and those who are being performed to. The lines between the two are unclear – one minute the audience are observing, the next, they are ones being observed. There is no real dividing line, and if one were to exist, it would be in a constant state of flux.