Unified space and time in the artistic collaboration of two cities

Creative Industry Košice coordinates the membership of the city of Košice in the international network of UNESCO Creative Cities of Media Arts. The cooperation of the member cities also consists of joint residencies of artists. This time, Košice joined forces with the Finnish city of Oulu. This resulted in an installation that was exclusively available for viewing at the Alfa gallery in Kasárny/Kulturpark during the international event Art & Tech Days.

City to City or Education of Professionals in New Media Art

The residency between Finnish artist Anni Kinnunen and Košice-based new media artist Jakub Pišek took place online. In a short time, they managed to create a work called Periphery/Periféria, under the mentorship of Boris Vaitovič, a professor in the New Media Studio at the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University in Košice.

Anni Kinnunen’s works are meditative, sometimes with a feeling of the object on the screen being static. They force a person to stop, wait and expect what will happen next. In today’s fast-paced era, it is downright disruptive to the system we live in. As Boris Vaitovič says in the accompanying curatorial text for the work: “After a while, we discover that we are not observing the content of the video, but rather ourselves. The external impulse turns us inward, we are confronted with a new sensitivity and fleeting peace hidden in reserved colors and moderate to mysterious shapes.”

On the other hand, Jakub Pišek transformed the videos into a different plane, changed and even multiplied this meditativeness into a generous space in the Alfa gallery: “Time, which until now had flowed linearly, is spread over a surface.”

Watch the aftermovie about Jakub Pišek’s work with Anni Kinnunen.

The collaboration was exclusively supported by the Slovak Arts Council.

Supported by the Slovak Arts Council from public sources. The Slovak Arts Council is the main partner of the project.