AV-arrki is the Distribution Centre for Finnish Media Art. Created in 1989 and based in Helsinki, AV-arrki strives to broaden awareness of Finnish Media Art and increase exposure to international festivals, galleries, museums and other platforms. The Centre represents over 170 artists, including visual artists Salla Tykkä, Sami Sänpäkkilä, Mika Taanila and Anssi Kasitonni.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Kate Ivey-Williams is a Social, Service and Experience Designer with a passion for projects that work with people and the environment.

Currently studying on the Masters in European Design program, Kate aims to “to create engaging services with meaningful user experiences for valuable social impact”.

Her blog is a collection of various projects she has undertaken in the past, including the children’s energy research game, Energie-Labor, and Polku, inspired by prints left in the snow.

The importance of design is obvious in each of the projects Kate details on her blog, and yet in none of them does it out weigh the human aspect which is clearly important to the artist. Whether we fully understand what social, service experience design is or not, we think Kate’s blog is very clever & think it should be shared.

See Kate’s blog here.
Follow Kate on Twitter.

Twee-tea cup – blow on your tea to cool it down and tweet like a bird

Designer duo Marjo Kuusinen and Piia Keto run together the accessory brand KAKSITVÅ from Helsinki, Finland. They met at a punk gig in a small Finnish town over 10 years ago, and know each other so well that designing together is effortless and their designs fit together seamlessly. Here is just another typical day in their studio.

In case you were’t familiar with the brand, Marjo and Piia wanted to share 10 facts about the notorious KAKSITVÅ:

1.YSTÄVÄT, FRIENDS.
Friends-collection (Fall/winter 2011-2012) was designed on the European tour of a Costa Rican HC band Billy the Kid. The tour was full of adventures, great people, endless kilometres, joy and laughter. Friendship is shown in graphic elements, and the adventures of expressive faces and other details can be seen throughout the collection, which features a lot of knits, wool fabric, and recycled leather.

2. KAKSITVÅ.
The name of the brand consists of the word ‘two’ both in Finnish and Swedish. We came up with the name when we met Finnish-Swedish twins whose dissimilar personalities inspired us as designers.

1. Syksy 11-12 (Tommi Hynynen) // 2. Kaksitvå (Tommi Hynynen)

3. Bailaus, partying.
KAKSITVÅ is an accessory brand which brings the party with them. Even in a bowling tournament where we were invited, they founded a new award in order to obtain the award-winning team KAKSITVÅ. After a trip to Mexico we got our own skate team in Oaxaca. KAKSITVÅs promoters in Costa Rica have practically covered Mid-America with KAKSITVÅ label stickers. And when we met the Danish Crown Princess Mary, we made her feel relaxed by asking, “What’s up Mary?”

4. Seikkailut, Adventures.
We were artists residence in Oaxaca for two months during the spring of 2010. Touring around, making lot of new friends, partying and designing summer 2011, kids and tableware collection. Best of times!

3. Bailut // 4. ss11 Mexico Collection (Tommi Hynynen)

5. Maalaisuus, country side girls.
The inspiration for our work comes from everything that happens around us: countryside life mixed with the adventures around the world.

6. Reilu meininki, fair play.
It is important to us that our products are manufactured in Finland with comfortable partners: Knitwear is manufactured in a small factory by Jari in Lahti, Finland and finished products are sewn by Marja and Marja-Terttu. Happy Priska will always make our porcelain jewellery with precise hand, and Marjatta manages the production of bags with her team of professional seamstresses.

5. Maalaisuus // 6. Fairplay

7. Kodinsisustus, home decoration.
Our Friends pillows just won a prize in Habitare interior decoration fair. The jury thought that they were easy going and fun: they make you smile and suit for the whole family.

8. Suunnittelutoimisto, design office. KAKSITVÅ get things done!
We make projects for other companies too. We have done collaboration with Estonian fashion bloggers, kids fashion store, hair dressers, fashion store Helsinki10, finnish bands Haloo Helsinki & PMMP, Popot sneaker store, Melodica skate boards… If your project needs an innovative touch, we are very happy to work with you!

7. Tyyny (Tommi Hynynen) // 8. Suunnittelutoimisto

9. Karaoke!
It’s not only about our (not very) beautiful voices, it’s also all about a huge aerobic show! We just love karaoke! Finnish, English, Swedish, Spanish you name it – we sing it!

10. Fortune cookies.
We have lots of fortune cookies for us, our trainees and partners, and every morning when we come to work we open one. Today Merja’s cookie said she is going to Hawaii and Piia’s promised that luck is coming to her. So only good things happening for KAKSITVÅ in the near future.

9. Karaoke // 10. Fortune

You can buy KAKSITVÅ products in several places in Finland, and also in Denmark, Hong Kong and in Urban Outfitters in UK. Full list on their website.

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

I went back home to see my family in Finland in the end of June, and spent a few days with my sister in Turku, which is currently European Capital of Culture 2011. This is what I saw and did.

Due to Turku being Cultural City of Europe there are plenty of cultural things to see and do. Although, even when the city has less than 180 000 people, it has tons of museums and galleries and vibrant artist community already anyway. Turku 2011 is just bringing it all to the attention of tourists.

Flux Aura which is part of Turku 2011 has brought Finnish and international environmental art by the banks of River Aura. It features 12 different artworks situated in the river, in nearby parks, on and under the bridges, in buses and paving stones. I saw four pieces of work whilst just wondering around: The Sea Frills (under a bridge and made out of thousands of reflectors), Balancing (flock of large elders in the river), Flowerdrops (made out of recycled plastic) and Motive Ships (soft sculptures hanging from the trees by the riverside reminiscent of votive ships in old churches). I was a bit disappointed to miss Candy Chang’s Career Path which invited passersby to reflect their life journey by filling in blanks in sentences on the pavement.

Riverbanks are a hub of activity during the summer months. There are people drinking (it’s illegal to drink in public in Finland but the police doesn’t mind just as long as you can behave yourself), having naps, having picnics and even dancing…

The main venue of Turku 2011 is Logomo -a brand new, so new infect that it’s still under construction (it won’t be fully completed until 2014), cultural centre near city centre (and literally two minute walk away though a foresty path from my sister’s house). The building used to be owned by Finnish Railway and sort of reminded me of Tramway in Glasgow (although Logomo is absolutely massive). Logomo has 4 different exhibitions at the moment all lasting until the end of the year: Alice in Wonderland, Tom of Finland, Fire! Fire!, and Only a Game. There are also 2 pieces on loan from Kiasma.

Alice in Wonderland was supposed to have ‘a loose narrative with a wide range of international artists using lens-based maid, who lead us to consider what is present’. We thought it was a little bit too loose and disjointed. I really enjoyed works by Hanna Haaslahti (Real-Time Family picked up most recent photo uploads from Flicrk, and Space of Two Categories had a small child dancing in your shadow – when you moved the little girl moved too), Jan Mancuska, Tuomo Rainio (I ended up looking at his artist book for a while), Nelli Palomaki, Alain Paiement, and Trish Morrissey. I wish I had had more time to appreciate Christian Marclay‘s Looking for Love.

Tom of Finland exhibition was supposed to be a retrospective of Touko Laaksonen‘s lifetime work. It wasn’t. We were really disappointed by the curation and lack range of work on show. We would have wanted to read more stories behind the works, where they were published and so on. Now we just got a tiny room with walls covered with pictures of naked/seminaked men, and a documentary running in the corner of the room.

Fire! Fire! was also a disappointment. We were expecting a comprehensive exhibition about fire that happened in Turku in 1827, instead we got rooms filled with bits and bobs connected very loosely with fire (from barbecues to old fire engines). In the entrance hall there was also a football exhibition by UEFA and I ended up seeing some famous footballers’ tops and playing videogames. Even considering that Logomo was a disappointment made even more bitter by the cost: it cost 18 euros to see all the exhibitions.

Museums and exhibitions are rarely free in Finland. I could have also gone to see David Shrigley animations in Turku Art Museum, but the cost of 8 euros stopped me. I found myself thinking why should I pay 8 euros when I can see his work for free back in Scotland. I also found myself thinking that my attitude is probably wrong and it is good to support art museums, centres and galleries.

Another thing I missed was Art Saunas : four saunas designed by different artists and constructed in different areas of Turku. What I made sure was that I didn’t miss any of the ordinary Finnish woodburning saunas though: I took plenty of advantage of them.

When my sister was showing me around the city, she also took me to the Turku Main Library. It’s a beautiful, welcoming building which combines the old building and new multimillion euro extension which has state of the art borrowing systems, cozy reading corners, computers, wifi, art exhibitions… It made me really jealous and a bit bitter to think what the libraries are in UK and what they will become in the near future. You could see loads of people just hanging about, reading, chatting to each other, kids browsing books whilst sitting on beanbags…

I just couldn’t resist taking a photo of the PIzza place where you can now get Beckham Special due to certain famous footballer ordering pizzas from there whilst he was in Finland having an operation.

What’s a creative scene without places where you can go and meet your friends? Hmmn, not sure other than not much fun, but Turku has plenty of pubs and bars to choose from too. You have your trendy bars in the city centre, and more clinical family restaurants. But nothing beats having a drink on board one of the boats (they don’t move anywhere other than side to side making you tiny bit queasy if you’ve had one too many). We spent quite a while one evening having a couple of drinks and just people watching, and as it doesn’t get dark until around midnight, time seems to fly really fast. You also have your old man’s pubs which haven’t changed their interior or clients for over 30 years, your artier places where all the famous actors and other creatives went 20 years ago, and your a bit rough pubs where the arty, but not so famous folk go these days, and old school buildings which have been converted to pubs with massive beer gardens… So many excellent pubs, so little time, and definitely so little money as drinks aren’t cheap in Finland.

Every time I’m in Finland I need to visit a shop called Televisio. They store bags, jewellery, and clothes from Finnish designers and labels such as Globe Hope, IVANAHelsinki and Dead Birds & Lion Heart. And again, I couldn’t resist buying myself a couple of bags and jewellery. Turku has also several other design and vintage shops, and independent record and book shops. The streets have character due to shops being so varied. Of course you see the chain stores too, but it is so much more fun to spot the more unique shops with their more individual products.

You can still also see remnants of recent Eurocultured event.

On my last day in Finland I visited the big Medieval Market – an annual festival in Turku. It was boiling hot, full of people, and had so much to see. A group of actors dressed in medieval clothes were wondering amongst all the people, staying in character. It made you feel like you were in the middle of some sort of absurd play. Also all the vendors had to be selling more traditional wares. I really enjoyed it (minus the soap makers’ stall with hooves and fat on show and the roasted pig) and spent hours just walking about.

I finished my day by going see a puppet show ‘John Eleanor’ about an English medieval crossdresser. I absolutely loved it. It mixed fact and fiction (mostly fact, pointing out the bits that might have not happened), and it was amazing to see such a talented puppeteer at work: I can’t quite look at hands ion the same way ever again. It had been roasting at the attic where the play was shown, and after I left at 10pm (and it was still warm enough not to even wear a cardigan) I went to get some ice-cream and watched some people playing music in one of the parks. It was a lovely way to finish my holiday.

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My Creative Scene is an insight into different creative & cultural happenings in cities where your members and readers live. Browse through more insider guides here or contact us to write about the arts scene where you are.

Kuuma Ankanpoikanen, one of the most active puppet theatre groups in Finland, was founded in 2006. It consists of five puppet theatre professionals who are all members of Puppet Studio Ltd. Merja Pöyhönen from Kuuma Ankanpoikanen was recently awarded acclaimed Kritiikin Kannukset, which is given annually by The Finnish Critics’ Association to a young individual artist or a group in recognition of their artistic breakthrough. Kuuma Ankanpoikanen also won a Finnish Puppet theatre competition last year.

Kuuma Ankanpoikanen produce shows full-time for both adults and children. Their original repertoire range from children’s shows about glaciers and heroism and shortsighted princess, to shows for adults exploring the themes of guilt, confession, fragility of relationships, and space travel to name just a few. They also have a show about sexuality aimed at teenagers, and an adult show that bravely combines puppet theatre, experimental electronic music and live animation.

Kuuma Ankanpoikanen doesn’t have their own premises to perform at. Therefore performances have taken place at different places, including theatres and festivals, across Finland. They also fight for the visibility of the whole field by organising puppet theatre soirees in bars and events, such as Eurocultured, in Turku, Finland. Most recently they sent their gorilla police and a giant 3m policeman to music festival Ruisrock.

Critics have described the performances and the performers of Kuuma Ankanpoikanen with words such as sincere, absurd, open-minded, sympathetic, unreserved, surreal, dazzling, wonderful, talented, dadaist, courageous, sensitive, hysterical, untouchable, and exhilarating.

Photos from the events:

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.