Author: Eduardo Alonso

Annantalo Arts Centre is a member of the European Network of Art Organisations for Children and Young People (EUnetART) and will be hosting the event in Finland, along with EUnetART and Finnish Aladdin’s Lamp network, which enhances children's art education in Finland. This year’s festival will be held in partnership with the City of Helsinki, Passion2 seminar organized by Annantalo Arts Centre with Pedaali Association and various art institutions from the Capital region.

The conference will be preceded by the SpringLab. This is highlighted by the participation of ISH group from Holland, who will work with groups of Finnish children from Vantaa Mikkola School and have presentations for the results of their project on Saturday, 5th May in Tikkurila lukio hosted by the Cultural Services of Vantaa City.

While it might be true to say that the youth culture today lacks a steady footing, particularly in relation to art, listening to the director of Annantalo Arts Centre, Johanna Lindstedt, during an interview last Friday gave a broader overview of the reality of art and creativity even among children and youth in Helsinki region. It also paved way to recognise other creative activities that are taking place in other towns around Finland.

The Aladdin’s Lamp (Taikalamppu in Finnish) was launched six years ago and has managed to touch upon many aspects of children and art in Finland, and also forms a network that offers funding to pilot projects that target children and youth. So far there are many towns that have inaugurated the Aladdin’s Lamp, among which are Helsinki, Vantaa, Pori, and Hämeenlinna. These form a network that shares and implements ideas that strengthen the growth of children and youth art work in Finland.

My interest had been growing over the weeks regarding arts participation of young people in Helsinki region. Living in Helsinki metropolitan and being witness to the idleness of many youth gives one thoughts of what is not being done to occupy these youths, and what can be done to indulge them in something worthwhile, even useful for their future. This year's EUnetART festival offers an opportunity for participants, personnel of culture and education, along with teachers of children and people, to learn the success of others, adapt new ways of involving youth and children in art and cultural activities and also motivate them into new endeavours of their choice.

Since the late-eighties an association of artists have worked for the production of modern dance performances and activities. In 1997 that association was established in a permanent place at Kaapeli (Cable Factory) with the aim of supporting the production of contemporary dance. Now Zodiak is doing better than ever. The second annual Z-In-Motion festival takes places in May and about 15-20 productions are presented every year. How is this done? Let's take a small tour behind the scenes.

Are you a dancer? Do you want to produce a piece? Send your application! Dancer-choreographer Vera Nevanlinna is part of the board of the Zodiak Presents Association. Every year the board decides the performances to be produce from all the received applications. “It is a really hard selection process because every year there is 70 or 80 applicants and we only produce 15 or 20 of them.” Don't give up if your application is not approved, “Production will be harder then and to rent a performance space will be more expensive,” Vera acknowledges, “but I think people should try to do it.”

Vera has danced since she was three. “Someone told my mother that I wasn't walking, but that I was dancing,” she tells. Since 1998 she has been involved with Zodiak and currently she is premiering the solo piece News, a 20-minute piece that she learned from the Deborah Hay performance commissioning project in Scotland last September. I agreed to practice the piece at least for three months before the first public performance,” Vera explains, “and that means that I do the piece in its entirety five times a week during those three months.”

 {mosimage}

As in any production, someone needs to take care of managing the money. This spring, choreographer Hanna Pajala-Assefa is taking care of that part of the productions. “I don't get the money but I just coordinate the budget. It's quite nice to be able to help the production because as a choreographer I know that when the premiere is getting closer your mind is getting more and more focused with the artist work, so it's hard to get involved with the practical problems.”

Those practical problems can be very diverse, “I was working in a production some weeks ago and in the performance they were using lots of toilet paper,” Hanna explains. “When I saw the rehearsal and I saw that they were using 15 or 20 rolls per show, it was obvious that they should get them free from someone. It that sense, it's nice to help. Fortunately, it didn't happen during the paper workers strike.”

An important aspect of the show is the technical requirements of every performance. Tuukka Törneblom has worked for one year at Zodiak as technical director. “My task here is to make the light and sound design possible. Sometimes people want to have something fancy and I have to say that it's not possible,” he clarifies. “There are lots of tricks to learn here because it's not the typical stage. We miss a backstage, there are windows. Many of those are still new for me.”

Education and workshops

Apart of the performances and the productions, Zodiak is devoted to spread the knowledge about contemporary dance. The center organizes different workshops and lectures. Choreographer Anu Rajala has been in charge of the workshop Dance as an Experience in Body and Mind this spring. This workshop was “open to anyone interested in learning and experiencing more about their own movement” and it was “focus on encountering, sensing and bodily communication within the group”. The workshop results in a public performance.

Katja Kirsi is in charge of Education and Outreach at Zodiak. She plans different ways for artists and audience to communicate. Pre and after performance talks are organized which allow audiences to learn about the artists' work. Zodiak is trying to reach the widest audiences possible, so even if Finnish is not your best language, every now and then workshops in other languages, such as English, French and German, are organized.

In addition, big efforts are done to integrate dance into schools and get the young into modern dance apart from the hip hop artists' MTV choreographies. “Feedback youngsters usually give is that modern dance is odd, but at the same time they say they enjoy it,” Katja points out. “One thing I try to say is that it can be good to challenge your mind. I try to give them hints and tips to understand the performance: Why are they feeling like this? Why are they reacting like that? They have new questions for themselves.”

Don't be afraid if you haven't seen contemporary dance. The dozens of performances during the Z-In-Motion festival are a good opportunity to discover this art, “Come and see many pieces. There are so many variations of modern dance that you need to see several performances to see the whole picture,” suggest Vera Nevanlinna suggests, but the best advice she gives is, “Don't trust what you saw on TV!”

The Eurovision Song Contest enjoys a healthy popularity and it is more kitsch than ever. Last year there were more than eight million votes (either by phone call or SMS) and the contest is followed by large audiences, even in non-participant countries like India, Korea and New Zealand. Drag queens, monsters, boy bands and the usual melodic singers compete for being the big stars for one year (or day).This year is no exception. 
 
Verka Serdyuchka, the Ukrainian participant is a controversial drag queen who has raised a great deal of protest in her own country. Angry Ukrainian nationalists held demonstrations across the country against Verka, who was chosen as Ukraine’s entry by an overwhelming majority. The nationalists claim that Serdyuchka is a grotesque stereotype of a stupid Ukrainian villager.

No less controversial is the song by Israel’s candidate. The group is Teapacks and the song is Push the Button. It refers to “crazy rulers” and says that “he’s gonna blow us up to biddy, biddy kingdom come”. Did someone mention Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The band denies it, but some weeks ago Eurovision spokesman Kjell Ekholm hinted that the song could be banned. Any publicity is good to pull out some votes.

{mosimage}Post-Lordi Finland
After last year's nightmare, Finland decided to choose a more conventional performer in the form of Idols-tailored singer Hanna Pakarinen. She will be the entry for the host country and her song has some strong rock guitars, but the melody is cheesy as only a Eurovision song can be. As host country, Hanna Pakarinen already qualifies to the finals and she will sing the fifth performance of the night.

But Finland does not only face the challenge of delivering a good musical performance. The Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) is in charge of organizing the event, which will be held at Finland’s largest ice hockey hall the Hartwall Areena in Pasila, just a few kilometers from the city center – although YLE wants to name the hall the 'Helsinki Areena' for the event to avoid extra and free advertising. More than forty people in YLE have worked for months in the production of the event that has a budget of around 13 million euros. In spite of all the efforts, there have been some critiques already towards YLE’s work. The promised webcast of the contest draw failed and recently Estonia protested because of the lack of information from YLE about the technical aspects of the stage, the lighting and the sound.

Finnish polarities
The theme for this year’s contest will be “True Fantasy”, which “will embrace Finland and Finnishness in terms of the polarities associated with the country: light vs. darkness, northern fells vs. islands in the south, our strong bond to nature vs. fast technological development, taciturnity against inner strength and creative madness, as showcased by Lordi in an original way,” defines YLE’s Executive Producer Heikki Seppälä.Old national rivalries and friendships will arise again. Cyprus will give 12 points to Greece and Greece will do the same with Cyprus. One more time place your bets! And if you cannot stand the contest, put your earplugs in for the next few weeks.

Making films inside videogames has been a growing trend since the advent of 3D games in the '90s. Quake was the first videogame to give freedom and powerful resources to creators bringing hour long movies with custom built sets, special effects, graphics, real voices, sound effects and music could be created.

As the game engines, tools and 3D hardware improved and better and more diverse games were released, the popularity of making movies with games increased. Today, this trend is known as machinima, a term that defines both a production technique and a film genre. Machinima (pronounced: muh-sheen-eh-mah) is a combination of filmmaking, animation and game development. It is movies made within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies.

Machinima takes the basics of real world filmmaking into the virtual world of the game. Pre-production is needed to prepare the screenplay, the storyboard, the sets, the characters and camera positions. Once everything is ready, filming can start.

Ready! Action! Go! The game starts when the players with the game controllers, instead of playing it, perform their role in the movie, as any other actor. The shooting of the movie can be through network playing. Machinima makers can also produce the movie on their own by using automated script and other tools, usually provided by the developers of the game. After the shooting, a period of post-production is needed for editing, adding special effects, music and sound.

This technique is much faster and cheaper to produce than traditional CGI animation. Sets and characters can easily be changed and there is no need for expensive hardware and software tools. The films are quickly spread over the Internet and community forums. Machinima fans created the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, where one can watch, create and share a variety of films.

{mosimage}Popular series

The most popular 3D games provide the scenarios for machinima works. Rooster Teeth is one of the most popular machinima community websites. They are the creators of The Strangerhood, a sit-com based on The Sims 2, where a bunch a Sims is gathered in an apartment for unknown reasons. Based in the game Halo, Burns has created Red vs. Blue. In this series nine intergalactic soldiers are stuck in a non-descript landscape. They are supposed to fight each other, but they wonder why they are there in the first place and joke about profound matters.

Grand Theft Auto, Second Life, Unreal Tournament and almost any 3D game can be the environment for a machinima work. As computers get more powerful, more people join the community and this goes mainstream. Several producers are already selling DVD of their films and series. If you play it, film it!

Machinima films can be watch at www.machinima.com

By the end of the eighties the industrial production had moved out of the area. Ruoholahti was rebuilt into a residential area and City of Helsinki planned to demolish the charismatic building. Artists and architects, who had rented the space there in search of a quiet working place and cheap rents, persuaded the City of Helsinki to keep the building in its original form. Nowadays it is a distinguished cultural centre that hosts around 800 events annually and is the working place of 100 artist and 70 bands.

Since last summer, the Cable Factory has a new landlord. Born in 1972, Tuomas “Stuba” Nikula is the new Managing Director of Kiinteistö Oy Kaapelitalo, the company behind the Cable Factory building whose turnover in 2005 was 3.5 million euros. As any other landlord in the world, the current duties concerning Kaapeli are to “fix the building and rent the space”, as Stuba himself explains. Kaapeli itself is not devoted to cultural production, “That is left to our tenants,” continues the director.

{mosimage}From his position Stuba Nikula gets a good overview of today's Finnish culture. "It seems that for anything to be good it has to be exported, but to achieve that goal more work is needed and more spaces for the youngsters and newcomers.” In a world where influences travel within one second, for Scuba a challenge for the future is “to keep the Finnish touch in our cultural production and, for that, public money is needed.”Meanwhile, the Cable Factory is “fully booked” for long time agreements. “Contracts are permanent and only two or three tenants out of 100 moved out every year. The population here is getting as old as the building,” Stuba jokes. For the short term rentals the calendar is already opened for 2009. If you plan an exhibition or a fair, hurry up. The space and dates are booked on a first come, first served basis.