Sun 8 October 2017, 3 p.m.
Discussion: Monuments talk

Visual artist Shoji Kato, professor of sociology Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen and architect Mika Savela will exchange cross disciplinary ideas around human places, built spaces and objects in relation to Shoji Kato’s exhibition Mountains and Valleys at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte.

Shoji Kato is a visual artist based currently in Helsinki. He has a DFA from the The Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki. His works have been shown in exhibitions around the world since 2000. In his work Shoji Kato sets distance and proximity between shared movements and individual moments. These are often seen and imagined through marks, traces, and compositions. Abstract ideas and figurative forms naturally interact with Kato’s variable viewpoints, changing scales and shifting temporalities. Kato works with ’places’ or meta-locations of subjectivity, and the ways in which these can appear and disappear in relation to that with which they come into association.

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen is professor of sociology at the University of Tampere. His previous positions include fellowships at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, where he has also served as a deputy director. In addition, he has worked as professor of sociology at the University of Helsinki. Lehtonen’s present empirical work centres on two different topic areas, one of which is insurance and the management of uncertainty, and the other the role of waste in the contemporary way of life, more specifically practices of dumpster diving (the latter research is conducted jointly with Olli Pyyhtinen). He has also published extensively on social theory. Lehtonen’s more theoretical work has addressed, from many angles, the basic theme of human togetherness, of humans being together, and its reverse side, the way in which people and things can be excluded from various forms of collective life.

Mika Savela is a curator, architect and designer. He graduated as architect from the Aalto University in Finland and has practiced professionally in urban design and architecture, as well as in more cross-disciplinary forms of design, editing, publishing and curating. He is the co-founder of Selim Projects, a Helsinki-based contemporary practice. His Ph.D. research at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) explored curatorial practice, biennialization and the narratives of Chinese urbanization. At CUHK, he also contributed to the teaching, exhibitions and publications of the M.Sc. in Urban Design program. In addition, he has taught at the Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture. He was appointed as a Mellon Researcher (2016-17) at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and in 2017 he was a laureate for the Future Architecture Platform as well as the Forecast Platform in Berlin. As of January 2018, he is appointed as editor-in-chief of the Finnish Architectural Review.

SHOJI KATO
Mountains and Valleys
29.9.–22.10.2017
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte
Yrjönkatu 8–10 courtyard, 00120 Helsinki