Helsinki

While the world looks at Helsinki as a place of education, design and culture, the city is currently experiencing some huge upheavals. This excursion will consider Helsinki as a contested terrain in two senses: First, in terms of the continued existence of historico-political conflicts in connection with constructing the national identity, and second with regard to the current transformation of local museums and educational institutions away from a welfare state organisational structure to a neo-liberal one, including both systems’ respective conditions, discourses and forms of expression. Our look into the past will focus specifically on the significance of the Finnish Civil War of 1918 in the formation of the nation of Finland and the question of how this manifests itself today. Questions in this regard arise in the National Museum of Finland, the Mannerheim Museum, the Ateneum Museum of Finnish Art, the Gallen-Kallela Museum, the Alvar Aalto Museum, the Museum of Workers' Housing as well as the Suomenlinna fortress island. Our look at the present is devoted to the institutional transformation of local museums and cultural institutions. We will discuss this neo-liberal process of transformation and the growing resistance against it with representatives of the local art scene and become acquainted with selected institutions and initiatives, such as Frame Finland, Checkpoint Helsinki, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art or the Helsinki City Art Museum as well as the plans for a Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki and a new museum under Lasipalatsi Square as part of an emerging cluster.