Residencies
Maunula (film)
The residency project is produced by Riikka Kuoppala, Finnish visual artist and film-maker based in Brussels and Helsinki, and Thomas Martin, a French sociologist based in Brussels. Kuoppala’s films and installations often portray mental states related to crises and traumas experienced by the characters. Martin has worked with various communities in Benin and France.
Kuoppala’s and Martin’s project Maunula – the movie (working title) is a film realised in collaboration with two resident groups from the Maunula neighbourhood: children of 10-12 years and retired people. The film sets out to explore the possible futures of a neighbourhood while discussing ways of affecting change locally.
The residency included a workshop where the inter-generational group of participants engaged weekly in talking and prototyping, as well as in dramatised situations and thought experiments. “If Maunula was an independent state, how should we govern it?” was the theme of one of the sessions, during which a constitution was written for the neighbourhood.
Several small cameras were used throughout the workshop period by the participants, whose video materials will have a central role in the film, together with further interviews and footage realised by the artists.
After the residency, Kuoppala and Martin will edit the materials in a lengthy post-production process which will give a final form to the film before it premieres in Helsinki in 2017.
COMMUNITY_ Retired persons and children
ART FORM_ Visual art, media art, film
CONTEXT_ Collaborative Media Art Residencies Helsinki