Commissions
Partizaning Maunula
Moscow-based Partizaning collective is an urban activist movement focusing on art as a tool for social change. Partizaning maintains an art and research platform website and have engaged in urban interventions, publishing books, curating exhibitions, and teaching. Two collective members, Anton Polskiy and Natalia Sinitsina were hosted by m-cult to create Partizaning Maunula, an intervention focusing on exclusion in the neighbourhood.
In collaboration with artists from Aalto University’s VICCA MA progamme, they created a series of interventions to address the parallel dynamics of gentrification and segregation in the Maunula neighbourhood. The fruitful collaboration took many forms:
*Documentary miniature paintings from encounters in Maunula (Anton Polskiy)
*Maunula Looks, series of photograph portraits (Rogério Nuno Costa)
*Maunula Speaks, visualized survey on local intra-perceptions (Ali Akbar Mehta & Vidha Saumuya)
*Participatory/intervention reports on local loneliness, the ‘Forest Pub’, and gentrification (Hanna Perälä, Aneta Atsova, Rogerio Nuno Costa)
*Comic strips on the Return of the Mummy and local slot machine gambling, (Jesus Shrestra)
*A beer-can custom version of the popular ‘mölkky’ outdoor game (Anton Polskiy, Natalia Sinitsina, Aneta Atsova).
To share their work, Partizaning and the group co-edited Mummy News, a supplement to the local newspaper, mixing compassion and humour to discuss local problems. The 4-page supplement was dedicated to a famous person from Maunula’s history: The Maunula Mummy, a lonely alcoholist found mummified in his flat 6 years after his death.
A final event was organised on September 28 in Maunula. The informal programme included the launch of Mummy News, exhibition opening, mölkky gaming as well as bean soup and lingonberry pie offered to all passers-by.
COMMUNITY_ Aalto University Visual Culture and Contemporary Art MA programme, Maunula neighbourhood association, Maunulan Sanomat newspaper
ART FORM_ public art, socially engaged art
CONTEXT_ Collaborative Media Art Commissions Helsinki
