ABOUT
/AFA

Art For All Festival is a production promoting art and culture by bringing together people across disciplines and aiming to be more accessible to everyone.

is a community supporting artists and art workers in the beginning of their careers. The organisation has been started by students and alumni from both the University of the Arts and Aalto University. In addition to offering peer support and cross-artistic collaboration, we produce an annual festival where artists from different fields have a platform to show their work.

AFA
Festival 2021

The theme of the festival 2021 was

. Through this theme the artists explored different ways of being together and belonging. The theme was chosen also to reflect the covid-19 pandemic - recovery from isolation and a lack of connection.

The first AFA festival took place at

20.-22.8.2021. The Malmi Airport offered a unique setting for AFA: the possibility to experiment on wider scales and an informal welcoming display for our artworks.

The artists were selected through an open call. A hangar residency for the artists to produce and install their work was arranged during the days leading up to the festival. At the heart of the residency was to inspire one another and learn. It was important for the AFA team to give the artists freedom of experimenting while creating a safe environment for everyone.

Algernon’s Flowers is dedicated to mice and rats that are used in the name of science. The art installation is defined by a mix of different elements of flowers, wood, and steel around photographs from a laboratory animal centre. Combining these elements invites the viewer to approach the sensitive topic of experiments on animals from various directions and challenges the morals and ethics of human behavior and our relationship to nature.

Symbiote is an explorative visual project about underground fungal networks - mycelium - in comparison with my own interconnected system of relationships and resources. Illustrated in the form of two maps, the piece opens up questions about systematic growth, selectivity, cooperation and dependence.

Inspired by practices of ASMR, embodiment, somatics and sensuality, Aquatic Fantastical Organic questions notions of subjectivity, individuality and the idea of who and what is sensing and being sensed. It explores how we might reimagine our own corporeality by depicting how our physicality ties us to each other and to our environment.

Safe Haven recreates the traditional Sámi Goahti [FI: Kota] as a portal through waking life to the liminal dreamscape, a space to contemplate actions and reflections.

Through the interactive experience, visitors are enabled to safely explore both the darkness and the light. The space was further activated by a performance piece by Oona Räyhäntausta.

Letting go, giving in, receiving, giving. Trust. Overlap, existing separately, interfaces, avalanches. Conversation and interaction - listening before talking.

On to a large paper, a yet unknown story was drawn; a story in which two drawn lines made with different materials alternate and intersect - like friends from years ago. Organic, abstract landslides infiltrated with figurative as well as pleated forms into a new, unplanned entity.

Mätäojan Lapset’s works are based on experimental playfulness, organicity and collective work, where the group is an organism made up of each of its parts. The starting point for the group is the idea that the works are not just the pieces produced, but a part of the process with which the collective seeks to explore and create alternative forms of being human, co-operation of the mycelial kind.

Rosalia works with any materials or techniques that feel right at the time. Her works often create themselves, leading her to work with them in the direction they want. Her work process follows the nature of the universe, where randomness is part of a perfect plan.

Pietu Arvola is a musician, sound designer and experimental video artist. Under the alias Bereen Ondo he creates experimental electronic music which blends electroacoustic sound sources and field recordings with noise textures and minimalistic sound motifs. In addition he makes experimental videos in which he uses CRT TVs and analogue video modules to process both digital and analogue video sources.

M makes experimental/pop music and the systems to play it. You can find interactive versions of M’s music at postclub.club and unburn.it (premiering as part of Ars Electronica on September 8th) or static versions on Soundcloud . The Art for All piece explored Google Slides as a tool for audio-visual performance.

From deep within a meandering maze of code, peculiar sounds emanate. rumor tells of a pulu (pigeon) who long ago got lost inside and is still looking for a way out. Little by little, the echoes of surreal soundscapes and kaleidoscopic beats grow stronger. The dance floor has been covered in dust, but perhaps its magical connecting power has not yet run dry.

Deep house for those chill out moments as the sun starts to set, or banging techno for those nights you wish never ended.

Friend of energetic beats and fat & boomy bass.

Italy-born Luca is Hagakure. The project aims to pursue minimalism and rhythm in the worlds of house and techno.

DJ, roader, organizer… Dinavisk’s record collection consists of old school and soulful house tracks.

Tenaladyboy has been working on a new approach to produce audio reactive vj-material for the last year and a half. The solution combines 3d model modifications with 2d material in a real-time processing environment.