6.9.2023 - 8.9.2023

ISEAS Food documentary film screening

Documentary film will be screened at the Itikka exhibition space on the 2nd floor on our opening hours from 6th to 8th of September. The film begins on the hour.

Food production is one of the most complex things in our lives. Food, its’ production and consumption are an important part of our culture and identity. People’s cultural food habits affect the well-being of our planet as a whole. A realistic understanding of the current state of food production and consumption will help us to find solutions and seek cultural change. The ISEAS Food symposium in Lapua in August 2022 tackled these issues through the interaction of artists, researchers and local communities.

Since 2017, the International Socially Engaged Art Symposium ISEAS has become an annual forum for artists and researchers to interact with local communities across Finland. In 2022, it landed in Lapua. Artists and artist-researchers Raisa Foster, Katja Juhola, Joan Marie Kelly, Hugo Peña Lagos, Mahmoud Saleh Mohammadi, Teemu Mäki, Clarice Zdanski, two food researchers Anu Hopia and Teea Kortetmäki, and an interdisciplinary eco-anxiety scholar Panu Pihkala were invited to join the collective work. The symposium explored the concept of food in four different teams between art and science. The local communities involved were Tiistenjoki school, Seinäjoki high school, young farmers in the area and a book club of elderly people in Lapua. Fabio Cito and Linus Westerlund formed the documentary team in ISEAS.

The artists and researchers of the ISEAS Food Symposium were present in the AARG programme in Kunsthalle Seinäjoki, sharing their insights of the symposium in August 2022.The documentary film, which will be shown in Itikka from 6 to 8 September 2023, tells the story of the discussions that took place at the symposium on the theme of food.

The exhibition Our Shared Food, based on the symposium, will be on display at the Lapua Art Museum from 23.9.2023 to 20.1.2024. The exhibition is curated by Katja Juhola.

What is ISEAS?

ISEAS is an artist-driven and independent symposium positioned at the cutting edge of contemporary art that is socially-critical, socially- and environmentally-engaged. The curatorial work brings together artists and scholars from a wide range of backgrounds, emerging, already well-established, multi-gendered, multi-disciplinary artists and scholars. The symposium will open up an understanding of different values and ways of forming knowledge through collaboration and joint discussions and art. Topics such as the diverse perspectives of food production are fresh openings in the world of art and artistic research. Since 2013, Katja Juhola, the founder of the symposium, artist and PhD researcher, has participated in various international art symposia around the world. The purpose of the symposiums is to share artistic knowledge and create networks between artists. With these experiences, Juhola organised her first international art symposium in 2014 in Mustio, Southern Finland. In 2017, the International Socially Engaged Art Symposium (ISEAS) took place for the first time. Since then, ISEAS has taken place in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.