With
sinisyyden vastalause project I am using the facilities of the art context in order to encourage Finnish population to protest, answer back, the prejudgment that outsiders (like for example Spanish people that have never been in Finland or in contact with Finns) have about Finnish people: that are blue and depressive.
The participants (from different ages and professions) will first discuss, while explaining some of their personal and professional experiences, how much this prejudgment is based on factual knowledge and how much not. Or how much could be a cultural misconception or how much not. After that, and depending on the conclusions (?) from the confrontation of opinions, they will conceive a reply -probably a video- that will be shown in other countries.
Parallel to this, I am interviewing and sending questioners to Finns and non-Finns. As well I am archiving papers, statistics and other documents related to the issue.
Our meetings are going to be:
the 10th of August from 18:00 to 21:00 will be the first event. There will be a talk to introduce the project and some participants are going to share with the audience their opinions and personal/professional experiences. On that day there will be 2 special lecturers that are going to explain some their professional background. This wants to open the discussion, which will continue during the following days.
The 12th (from 10:00 until 13:00 and 14:00 until 18:30) and the 13th (from 10:00 until 13:00) the participants are going to continue with the debate. The hole discussions are going to be transcribed in the
sinisyyden vastalause progress, so that everyone will have the opportunity to follow, confront and refute some opinions.
During the 30th, 31st of August and 1st of September the participants are going to think how to produce the protest. Ideally everything is going to be ready at the ends of the first week of September...