Year: 2017
Intimate delight and sensitivity
A few weeks ago, Baltic Circle's communications assistant Essi Brunberg had a chance to sit down with Julius Elo and Xana, the creators of Sleeping Beauty, to discuss their experiences, thoughts and feelings regarding not only their work on the performance, but the themes surrounding it as well.
Baltic Circle continues discussion on freedom of expression in the arts: Case Ceci n’est pas…
In November 2014 the police of Helsinki censored the final scene of the piece Ceci n’est pas… by Dries Verhoeven as an act of public obscenity. In September 2017 the Supreme Administrative Court published their decision on the case, overturning the previous judgments by the police and Helsinki administrative court.
Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe their eye first*
The 100-year-old Finland seems to have something of a blind spot. It has built a myth of a monoculture by violently pushing out others; by denying equal rights for Sami and Roma groups and forcing them to blend into the white majority. The myth has been constructed in a systematic fashion and has been deeply embedded in Finnish power structures such as different state institutions and media, not least in arts and culture. It lives inside these systems and has morphed with time into an invisible, white norm.
The sensorship of Ceci n’est pas… to be considerated by the Supreme Administrative Court
In December, the Helsinki Administrative Court rejected the Baltic Circle festival's appeal against the police's decision to ban the work Ceci n'est pas mon corps. The festival has appealed the administrative court's decision to the Supreme Administrative Court. Baltic Circle feels that the future solution will be of great importance from the point of view of freedom of speech and also for how street art will be presented in Finland in the future.