History
Why did IHME change its operations?
From a festival into a contemporary art commissioning agency.
The annual IHME Helsinki Commission is open to everyone and free of charge. A work tailored to a public space is created from a dialogue between art and researched knowledge. IHME works are often situational or place-related, and over the years they have been marveled at in the tram, at the health center, in Vantaa’s Mätäoja neighborhood park, as well as in Yle Areena.
Internationally recognized and awarded artists who share our ethos of ecological sustainability and the power of art in the sustainability transition are chosen as the creators of the commission. You can experience many kinds of emotions with art, and art has the power to change thinking and action. A large number of multidisciplinary partners from home and abroad often participate in the realization of the commissions. The commissions can also be realized in the artist’s home country.
IHME Helsinki works are often participatory, in which case the role of the audience in the work is central. Check out the upcoming work and come along!
Chicago Boys – While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming invites everyone of all cultural backgrounds, ages, and educations to share their stories, play music and sing together, according to their abilities. At the core of Chicago Boys are the people who form an amateur band and discussion group. Band members share a desire to meet new people and to think about what is happening in the world. For example, how are neoliberalism and the environmental crisis affecting our everyday lives, and how are they reflected in our experiences of popular music?
The artist duo Cooking Sections – Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe – will be making IHME Helsinki Commission 2024. Cooking Sections started in London in 2013 and since their inception they have been examining the systems that organise the world through food. They will carry out their IHME Helsinki Commission as part of their CLIMAVORE project. Cooking Sections’ IHME Helsinki Commission 2024 will promote soil and water health by announcing a national challenge that is open to everyone. It challenges bakers, home cooks, bakeries, grassroots organisations and restaurants to develop future bread recipes so as to increase understanding of the connections between soil, nutrition, and gut health.
In the end, I was left with a hopeful feeling that all of us together can bring about a change before it’s too late.
The IHME Helsinki Commission 2022 Learning from Doubt by artist, film maker Amar Kanwar was an online, ten-week educational course based on and emerging from Kanwar´s art installation and exhibition The Sovereign Forest. Lessons learned from experiments on ecological sustainability with a unique rice seed bank in the village of Narisho in Odisha, India and the experiences gained during the making and exhibiting of The Sovereign Forest were integrated into the course.
To Burn, Forest, Fire consisted of the scent of the first-ever forest on earth and the scent of the last forest of the age of climate crisis, made into incense and then burned across a variety of sites around the city of Helsinki in 1-30 September and 1 October, 2021.
IHME Helsinki 2020 commission Listening Through the Dead Zones was a site-specific sound installation by the Norwegian artist Jana Winderen, in collaboration with Tony Myatt, at the Rowing Stadium in Helsinki.
From a festival into a contemporary art commissioning agency.