Nature tour on IHME Festival 2018, photo: Veikko Somerpuro.
Pro Arte Foundation Finland is IHME Helsinki’s background organization.
IHME’s advisory board is responsible for choosing the artists who will carry out IHME Helsinki Commissions and for developing IHME’s operations in a changing operating environment. The group’s members are experts in art and science who work internationally.
Paula Toppila is passionate about the ecological turn of an art institution and art´s role in sustainability transformation in the society at large. She has been the Executive Director and Curator of Pro Arte Foundation Finland since 2007. Toppila also produced the commissioned works of art for the IHME Contemporary Art Festival (2009-2018) in public space by Antony Gormley, Susan Philipsz, Superflex, Miroslaw Balkan, Yael Bartana, Jeremy Deller, Katerina Seda, Theaster Gates with The Black Monks of Mississippi and Henrik Håkansson. Christian Boltanski’s continuing work The Heart Archive was performed by IHME in four city libraries in Finland. Toppila led the organizational change from the IHME Contemporary Art Festival to IHME Helsinki, which currently combines art, science and climate work. The aim is to promote freedom of art, eco-social civilization, a sustainable and democratic society and a diverse good life.
Toppila has worked as a curator at the Frame in 1998-2007, and has curated several Finnish and international exhibitions both in Finland and abroad, e.g. Finland’s representation at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2001 and the fourth Pirkanmaa Triennial in Tampere in 2009. Toppila has co-curated e.g. Momentum – at the Nordic Biennale in Moss, Norway in 2000. She has contributed to Siksi, Taide, Flash Art and Framework magazines. She has a master’s degree in philosophy, majoring in art history. She has supplemented her skills with both curatorial and leadership and management training.
Saara Moisio has worked as a communications planner at IHME Helsinki since April 2022. She has a masters and doctoral degree in theatre research from University of Helsinki. She has also a bachelor degree in business administration and marketing communications.
Moisio defended her doctoral dissertation about the dynamics of value creation in the audience experiences of contemporary dance in January 2022. In her studies she has focused on performance analysis, arts management, marketing and communications, audience studies and qualitative research methods. At the university she has been teaching a course on how to study spectators’ experiences of performing arts. Before her PhD project she worked in various performing arts organizations in communications and production. She has also written reviews and articles about dance in online journals Liikekieli.com and Mustekala.
Saara Korpela is eco-coordinator at IHME Helsinki. She has a Master of Arts degree and has studied Russian translation and interpretation, environmental protection, water and waste management, as well as sustainable development.
She has been actively involved in the urban environmental organisation Dodo ry, planning and implementing local and international discussion events and campaigns. Korpela has worked in various customer-service and coordinating functions, and as a translator in the private and public sectors. Her longest appointment was at the Finnish Customs, where alongside her other duties she took part in initiating and piloting an environmental management programme. At Ekolo Wholesale, a company that retails organic and environmentally friendly goods, she worked in marketing communications.
Board member of Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Kalle Hamm
Kalle Hamm graduated as a visual artist from the Lahti Fine Art Institute in 1994 and as a Master of Arts from the University of Art and Design in 2002. Hamm worked as a leading teacher at the Taika Design and Art School from 2000 to 2003 and as a museum lecturer at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma from 2003 to 2007. Hamm has dealt with the relationship between humans and plants in his works. In his works, plants are active agents that interact with their environment. Hamm is also one of the founding members of the Band of Weeds sound collective. Hamm has also collaborated with visual artist Dzamil Kamanger since 1999. The works made together examine the relationship of marginal groups with the mainstream population: exclusion, inclusion, and equality. Key themes are cultural interaction, multiple identities, and the individual’s position in society.
Board member of Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Max Mickelsson
Max Mickelsson has combined the careers of politician and technologist with working in business and communications. He is currently Head of New Markets and Miltton. Before he worked for Microsoft, the last position he held being Director for Government Affairs. Prior to that, he worked in politics and government as a Ministerial Advisor. Mickelsson has held positions of responsibility in numerous NGOs. He is now Vice Chair of the IoT Forge Foundation and Vice Chair of Kiasma Support Foundation. Mickelsson is particularly interested in the potential of artificial intelligence to disrupt corporate culture and society in a complex world. Besides a passion for horses and riding, he is a contemporary-art enthusiast. He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from Åbo Akademi University.
Board member of Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Lauri Paloheimo
Lauri Paloheimo is Chair of the Board of the Leonora and Yrjö Paloheimo Foundation. The Foundation maintains the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy’s spaces at Kallio-Kuninkala manor house in Järvenpää. Paloheimo is also a founder member and Chair of the Sibelius Academy’s association for concerts and master classes. In 2018, he was awarded the title of Honorary Doctor by the University of the Arts Helsinki. He has made his career in international finance, most recently as an investment banker. Lauri Paloheimo was Pro Arte Foundation Finland’s administrator in the setting up of the Foundation until June 2019.
The chair of Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Marja Ramm-Schmidt
Marja Ramm-Schmidt is OTK and deputy judge. Today, she has board and other positions in the third sector, their main focus in foundations. Respecting and following the principles of good governance and high-quality ethical operations is important to her. Previously, Ramm-Schmidt worked as a lawyer for several decades. In that role, she served as an advisor to Finnish and foreign companies operating in Finland since the 1980s. In addition to this, her specialty was property and inheritance law and arbitration duties. In addition to her main job, Ramm-Schmidt actively participated in the fiduciary duties of the Finnish Bar Association and activities in the international organization of the field, AIJA. She has extensive and long-term experience in sports organization activities. She was a member of the Sports Legal Protection Committee from 1991 to 2017. She spends her free time in Ylläs in Lapland and the archipelago, besides which skiing and orienteering are her favorite hobbies.
Board member of Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Marja Sakari
The art historian Marja Sakari is Director of the Ateneum Art Museum, which is part of the Finnish National Gallery. She was previously Curator of Changing Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. In 2008-2012, she was Director of the Finnish Institute in France in Paris. Sakari has taught art history, for instance, as Principal Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, and the University of Helsinki. She has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Academy of Finland and as a researcher at the Central Art Archives. Her doctoral thesis (2000) dealt with the ethics of Finnish conceptual art via a postmodern and phenomenological interpretation. Sakari has held numerous positions of responsibility in art institutions and has written extensively about visual art.
Member of Advisory Board, Curator, Professor
Ute Meta Bauer
Ute Meta Bauer is a curator of exhibitions. Since October 2013 she serves as founding director of the CCA – Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore — a research center of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where she is professor at ADM, NTU’s School of Art, Media and Design. From 2012–2013 she was Professor and Dean of the School of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London. Prior to that appointment she was Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, where she served as the Founding Director of ACT, the Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (2009–2012) and as Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program (2005–2009) at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. She was a professor (1996 – 2006) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria, heading the Institute of Cultural Studies and serving as Vice Rector for International Relations. During her tenure as Founding Director of the Office for Contemporary Art (OCA) in Oslo, Norway (2002-2005). She has curated exhibitions for the major contemporary art biennales and event. She has also edited and published variety of articles and publications in the field of contemporary art. Ute Meta Bauer has been a member of IHME’s expert team since fall 2018.
Member of Advisory Board, Ph.D., Senior researcher
Hanna Guttorm
Hanna Guttorm is a Senior Researcher in Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki. She is also a member of Helsinki Institute for Sustainable Development (HELSUS). Guttorm has revived her father’s Northern Sámi language and is also a part-time Associate Professor in Sámi Teacher Education at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu, Norway. She is Chair of the Dutkansarvvi – Sámi Language and Culture Research Society, and Editor of Dutkansarvvi Dieđalaš Áigečála magazine. Primarily in Kone Foundation‘s individually and collectively funded projects, Guttorm explores, writes, speaks and performs from somewhere between the arts, sciences and pedagogy, for a more ecologically and socially sustainable world.
Member of Advisory Board, Artist, Ph.D. candidate
Antti Majava
The visual artist and researcher at the BIOS Research Unit Antti Majava has brought in his work together experts and viewpoints stemming from science, arts, and other fields. He is the founding member of the Mustarinda Association, and through it has created a platform for experimentation in artistic and everyday practices which take into account the material underpinnings of society. In his doctoral thesis, which employs socio-ecological methods, he studies the effects of nature, society and science on the development of artistic phenomena, and correspondingly, the role of art in socio-ecological and scientific breakthroughs. In the research unit his role has been to look at forests and bioeconomy, and to develop ways of collaboration with representatives of the media and art worlds. His texts have been published both in scientific and popular journals; alongside writing, he continues his visual artistic work.
Member of Advisory Board, Artist, Ph.D., Professor
Jussi Parikka
Dr Jussi Parikka is Professor of Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University and Visiting Professor at the Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) and at FAMU in Prague. In addition, he is a Docent of Digital Culture Theory at the University of Turku. His various books have addressed a wide range of topics relevant to a critical understanding of network culture, aesthetics and media archaeology of contemporary society. The books include the media ecology-trilogy Digital Contagions (2007, 2nd. ed 2016), the award-winning Insect Media (2010) and most recently, A Geology of Media (2015), which addresses the environmental contexts of technical media culture.
Board member of Pro Arte Foundation Finland
Hanna Snellman
Professor Hanna Snellman is Vice-Rector of the University of Helsinki. She has been Professor of European Ethnology at the University of Helsinki since 2012 and was a Dean of Faculty in 2017-2018. She has previously been, for instance, a Vice-Dean (2014-2016) and Acting Dean (2014-2015) at the University of Helsinki, Professor of Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä (2009-2012), Professor of Finnish at Lakehead University, Canada (2007), and a Researcher at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Snellman’s doctoral thesis (1997) dealt with the life of loggers along the Kemi River. She has researched people’s everyday lives and movements. She is particularly interested in research on minorities, which has included studying Finnish-speaking migrants in Sweden. Snellman’s numerous positions of responsibility, extensive networks and publications have involved her in many collaborative ventures that span national borders and academic disciplines.
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