IHME Helsinki joins World Weather Network

Press Release 21.6.2022

IHME Helsinki has been invited to be part of the international World Weather Network, alongside 27 other leading organizations that commission contemporary art. Together they form the World Weather Network and are seeking to respond to the climate emergency by acting collectively, listening and learning. The Network’s activities are being brought together on a website, which will be launched at the summer solstice, 21.6.2022: www.worldweathernetwork.org.

The World Weather Network’s website has a programme for the year up to 21.6.2023. Network members also share the ideas, writings, observations, stories, pictures and videos of their invited artists, researchers and communities in ‘weather reports’. The Network uses these digitally and/or locally realized artworks to highlight diverse experiences of and viewpoints on the weather, and ways of understanding the weather and its effects around the world, in 19 different languages.

IHME’s Executive Director and Curator Paula Toppila is delighted to be invited to be part of the Network and sees it as having diverse potential:

“The Network is a chance to collaborate with top contemporary-art professionals and to use art and dialogue to add to understanding of how the global environmental crisis is affecting different parts of the world, how art institutions are reacting to it, and how we can together bring about more change.”

IHME Helsinki will use the Network to let people re-experience IHME Commissions 2020 and 2021: Jana Winderen’s sound work Listening Through the Dead Zones [excerpt] and Katie Paterson’s incense ceremony To Burn, Forest, Fire. A website version of Winderen’s work will allow it to be heard online. During the year, Network partners will hold To Burn, Forest, Fire incense ceremonies around the world, including in New Zealand, Iceland, India, South Korea, Dubai, Nigeria and the Philippines.

World Weather Network organizations will stage joint online events: discussions, presentations and performances. In them, leading experts from various fields of science, technology, ecology, philosophy and politics will discuss the weather and climate with artists. Although individual organizations will be reporting on local environmental changes, they are all united in their concern for the state of the planet. The World Weather Network provides an alternative way of getting to know, to look at and to listen to the world’s weather and climate. Follow the Network’s activities on its website and social-media channels:

Twitter: @wwn_art
Instagram: @WorldWeatherNetwork
Facebook
YouTube

#WorldWeatherNetwork

For further information: Executive Director and Curator Paula Toppila, paula.toppila@ihmehelsinki.fi, tel. +358-45-1240096. Press images: Communications Planner Saara Moisio saara.moisio@ihmehelsinki.fi, tel. +358-45-2350080

Our work is made possible with the support from our founding body Pro Arte Foundation Finland along with Kone Foundation and Saastamoinen Foundation in 2020-22.

The other Network organizations:

ARTANGEL, London, ARTIGENIUM, San Sebastian, ART JAMEEL, Dubai, ARTSONJE CENTER, Seoul, BUNDANON, New South Wales, DHAKA ART SUMMIT, Bangladesh, ENOURA OBSERVATORY, Japan, NICOLETTA FIORUCCI FOUNDATION, FOGO ISLAND ARTS, Newfoundland, FONDAZIONE SANDRETTO RE REBAUDENGO, Torino, HOLT-SMITHSON FOUNDATION, New Mexico, ICELANDIC ARTS CENTRE, Reykjavik, KHOJ, New Delhi, MALI, Lima, MCAD, Manilla, NEON, Athens, NGO, Johannesburg, WAAG, Amsterdam, RUYA FOUNDATION, Iraq, SAHA, Istanbul, SOPHIA POINT, Guyana, TERRA FOUNDATION, Comporta, TE TUHI, Aotearoa / New Zealand, UCCA, Beijing, YINKA SHONIBARE FOUNDA