1–4.12.2025

Collective Imagination in the Era of Optimisation
At Kiasma Theatre and Aalto University

M-Cult presents the second edition of the Minna Tarkka Lectures, an annual get-together dedicated to discussing and debating the potential of art, media, and technology in reshaping current and future democratic societies.

Inspired by the legacy of media art pioneer and M-Cult’s founder Minna Tarkka (1960–2023), this series continues her commitment to critical experimentation and socially engaged practices rooted in a deep commitment to hospitality and the intersections of political and technological development.
Responding to pressures in contemporary social and cultural environments impacted by digital, networked, and so-called intelligent technologies, this year’s edition asks: What forms of togetherness and resistance surface through media within the context of artistic practices today? How can artists, communities, and technologies rewire shared futures when the dominant narratives emphasise acceleration and optimisation?

To explore these questions, M-Cult has invited three contemporary voices whose artistic and theoretical practices challenge technological power while cultivating emerging forms of collectivity: Ruth Catlow, artists collective eeefff, and Harold Hejazi. Their workshops and public lectures will open spaces for shared reflection and imagination. Lectures are responded to by Andrew Gryf Paterson, Marleena Huuhka, and Grégoire Rousseau, and accompanied by edible artworks by Alejandra Alarcón, Koira1 and Emma Vilppula, and Caroline Suinner.

Through this programme, Minna Tarkka Lectures 2025 expands into a discussion of possibilities and calls for collective resistance, togetherness, connection, and solidarity in an era of screens, algorithms, fractured publics, and accelerationist capital. The programme ranges from community organisation and technologies to participatory and performative practices, as well as gaming and collective learning.

In Spring 2025, M-Cult organised the Open Advisory Session of Minna Tarkka Lectures, which served as a catalyst for understanding potential futures within the M-Cult community while planning future approaches for lecture events and programming.

Speakers:
Artist, researcher, curator, and organiser Ruth Catlow
Artist collective eeefff
Artist and game designer Harold Hejazi

Respondents:
Artist-organiser Andrew Gryf Paterson
PhD Marleena Huuhka
Artist, educator, and co-founder of Station of Commons Grégoire Rousseau

Food pairings for the lectures by artists:
Alejandra Alarcón
Koira1 and Emma Vilppula
Caroline Suinner

Public Lectures, 2.12.2025, 14:00 – 19:30, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Kiasma Theatre, (Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki) Also streamed on M-Cult’s YouTube channel

Ruth Catlow: Life and death in the World Wild Web
In the mid-1990s, artists, technologists, and activists united in the early web’s spirit of openness to build global infrastructures for creative and political collaboration. But accelerationist capital reshaped those dreams – eroding ecologies, commons, and digital freedoms. Today, as species and cultures face extinction, new generations are inventing adventurous practices of multispecies connection and solidarity.

Harold Hejazi: Reprogramming Public Spaces

In an era defined by screens, algorithms, and fractured publics, we are being pulled further apart, polarised, and left socially isolated. This playable lecture asks how we can return to the space between people. Through examples of games in museums, theatres, and public spaces, it considers whether participation and conversation can stitch fragmented publics back together. Join to explore how collaborative play can transform cultural spaces into civic arenas that serve as rehearsal grounds for collective resistance and togetherness.

eeefff: Scenes of Algosomatics, Educational Fiction, Partisan Technologies
eeefff is an artistic collaboration/made-up institution working across poetic computations and “infrastructures of imagination.” This lecture draws from their ongoing initiative School of Algorithmic Solidarity and focuses on techno-politic-poetic imaginations and the scenes of their unfolding. A key concept is Algosomatics, the somatic and bodily dimension of life supported and exploited by computation. The lecture examines how algorithmically aided environments modulate bodies, and how “motor inventiveness” (the history of developing and improving motors) can repurpose these effects into forms of imagination.

Togetherness
In M-Cult’s past and present, preparing and sharing food has been a vital medium for building communities and forming infrastructures for conversation around shared tables. Continuing this celebration of relational practices, Minna Tarkka Lectures 2025 pairs each lecture with edible artworks by artists Alejandra Alarcón, Koira1 and Emma Vilppula and Caroline Suinner.

Read more, see full programme and information, and register at: https://m-cult.org/productions/minna-tarkka-lectures/2025