Please join us for the book launch of ‘They Inhabit While Working’, an essay collection from artist Jaana Laakkonen, published by Archive Books in 2021. It consists of Jaana’s texts from 2016–2020, some of which were written to accompany exhibitions, some that were performed as part of workshops and her artworks and some that were written specifically for this book. Jaana’s practice in recent years has entangled paint, text, feminist posthumanism and the everyday, among ‘others’.
“Elsewhere critical thinking and mundane life have followed separate paths, one rending the other impossible or irrelevant. Somehow, in some worlds, you can’t do one while doing the other. In Jaana Laakkonen’s book we have a record of the successful transgression of this binary prohibition developed through years of careful artistic practice and living with reading. Perhaps, while exploring this book, you also notice how the spine of the book cracks as you open it, how the paper feels in your hand. Perhaps you have wondered about the trees that make up its matter. Perhaps you have heard about how artists work and wonder what it would mean for one to write a book? Especially if they had been reading post-humanist feminism or were not so bothered about art all the time?”
– From foreword by Sam Basu, artist, curator and co-founder of Treignac Projet
For the book launch event Jaana has invited Hello Dust and curators Petronella Grönroos and Miina Hujala to perform and read sections from ‘They Inhabit While Working’. These contributions are hosted among a small configuration of a slideshow, fabrics, a couple of cushions and lights. The book is available for purchase (15€) at the event by MobilePay or cash.
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Jaana Laakkonen is an artist born in 1985 in Joensuu, Finland, currently living and working in Helsinki. In April 2022 Jaana’s works can be encountered in K17 Space for Art and Ecology in Sipoo (Finland) and from May to August 2022 in Cincinnati CAC (US) as a part of Breaking Water group exhibition curated by Amara Antilla and Clelia Coussonnet.
Hello dust is a curatorial project by Mikko Kuorinki and Essi Kausalainen. Hello dust is based in Tapiola.
Petronella Grönroos has worked for over a decade as an exhibitions coordinator at an artist-association-led exhibition space Photographic Gallery Hippolyte. Currently she is an interim curator at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, and joins the Helsinki Biennial team this March.
Miina Hujala is an artist and a curator that works as the director of Alkovi art space as well as curates Connecting Points- programme at HIAP (Helsinki International Artist Programme) and is an artistic researcher and project manager on Reside/Sustain-project that started in 2021.
The book was supported by Kone Foundation.