After two months of cloistering within my four walls writing on this project, my MA thesis at the University of Art & Design in Helsinki, I could finally pick up the books from the bookbinder yesterday! What a feeling to hold them in my hands. The bookbinder did such a nice job that I cannot resist recommending the company. I am now about to leave home to hand them in for evaluation to later join the architectural workshop of the MoA-2011-exhibition which has eventually announced its location: it will take place in the old Skanno building facing the Cable Factory in Ruoholahti, next to the sea shore towards Lauttasaari. Nice! According to rumours, the website will also be launched soon, so stay updated for news!
PS: Wondering about those holes punched in the cover? They stand for each one of the people who were involved in this project. Thank you again!
Filed under: 4/5, Art, Bread, Design, Food, Making of, Network, Workshop | Tags: activism, city, consumption, event, experimental, food, local, näkkileipä, participatory
Last night, I finally had a meeting with Antto Melasniemi, co-owner of the two Helsinki restaurants Ateljé Finne in Töölö and Kuurna in Kruununhaka, to schedule and plan the 4th event of the 5-series, which deals with the consumption step (4/5:CONSUME). The day before, I bumped into Salla Kuuluvainen, who played an important role in the oven workshop and is generally active in urban gardening and food activism. I invited her along, and she immediately joined forces. So now, there is a team!
Since Antto is busy travelling the next week, we moved the event to the 29th of Nov., a Monday, which is the usual day of rest of the location (restaurant Ateljé Finne). The rough plan is to create an ephemeral dinner, meaning that literally nothing will be left after the meal, no tools, no crockery, no cutlery. We will organize an afternoon workshop for creating those ephemeral objects for 10 people, who will invite one avec to join us for the dinner following the workshop. Antto, Salla, and I will complete the edible objects with dishes that will be kept in secret. Stay tuned for updates!
Filed under: 2/5, Art, Bread, Design, Food, Making of, Pictures | Tags: culture, education, event, exhibition, experimental, food, participatory, process, stitching
Finally, I got those pictures uploaded. With all the different platforms where I am putting pictures I sometimes just miss one. Thanks to that person who reminded me. Enjoy on picasa (become my favourite and you will always be informed automatically- some more annoying spam), and on Facebook (become a fan of the 5-project, same thing, only more spam on Facebook!). :P
Filed under: 3/5, Art, Design, Helsinki, Making of | Tags: city, culture, event, food, local, nature, participatory, process, public space, slow, storytelling
The next event is in its planning phase. A trip to the venue has been made, and a suitable place found (only need the permission yet). Some pre-information: the event will take place on the island of Seurasaari on Friday, 22.10.2010, the day of full moon. Since waiting for the moon to become full is a slow but unstoppable process, I do not really need a calendar any more. Instead, I only have to check out the sky to see how much time is left for organizing,. Sort of like it. Even though my window is getting blocked more and more by the growing construction site on the other side of our flat. :(
The upcoming event is the third out of five steps of the production process: the preparation of the raw material. In industrial terms, one might speak of food processing, which has a somewhat negative connotation. Food processing takes raw food as material through lots of different treatments to achieve consumer products with a long shelf-life and good transportation characteristics. Depending on the context, the word process sounds very positive to me – at least when I think of this project and the relevance of different processes to it. In the end, even a process can be a result, even if it is part of a cycle and continuously changing.
Soon, there will be a Facebook-invitation for the event via the 5-Facebook-page (yeah, it has its own page! Click here to get there!), where people can sign up and invite their friends via their online networks. I tagged this post with some new tags that will play a role for the event… So, stay tuned (and watch the moon)!
Filed under: 2/5, Art, Design, Food, Making of | Tags: exhibition, experimental, food, gardening, slow
Yes! I did a beautiful autumn walk to school and what expects me there – the green explosion I was hoping for! :) Just got done with preparing the edibles for tomorrow night. Smells good here… Tomorrow will be the last day of the installation, ending in the small experimental dinner with signed-up people, and the dismantling of the exhibition afterwards/meanwhile.
Filed under: 2/5, Art, Design, Handicraft, Making of | Tags: education, event, experimental, handicraft, participatory, slow, stitching
Finally, I managed to upload some of the many pictures taken during the stitching night. Enjoy!
Filed under: Bread, Design, Food, Helsinki, Making of | Tags: activism, bread, city, culture, event, forgotten, participatory, public space, slow
Looking out of the window today, and spending time outside gathering firewood and things for the first official event weekend around the cob oven at Kalasatama, one might not believe there is any hope for even one single sunray left. But there is! http://foreca.fi/Finland/Helsinki
And here again the link to the Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113585698695682
So get prepared to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon outside, baking Finnish flat bread (Rieska) together with Helsinkians, in the urban cob oven “Archie” at the container square at Kalasatama. The afternoon starts early with firing up the oven, so that around 3 pm we can start together to mix ingredients and bake the first bread experiments in the oven. Be prepared for some surprises!
Filed under: Helsinki, Making of | Tags: city, event, experimental, food, public space
And it works!!! :D :D :D
Tonight, we had our first pizza baked in the cob oven! It was just incredible! The firing took around 3-4 hrs, with a first experiment at 175 degrees and a second firing after which the oven reached a temperature of about 250 degrees and just made one tasty crunchy but juicy pizza after the other! We had a wheat sourdough and topped it with ingredients everyone brought, with some veggies harvested from the dodo-garden which had really nice flavours. As tools we used a used oven peel that was donated to us by my dear neighbours (Big Mama, thanks so much!), with the help of a saw (you shouldn’t let the dough suck in the tomato sauce for too long, otherwise you have difficulties getting the pizza off the peel). The wood was found in the surroundings and brought by Anna from her parents place. Valtteri built a beautiful oven door, which makes Archie almost complete, since a bunch of people built an impressive roof for him on Saturday to protect him from the upcoming (winter?) season.
The pizza was enjoyed in a little pop-up park (grass mats left over from the Flow festival), under the shadow of a carrot tree (carrots grow on trees, right?). Everyone went home with a warm and full stomach, some sand between the teeth, and the aromatic smell of burnt wood in the clothes. What a night. More to come! :)
For more pictures, visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/105277324473045859094/FirstPizza#
Filed under: Good to know, Helsinki, Making of, Network, Press, Workshop | Tags: activism, city, handicraft, knowledge, participatory
Check this out, a feature article on Simon’s clayoven blog about Archie and the project! Once more: hurray to the internet!
http://clayoven.wordpress.com/
Filed under: Bread, Helsinki, Making of, Workshop | Tags: activism, bread, city, culture, event, participatory
One could say that Friday 13th of August was Archie’s birthday because he got finally completed! In a communal effort, stretching from 2 pm to about 9 pm, the last and final layer of the oven was built, with different people showing up and engaging their hands and feet in puddling, shaping bricks, and layering them on top of the insulation layer. No collapsing of the dome, everything is fine, and we can now impatiently wait and look forward to the official inauguration. After first experiments with firing it, the first public use will be 4th of September at dodo’s harvest feast, taking place around Archie’s corner, with veggies harvested from dodo’s vegetable garden from the other side of Kalasatama. Here the link to the Facebook-event:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=120042798044787
Depending on weather and other factors, the “5”- food event series will have their kick-off happening at the same place, one day later, on a hopefully beautiful sunny late summer afternoon. Keep your eyes open for hints to the event! And welcome…!
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