Doing Differently
The premise of this English language edition of Mustekala is that in a severely broken world things fundamentally need to be done differently.
The edition is curated by Jenna Jauhiainen. (Cover art: Jenna Jauhiainen)
Jutut
Editorial
“What I often lean on in the face of the injustices of the world is that what is radical today will be normal tomorrow. And when I am trying to change the world through art or activism, I don’t think I will be changing the minds of the people who have already decades ago gotten accustomed to the way things are, but instead I am attempting to influence those who have just entered the theatre and are on their way to the stage. It is the youth that will take for granted what we offer them as radical dreams, visions and manifestos, and live them true when it is their time to take the centre of the stage.”
Notes on a Public Art Commission
“Through a series of court cases the goal of ACT is to create a legal precedent for the recognition of the rights of stateless persons in Norway. In this way the work treats the legislation as plastic, sculptural material in constant change. The project illuminates and activates the mechanisms governing legislation and pushes the boundaries of the law in a concrete study of how the legal system and the legislation work, what shapes them and what their consequences are.”
Slashing the Canvas of a Perfect Picture of Swedish Acceptance
“When we – Inga and Sam – are playing our role as Status Queer, working for a democratic cultural production means leveraging our privilege to get resources, tools and space to those without that luxury. So, how do we do this? Here our methods range from economic, advisory and administrative support for other creators to knowledge sharing and network building, as well as work exchanges, shared creative processes and collaborative making.”
Undoing as Doing: Degrowth and Artistic Praxis
“Change is not something that is meant to be accomplished overnight. It is work that must be done step by persistent step, fought and won in a myriad of small battles across all facets of life. And I would argue here that in order to work towards a society based upon the values I mentioned above (well-being, equitability, autonomy, simplicity, conviviality, and care), values which lie diametrically opposed to the paradigms of capitalism, authoritarianism and colonialism, we need to start by building up small areas of life free from exactly these paradigms. We need to build communities.”
Untitled
“If our systems are legitimized and built on sexism, heteronormativity, the gender binary, misogyny, white supremacy, racism, and these damage and profoundly affect people’s lives, decolonization becomes the key for change, for the practice of democracy in its entirety and outside the capitalist approach. It is necessary, if we want to achieve this transformation, to become self-critical and reflective selves, that we become capable of understanding and unlearning colonial practices, that we let ourselves rethink and question the legacies of yesteryear and how they affect our reality and what do they mean for the oppressed, for the otherness. Only then can we begin to discuss a collective practice of emancipation, in the full sense of the word.”
Selection of Memes by @pikakahvimemegirl
“I hope the reader can appreciate the memes of @pikakahvimemegirl as a form of art. The artist is quickly becoming a voice of a generation fragmented into news feeds and livestreams. With no gatekeepers besides the multinational Meta Platforms Inc. in charge of Instagram, it is able to publish and distribute pretty much what it wants, inspiring, triggering, failing and learning, all in real time, building community as it goes. The artist has inspired hundreds of fellow mememakers in Finland, and in just a couple of short years this revolutionarily leftist content is evidently breaking new ground for our cultural self-awareness and political memetics, the meaning production we rarely think about but nonetheless can feel in our bones.”