As an artist working across disciplines, Miroslaw Bałka's technique is based on the typology, adaptation and interpretation of signs, codes and symbols. In Helsinki, he is joined by local residents to create a project based on a semaphore flag signaling system, originally used by seafarers in the 19th century.
The project is divided between four districts of the city, with each district expressing key issues of their community through this system within the public space. Over four days, issues are discussed, culminating in an event attended by participants and observers as part of the IHME Days Contemporary Art Festival.
Using traditional signals of distress or concern used in the semaphore-flag system, each community calls attention to burning issues they believe should be addressed by the community at large and the government, including energy crises and social injustice. At the heart of the project is Bałka's belief that a democratic society endows people with liberty, but also with certain responsibilities. This idea is tied in with the concept that art has the potential to spur social change.
This year's edition of the IHME Days is focused on the theme of art's influence on society through commissioned artworks, performances, workshops, lectures, discussions and films. Bałka's Signals project is the flagship work commissioned for the event, aims at imagining how the workings of society can improve and how to bring about lasting change. Artists from around Finland and Europe will discuss various case studies, including director and chief curator Eyal Danon, curator and author Nato Thompson, visual artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, artist and art educator Pablo Helguera, and museum director Arja Elovirta.
Mirosław Bałka (born 1958) is a sculptor and interdisciplinary artist whose works often return to history and memory, recalling tragedies of European history such as the Holocaust - never in an overt way, memorialising through symbolic abstraction rather than distinct monuments. When dealing with contemporary issues, he elevates the elements of personal existence to the rank of a universal message.
Bałka will discuss Signals with curator Juan Vicente Aliaga after a screening of Bałka's film The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka, produced as part of the artist's Tate Modern commission in 2009, How It Is. That dark, echoing chamber is meant to evoke train and truck sounds, as Second World War victims were transported to death camps. The screening and discussion take place on the 13th of April.
The fifth edition of the IHME Days Contemporary Art Festival takes place from the 11th to the 14th of April 2013 at the Old Student House in Helsinki. For more information, see: www.ihmefestival.fi
Editor: AL
Source: IHME press information, e-flux