Congrats to the graduates 2023! đź’™
💙 Congratulations to this year’s graduates: Arina Baranova, Hilla Härkönen, Lo Leskelä, Miska Jounila, Róza Turunen, Ryu Koivukoski, Ulla Prami, Valtteri Saarenketo! 💙
💙 Warm congrats also to Heta Tepponen who received the fourth year’s diploma! 💙
[The following are segments of Maa’s rector’s speech to this year’s graduates:]
"Dear artists,
Arina, Hilla, Lo, Miska, RĂłza, Ryu, Ulla, Valtteri
[…]
Since our course together in YOUR first year, I have been part of so many conversations with each of you in which we have been thinking about what could be. This sense of potential, of possibility has been present in our talks - but always as something that is bound to what there already is. Each conversation has been vastly different and at different distances from your own bodies, places and experiences but the question that I feel I have shared WITH YOU is “how to continue from here?” I and many other teachers at the school have been privileged to see so many versions of your ideas, your voices and of your selves.
[…]
Can a place of education, a school, a community offer not only readymade stories of how art begins but also how to continue, when continuing can seem like the hardest thing to do. If it can, for whom and by whom? What can arts education do? What kinds of support can it offer?
[…]
Thinking about possibility and looking at what has been done requires recognising the gaze - the standards, the culture, the need to reorganise. Away from a gaze that recognises only what has been or only what should be. What could expansion mean if the aim is not to grow bigger or take over another’s territory? What does it mean to expand one’s gaze, to expand one’s ways of taking things in without taking space away from someone else - a gaze can trap and mark - BUT WHAT COULD IT BE TO LOOK WITH A gaze that requires the person, the specific person, you, to be present. A gaze that answers how to continue with a series of questions: what do we need to shift with? What do we need to move with and be moved with? We need to notice that these shifts are happening ALL THE TIME. That there is movement.
[…]
13.5.2023
H"
