A TWO YEAR PROJECT BY ART IN LOV AND LOVIISA CONTEMPORARY
University of Kucku – Faculty of Art, Sustainability, Rest and Whatever is diving into the theme of sustainability in a multidisciplinary and socially engaged two-year contemporary art project involving artists from various fields of art. This project by Art in Lov and Loviisa Contemporary is culminating in the week long Kucku Festival in October 2026. The project is inviting local artists as well as Finnish and international residence artists for a process of learning and working with art.
Our university is a self-made process of learning trough art and by working together in a town that lack higher level formal education as well as cultural institutions. In our university anyone is invited to be a student, credits are collected as stamps, any used garment can be your school uniform and the active participants will get a university degree. The concept of learning includes but is not limited to, artistic work in any discipline, socially engaged art projects, collegial support, collaboration between artists and collaboration between artists and professionals in other fields of work, workshops, lectures exhibitions and performative art events. The base of the concept is to learn from each other. Included in our university is also a aim to give the artists in Loviisa the opportunity of professional development. Trough University of Kucku we can involve artists, curators and other professionals to teach technical skills and mentoring in the artistic practice of each artist.
Our events are open for everyone but on top of the events and work produced for the general public we also seek to educate ourselves as artists trough this project. We are re-creating the groups for learning that occur in institutions of art education through collegial support that will be beneficial for both residence and local artists. The aim is to give each of us a platform to discuss our own artistic practice, as well as learning about Sustainability to find our own ways of incorporating it to our artistic practices. This work will also be a platform for developing personal artworks for the University of Kucku.
Kucku is the sound of a bird, a person acting differently from the excepted, a view tower in Loviisa and the Kucku Contemporary art Festival that has been arranged annually for the last 10 years by Loviisa Contemporary. Within the theme of sustainability, the festival will from now on be a biennale, allowing for rest and planning before the next festival. The Kucku festivals are known to be genuine events full of encounters and surprising experiences. The area of Loviisa is the venue and research-lab for the project, but also the home of our organizations Art in Lov (Loviisan taiteen tukiyhdistys ry. – Stödföreningen för Lovisa konst rf. ) and Loviisa Contemporart ry. and the context for everyday life of our members. Many of the local artists and practitioners are involved in both the organizations and from 2025 we will be working in tight collaboration.
Faculty of Art, Sustainability, Rest and Whatever
We selected the theme of Sustainability because of its urgency in the ecological as well as in the political and socio-ecological situation that the world faces now. Luckily our small organization is not the only arts organization to have realized this urgency, but as decision makers fail to prioritize sustainable solutions, we feel it’s our responsibility to raise our voices and work for change through culture and art.
We understand Sustainability as meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In addition to natural resources, we also need social and economic resources. As art organizations we will focus on sustainability in our own practices as an artist-run organizations and as individual artists. Artistically we will focus on sustainability in terms of society and the environmental, human rights-related, economic and political challenges we are facing. Looking for sustainability on an individual level in the mundane practices of our everyday life is important and an interesting topic, it can give hope and individual freedom, be a tool for personal well-being and to set examples. But we need to be aware that major changes need to happen where the power is. Global corporations like us to look at our personal footprints to aim our focus away from their own responsibility, larger structures and exploitation that can only be stopped by political decisions.
We aim for sustainability to be not only a theme, but the core in of our method of working. The two organisations behing the project aim for a more sustainable way of collaborating, using our resources and stregths together and minimizing waste, we want to create a sustainable working environment for the local and residence artists.
Rest is essential for maintaining social well-being and sustainability. We need rest globally and we need rest locally. The globe needs rest from us. We need rest from never ending work, social media, survival mode, best versions of ourselves and rest from others telling us what to do. And attention! Rest is not being numb, or having a break to be able to work more effectively afterwards. Rest is resistance. Resting is taking a active role in the circle of life -not in the circle of productivity and hierarchies. After 10 years of Kucku contemporary art festivals the artists in Loviisa need some rest. During 2025 the main theme for Loviisa Contemporary is rest, this means collective daydreaming and napping, record listening, smelling scents, reading books and talking about them, having common sauna with ceramics, paddling along Loviisa Bay in a group, having our own lynchian radio program about something that we dont know yet, making our own synthetizators, jamming, cooking together, being philosophic and amazingly talented thinkers in the kitchen, walking and talking in the dark autumn forest and making outdoor croquis. All in all – being social or unsocial in time and space.
As photographer Touko Hujanen puts it “Growth and development have occurred in all areas. We have learned, for example, two new napping positions in the hammock. We have improved at grabbing treats out of the air. There has also been significant development in watching the water’s surface.”
Whatever emphasizes the importance of is giving space for what we do not know yet. Art is giving us the opportunity to explore all possible aspects of sustainability without prejudice. As artists and organizers of an art event we need to be aware of our own privilege, there are challenges and opportunities we do not see, we need to listen and to give space for the ones with different viewpoints and experiences from ours. Including whatever as a subject is an effort to invite what we are not yet capable to imagine. Whatever is the option for artists to suggest their own faculty to our university.
The framework for the project is the Art in Lov residence and the Kucku festival. Art in Lov will invite artists through our residence programme to work around the theme of sustainability throughout the years of 2025-2026. Most of the residencies will be “collaboration residencies”, where international artists are invited to work with a local artist or institution. The residence artists will represent several artforms including but not exclusive to visual art, site specific and time-based arts, performing arts and music. The project encourages multidisciplinary collaboration and the use of art as a tool for research and learning within the theme of sustainability. All residence projects will be presented to an audience during the residency periods as well as during the University of Sustainability Biennale. Part of the University of Kucku project will be a group for professional development for local artists together with residence artists. The Kucku Festival will temporarily transform Loviisa to a major art venue. For the locals our hometown will be an art capital, for visitors this will be the moment to visit our small town. The results of the project will be presented in all the art venues we have and in unexpected places in public and private spaces.
