It's really, really cold here right now. Here being Tallinn, Estonia, where as I write it's currently -22 C (-7.6 F) and it "feels like" -33 C (-27.4 F) with the wind chill. I'm sitting here in Slothrop's trying to stay alive, for the feeble electric heating can't keep up with the brutality of an Estonian winter. Thank you, medieval architecture!

But that's okay, because February is going to be a crazy busy month with activities going on all around the Baltic sea - in Tallinn, Helsinki, and Stockholm.

Supermarket 2012

17-19 Feb - Stockholm! Both sides of Ptarmigan are attending Supermarket Art Fair 2012 in Stockholm. We are supported in part by the Kulturkontakt Nord mobility programme. At Supermarket, we will be running various "mini-events" throughout the weekend, all from our booth on the 5th floor of the Swedish Kulturhuset. These events haven't been completely mapped out yet, but they will include performances by friends of ours in Sweden (former Ptarmigan resident Ola Ståhl, and Julia Bondesson who also performed at our Invisible Prom event last April) and our own projects.  I'm going to try out a small demonstrative "workshop" on how to make your own hot sauce, and Sari will perform as well. I'm also hoping to have some public discussions about the issues that affect artist-run spaces, like a small roundtable chat. [Ptarmigan profile on Supermarket site]

Workshops and other participatory events

• Sunday 5 Feb - Svamp Tallinn.  Even though it's Super Bowl Sunday, come by Ptarmigan Tallinn at 14:30 and bring something to make sound with. We'll hopefully get a Helsinki Svamp happening this month too. [link]
• Friday 24 Feb - Fake it Til You Make It, February edition.  FITYMI is Justin Tyler Tate's monthly workgroup where participants show up without knowing what they will make. Last month everyone created cutout-style animations, and the month before we made inflatable sculptures. [link]
• Saturday 25 Feb - 'Fast and Raw' intermediate sushi workshop.  Justin also leads a regular workshop at Ptarmigan on sushi-making, which also includes knife-sharpening. Sign up at the Ptarmigan site.  [link]
• Monday 27 Feb - Fermented foods club, February meeting. I just made some natto which I will share with everyone (I made a lot) - if anyone can stomach it. I also got some tempeh spores so if I have time (unlikely), then I might try making that.  [link]
• Tuesday 28 Feb - Symposium, the Eesti Humanities association's regular symposium series, resumes activity. Programme TBA.

Performances, concerts  and exhibitions

• How ta tawk & dans rite - Ptarmigans Helsinki and Tallinn both are producing an interactive media/dance performance piece by Joey Chua Poh Yi, Rhys Turner, Anna Rouhu, and Guadalupe López.  The events have already begun in Helsinki and next week we give it a go at Ptarmigan Tallinn. There's only space for 15 audience members per performance; though it's free, we ask that you register through our website for which performance you would like to attend. All of the individual performances are set as separate events, so go to www.ptarmigan.ee and pick the one you want.
• Saturday 18 Feb - Ö-E-R orchestra, As Artistas Plasticos, Re:partisan. At Kodu Baar, in Tallinn, we're having a mixed show of music/sound meeting dance and performance. Featuring artists from Helsinki, performing in Tallinn. You know, that's the way it's supposed to work... [link]
• Thurdsay 1 March - Lewis McGuffie, Ptarmigan's Director of Creative Hemispheres, will open an exhibition at our gallery space in Tallinn, Tiib. [link]

Talks, presentations, screenings

• Monday 6 Feb - Clip Kino comes back to Tallinn with Viktor Lillemäe presenting a selection of his favourite American propaganda films from the 1950's.  This is the sequel to the Clip Kino he curated last May. Wow, it's been ages since we did a Clip Kino. [link]
• Wednesday 8 Feb - Luciana Ohira & Sergio Bonilha present "transimmanence" + Jane Hughes presents ¨Imagining Other Worlds¨.  This is a Labyrinths and Rings performance/presentation by two Brasilian artists and former Ptarmigan artist Jane Hughes, in Helsinki.  At XL Art Space. [link]
• Tuesday 21 Feb - As William "Bilwa" Costa and Martín Lanz Landázuri will do a 'Labyrinths and Rings' in Tallinn, presenting their Resonance project and screening a performance from The Kitchen NYC last December. [link]
• Wednesday 29 Feb - Leap day! I'm going to run a Liminal Images night, though I haven't worked out the programme yet, and it might be guest-curated.

Other events

• Monday 13 Feb - Slothrop's Books is going to have a belated opening party from 19:00 - 21:00. We'll have free wine, some musical entertainment probably, and a festive atmosphere. [link]
• Thursday 23 Feb - I'm going to do the DJ night at Kodu Baar that I meant to do monthly, but haven't actually managed to. I'll play vinyl in various forms: krautrock, prog, art-rock, jazz, psych, and other strange pulses. Kodu Baar is at Vaimu 1 in Old Town and I'll probably play from 21:00 til about 1 or 2 AM depending on the crowd. Lewis will make a really ridiculous and cryptic poster. We're thinking about trying to make one in the shape of a snowflake.

I welcome snow after 4 years without seeing much of it. Glasgow would get one or two light dustings each winter; I have one memory of a snowball fight (with my boss at the chain computer store I worked at), but not much more. My winter in Kentucky contained a very memorable icestorm, but it was over Christmas and I hit the worst of it in Ohio, on the way home to see my family; the rest of the winter had only a few light snowfalls, nothing like the unforgettable Blizzard of '93.

But this scene is one of relative normalcy here. Waking up slightly earlier than normal, I walked through the calm white blanket, my neighborhood quiet apart from the occasional dogwalker. It's hard to believe that a horrible upsetting war is raging in this same time zone; here, in the world's second-most stable country, it's the clichéd Winter Wonderland.

It's better here when there's snow; since the reduced daylight hours causes everything to appear dim and grey, and at least snow brightens the scenery. The uniquely Finnish take on Northern European brutalist apartment architecture - that of pastel yellows, blues and greens - is accentuated by the surrounding whiteness. It transforms mundane urban scenes into slightly more pastoral landscapes.

The locals say that this is mild; global warming or something has made the last few winters 'warm'. Yes, that's the sea under there - frozen at least partially, immobile under it's snowy covering. It used to freeze so deep you could drive across it, thus making the route to Seurasaari or Espoo much more direct than this.

Though winter isn't new to me, winter on the sea is. I don't know how solid the ice is today - certainly not enough to drive on, as the temperature is hovering around zero today - but I'm tempted to take a few steps. Only my mother's deep programming of "Fear of being trapped under ice" keeps me back, out of respect for her..

The familiar residue of parked cars is everywhere, though unlike Pittsburgh the locals don't place a chair in the spot to reserve it. This unwritten law of Pittsburgh streets is the most widely renowned symptom of Pittsburgh parking psychosis. I've heard numerous stories about enraged locals smashing windows, making physical threats, and even pushing other people's cars down the road with their own - all due to some perceived encroachment upon their parking territory.

My Antipodean partner, despite a few cold winters in Berlin, still sees snow as an exciting novelty. She complains about when the snow is too thin, where she finds walking on it to be equivalent to the 'fingernails on chalkboard' feeling (except she doesn't mind actual fingernails on a chalkboard). I tire of snow quickly; it's lovely when it's falling but we forget how quickly it turns ugly. Winter becomes an endless succession of trudging through piles of brown muck, deposited all over the city, slowly melting. Though I'm welcoming it now, I'm fully expecting to be grumpy and miserable about it in a few weeks.

I moved to Helsinki five days ago.  For the first time in my life, I live in a non-English speaking country (though you could certainly make a case for Scots).  Furthermore, I stepped off the plane committed to staying at least two years here, despite having never even visited Finland before.

Next week we move into our own flat,  provided by the student housing service at a very low price (but in a very poor location).  This week we're living in a large basement warehouse space rented by some of my partner's friends.  There are five thirty-something Finnish gamers who live in this space; they while away the days playing first-person shooters and talking to girls on Facebook chat.  The facilities are, to put it politely, raw; the only source of water is a bathroom sink, and the lack of walls makes privacy impossible.  There are some weird live wires hanging down in one corner which we were warned not to touch. 

Still, I feel strangely comfortable here, though I will probably be ready to move on come the weekend. This week, my partner has started her New Media MA program and I've gone back to work,  telecommuting from this strange 'home office'.   A lack of money (as I'm between paychecks and just spent a fortune shipping all of our worldly possessions here) has kept our leisure activities to walking and cycling around our new city, exploring the geography and sights.  More to report on this later.

Of course, this week coincides with the Democratic National Convention, so my head has been a weird mix of cable news punditry, endless blog dissections of speeches/rhetoric, and obsessive polling websites.  All of this on top of the stimuli of a new surrounding - a new, strange and difficult language; the adventures of surviving in a hyperactive economy on very little money; the thrills of Western consumerism in a new environment explored through repeated visits to supermarkets; etc.  I haven't had a drop of alcohol and don't miss it.  It's a very different first five days to when I moved to Glasgow; I haven't sensed the pulse of Helsinki yet, as I'm too distracted by MSNBC streams and figuring out if the sandwich spread I just bought is vegetarian.  Next week will be occupied by the new flat - settling in, and of course the Republican National Convention.  The following week I'm going back to the US for a few weeks, which means I don't properly start "living" here until October.  At which point I can begin my grand plans of playing music, making art, experimenting with the Uberman's Sleep Schedule, and other things ....