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.

Summer is almost here, and summer will (almost certainly) bring us a large empty shipping container, "permanently" landlocked in the Kalasatama harbour.  This is part of an initiative between the city and Part which will be an ongoing 25-year project to revitalise Kalasatama.  We're looking forward to using the container as a classroom for most Public School events this summer, and I'm also curious to see what sort of community we end up with down there, as other organisations (Dodo and Kuvataideakatemia, for starters) will also have their own containers.

Last weekend Ptarmigan hosted back-to-back Public School classes.  Friday brought the second meeting of Drawing, aka Dinosaur Drawing or Drawing Marathon, faciliated by Cathérine Kuebel and Sarah Alden.  This time the class was extended to be 6 PM til 9 PM, though most people petered out before 5 AM.
 
 

Ptarmigan was funded by The Nordic Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture administrated by the Nordic Culture Point!  We will be able to offer three 2-month residencies in 2010 to residents of the Nordic and Baltic countries (outside of Finland).


In true Ptarmigan fashion, we are interested in people who do similar things to what we do.  So while we are looking for artists and cultural producers, we are particularly interested in people who have a strong emphasis on community interaction, workshops, skills exchanges, and event-driven dissemination.


For more information, or to apply, please see our call for submissions.  And spread the word!  Applications are due in just over a month and we hope to make decisions in early June.

Here's the end of our set from Ptarmigan last weekend, performing the song 'Talbot' which is actually not on the 15,000 Day Boat Trip LP (available very very soon from 8mm!) but a song from my project Handshake Garden.  Blurring the lines, you know.... Please accept my apologies for how awkward it is to watch someone sing and play viola at the same time.  More live shows (with hopefully an expanded band lineup) will come in the future.  And thanks to my partner Tara for filming this and using a nice arty slow shutter speed.