HARMAA Final Event: Dislocations
25 April, 12:30–17:00, Kone Foundation’s Kamari, Tehtaankatu 21 B 45, 5th floor
Program
12:30 Doors open: exhibition and refreshments
13:00–13:20 Welcome & Introduction: “What Is HARMAA?”
Erika Ruonakoski, Joonas Martikainen, Pauliina Mäkelä, Irina Poleshchuk and Jaakko Vuori (Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä)
13:20–13:35 Film Screenings: Headwaters by Kate Stone and Kultapalmut by Verna Kovanen, featuring Pauliina Mäkelä and Topias Tiheäsalo
13:35–14:05 Panel 1: Dislocations: Language, Experience and Art
Panelists: Kate Sotejeff-Wilson, Sasha_D and Pauliina Mäkelä
Moderator: Irina Poleshchuk
The panel highlights the project’s co-operations with the translator and editor Kate Sotejeff-Wilson and comics artist Sasha_D, and demonstrates the role of the artist Pauliina Mäkelä in the project. Furthermore, it explores the theme of alienness, asking, what it means to exist as “dislocated” or misplaced, what it means to move between languages, to detect traces of another language in one’s native language and whether dislocations can be a source of creativity for an artist.
Sasha_D’s mobile comics Silence was published in February 2025 on HARMAA’s web site.
14:05–14:35 Panel 2: Thinking in Turbulent Times
Panelists: Magdalena Zolkos, Erika Ruonakoski and Jaakko Vuori
Moderator: Joonas Martikainen
The panel deals with the role of philosophy and academic work in times of instability. What is there to be done in times such as ours? Is the main goal to make the turbulence somehow comprehensible, to produce something like an x-ray of the experience of shaking itself, or to offer consolation or a listening ear? Or is it merely wishful thinking to claim that philosophers and political scientists could make a difference in times of instability?
Magdalena Zolkos is Associate Professor in Political Science (University of Jyväskylä). Her most recent publications include Psychosocial and Cultural Pespectives on the War in Ukraine: Imprints and Dreamscapes (2024), co-authored with Bohdan Shumylovych.
14:35–14:45 Break
14:45–15:45 Kiosks: Mind Game and Aphorisms from a Hat
15:45–17:00 Informal socialising over food and wine
What is HARMAA? HARMAA (Finnish word for “grey”) is a philosophical-artistic project that explores agency, the idea of post-truth, and alternative ways of philosophising. The longer name of HARMAA is Indirect Philosophy as a Form of Resistance: How to Reinforce Individual Agency in a Post-Truth Era? We have been working as a group for four years, and by the end of April, the project will be coming to its close. The project was made possible by the funding of Kone Foundation.
Members of the HARMAA Work Group
Erika Ruonakoski, Project Director, University of Jyväskylä
Irina Poleshchuk, Senior Researcher, University of Helsinki
Joonas S. Martikainen, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
Jaakko Vuori, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
Pauliina Mäkelä, Visual artist, Illustrator and Graphic Designer
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