Three contemporary art exhibitions and over forty multidisciplinary events offer varied perspectives on the theme of Utopia of Access Uniarts Helsinki is set to open a Research Pavilion in May in the context of the 57th Venice Biennale. During a span of five months, the Pavilion will host three contemporary art exhibitions and over forty multidisciplinary events. Under the theme Utopia of Access, the Pavilion calls for a variety of interpretations on urgent topics of debate using experimental methods. Over a hundred artistresearchers from European art universities will introduce their own contribution to the Pavilion in the field of contemporary art, music, performing arts, and curating. “The purpose of the Research Pavilion is to increase the dialogue between contemporary art and research and to bring about new kinds of multidisciplinary exhibition practices. During the summer of 2017, the Pavilion will present a remarkably skilled and diverse community of European experts in contemporary art, which will bring an outstanding addition to the programme of the Venice Biennale”, says Professor Anita Seppä, the Research Pavilion’s commissioner. The Research Pavilion is a follow-up to the pilot project that took place in Venice in 2015, and thanks to the enthusiastic reactions from the international art and research field, the university was encouraged to develop the concept further. Uniarts Helsinki has invited Konstex and the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (NARP) as its main partners for the Research Pavilion. The networks represent a large number of Norwegian and Swedish art institutions of higher education. In addition, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Zurich University of the Arts will also produce one exhibition each for the Research Pavilion. The programme of the Research Pavilion consists of three 6-week contemporary art exhibitions and 46 multidisciplinary art events activities called Camino Events. The inaugural event at the Research Pavilion in May is an exhibition curated by Jan Kaila and Henk Slager, You Gotta Say Yes to Another Access, which shows a diverse cross-section of how Nordic artist-researchers from higher art institutions view topical themes such as the openness of art, geopolitics, capitalisation of knowledge and new visual techniques. In July–August, the Research Pavilion will host Galleria del Vento, an exhibition by Florian Dombois. Dombois will build a wind tunnel during the exhibition’s run. He will bring along the machine from his transdisciplinary research laboratory at the Zurich University of the Arts and will collect all other material by going out into the lagoons of Venice on a boat with golden sails. The final exhibition at the Research Pavilion, Hauntopia/what if, runs from September to October and is produced by the Phd-inpractice programme of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In the exhibition curated by Anette Baldauf and Renate Lorenz, the artists bring unresolved forms of social violence of the past back to the present, and invite these ghosts to leave their trace in the here and now, and to envision potentially more ethical futures. EXHIBITIONS You Gotta Say Yes to Another Access 11 May – 2 July 2017 Curators: Jan Kaila and Henk Slager Artists: Andrea Coyotzi Borja & Sinem Kayacan, Andre Alves, Behzad Khosravi-Noori & Rene Leon-Rosales, Bull.Miletic, Eva Weinmayr, Mireia c. Saladrigues, Niran Baibulat, Stacey Sacks, Tao G.V. Sambolec and Vincent Roumagnac. Producer of the exhibition: Uniarts Helsinki Florian Dombois: Galleria del Vento 8 July –13 August 2017 The exhibition will include five Palaver discussions and workshops that will be held every Saturday in a Palaver-setup of the show. The artist will be present throughout the exhibition. Producer of the exhibition: Research Focus in Transdisciplinary at Department of Cultural Analysis, Zurich University of the Arts Hauntopia/what if 8 September – 15 October 2017 Curators: Anette Baldauf and Renate Lorenz Artists: Aline Benecke, Katalin Erdodi, Zsuzsi Flohr, Sílvia das Fadas, Till Gathmann, Moira Hille, Zosia Holubowska, Hristina Ivanoska, Janine Jembere, Ruth Jenrbekova, Belinda Kazeem- Kaminski, Mihret Kebede, Annette Krauss, Sandra Monterroso, Rafal Morusiewicz, Lisa Nyberg, Reading Group, Naomi Rincon- Gallardo, Masha Seligerus, Keiko Uenishi Producer of the exhibition: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna