 And we'll be following the same format. So we are here in Helsinki, but we have also a lot of guests who are online. There will be a discussion with moderator and two panelists. And after there is a possibility of Q&A here in Helsinki and of course online. And if you do it here in Helsinki, it's also important to introduce yourself also for visual impairment person and also to introduce eventually your organization. So I'm very glad now to leave the word to Marta Kierl, who will be the moderator of this session. And you will have like two speakers, so I'm sorry for the pronunciation, Heger, Narvik, Sander and Abitarik. Enjoy the session. Thank you so much, Marie. Very warm welcome to every one of you being here with us offline and for the ones who are joining us online. I'm extremely happy to be with you today and with two wonderful speakers. That we will delve into the conversation within a second. But before that, I will very shortly introduce myself. My name is Marta Kierl and I'm an independent performing arts curator based between Warsaw and Utrecht. My pronouns are she, her. I'm a white woman in my late 30s. I wear glasses. I have kind of blonde hair and I'm wearing a kind of gray shirt. And maybe before settling the ground for our conversation, I would like to share with you the context from which I speak in order to situate my view and my perspective on the topic we will touch, which is the digital international professional development. So in a way, it's of course a continuation that we have been talking about already this morning. We focus mostly or broadly, not only on the artists but mainly on artists, art workers or artists, art practitioners. And from my own perspective, as they've been curator that for many years, that was raised in Poland, that for many years have been based in Poland, that transnational activity was always key or was always something that would keep me standing, especially in the recent years where the local background became quite hostile. And therefore, the online encounters or educational platforms that were possible during the pandemic was the way to keep standing, if you like. But also I would like to bring here another perspective on that. I think that very possibility to somehow stay connected, but maybe don't necessarily always build new connections was really important during the pandemic time, but also it created a lot of hopes, if you like, or desires or wishes and dreams. And I wanted to quote here a South African choreographer and activist, Mamela Niamza, who said it was during the pandemic, during the wonderful conference, how to be together, organized by Turing, the Ather Spektakel and Tantzum August in Berlin. She said that the dreams that we are asked to dream and that remain as a kind of unfulfilled promise may keep haunting us and maybe especially difficult in the moment or the imagination kind of gets crushed by the reality and by the context very often, social, political, economic, name it. And it feels extremely important to address that topic also today, especially having in mind that we are talking and we are gathering here in the moment when there is a war going on in many places in Europe, in Ukraine, but not only. So, please let me welcome two wonderful speakers that are with us today, Heger Narvik-Sande and Abitarik. Heger is a CEO of Performing Arts Harp, Norway, and that is a center that is a performing arts advisor, but also manages the ministry or travel grants that allowed the Norwegian performing artists to be presented abroad. And Sander has extensive experience in organizational development and also in political advocacy. And I guess that might be also a very interesting point to address today, not only to maintain the international connections and transnational collaboration, not only to create conditions for the artists to be welcomed and presented and received not only in their own local context, but also the way how to advocate for that. And Abitarik is an artist and cultural worker born in Karachi and based in Paris. At the moment, Abitarik works as a communication manager for CUNCEL, which is an art organization based in Paris, founded by Gagori Kastera and Sandra Terjiman in Paris. And currently, Abitarik runs the project AFIELD, which is a network of social initiatives from arts and culture that supports cultural practitioners who develop initiatives in different projects that would create bonds between their own practices and the given local communities. And Abir is also an artist and he's practiced confluence issues of power, privilege, vulnerability, and social expectations through performance art. And I'm mentioning that because I believe that might be a point to come back to at some point when we continue our conversation. That will be my very short introduction of both of you and I believe there will be a moment to broad it and to really focus on your practices while the floor will be yours. Just before that, please let me very shortly draw you a little bit of a picture or a kind of landscape which we want to touch upon today. Yeah, I think it's extremely important to understand that we meet here at the moment, which seems to be the end of the pandemic, but as we all know, it's definitely not yet. So it feels like, indeed, this notion that Bojana mentioned of the honeymoon and the digital world seems to be still a little bit at stake because we are right after that very experience where, for many of us, I believe, digital tools might have been helpful. But also, I guess, we understood a lot of limits of these very tools and it will be wonderful to touch upon them today. And in many cases, I believe the development of the professional career, but also simple your own practice and the way of thinking while being isolated for many reasons, not only by pandemic, but also by the political circumstances. One is isolated in one location, the ability to connect elsewhere or to think with others that are situated in different contexts might be key in order to develop the way of thinking and all that, especially to keep the practice going on while the local background is hostile, while you don't feel very welcome in your own local backgrounds. But then, while many participants of online educational platforms or schools underline how important the presence of these very platforms was for them, they also underlined that, in many cases, it was the first time they really could become part of the network. Because, for instance, they didn't have to deal with the visa regulations, as we all know, can be extremely humiliating and absurd. But at the same time, many of them pointed out that actually there were a lot of networks, for instance, curatorial ones that were maintained, but they would rather be focused on already existing relations and networks. They would rather be the ones who would be possible to maintain because they were created before a hand on the basis of the life-gathering. So that would be one of the limitations of a point out and point out. And the other, again, is maybe a kind of illusion that this digital space as a possible public space can offer and the question how to overcome it. And in order to address it, I would love to start a conversation with the first question to both of you that is focused on the needs. So I would love to learn and to hear from you whether there are any particular needs expressed by the art workers, art practitioners, related to the development of the practices, any particular needs related also to the development of their competences that you identified during the last two years or before, something you would like to build upon, and whether there were any urgencies that shaped these very needs, or whether there were any urgencies that would shape particular competences that we might need at the moment. Aviv, would you like to start? Sure. Thank you, Marta. Thank you on the move for the invitation. My name is Abitaric. I am a brown-skinned man in my early 30s. I'm wearing a white shirt. And I have long dark hair tied in a ponytail. I go by he, him, or they. And to answer your question about needs, what we noticed, what I noticed, mainly in terms of this kind of political turmoil and then COVID on top of it all, was the need to become, to have a political stand, to take a position, which I think Alma mentioned earlier with the project around citizen journalists. A lot of my role as community manager, as communication manager, became almost like journalism. I really had to think about what news I was putting out there and where we were situating ourselves. So that's one that I think is quite evident and still is. And I think that's something that continues. We've become like it's heightened, that idea of needing to position yourself some way or not. And when you don't, then that has consequences as well. Apart from that, again, I think something that was mentioned earlier, I think this idea of recognition and solidarity. So it was again heightened during the pandemic, this feeling that people who are working locally, somewhere in the world confronting the social issue that is very present for them, may not have a network or somebody else supporting them elsewhere. So this has existed before the pandemic, but I feel like the pandemic heightened this where it became really apparent that somebody on the other end of the planet reaches out to you and has a conversation and is really interested and supportive of what you're doing locally, which that kind of support you might not have locally. So I felt like that was something that was heightened. And then the other thing I think was the reassessment of the way that we look at time and efficiency. A lot of this people's kind of daily lives and other obligations were pouring into the Zoom calls and so it became really apparent that flexibility was this new keyword that everybody had to use. And we just allowed for babies on screen and things to not follow. I think everybody became really okay with not knowing also because there was so much of like not knowing what the next step was or if things were going to be possible. So I think those are the kind of key aspects that I would highlight and maybe pass it on to Hege. Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much for the invitation. I'm Hege Knaviksanda and I'm a female woman in my beginning of my 40s. I have silver hair and blue eyes and today I'm wearing a white shirt. Yes, I totally agree with you, Abbe, for what you're saying here. And for us and for like from the organization perspective, I would say like for the two last year, we've all been like a survival mode. And I think we all had a huge need to maintain our activities and also to stay in contact with our colleagues but also be a part of communities to share knowledge but also to get comfort and support. Because it has been a time of crisis. I think that's important to say. And it's been a crisis especially for artists within the performing art and for music because these are art forms that are live. And both these sectors has in principle stood still for two years. They have not been able to perform or practice their profession. And I think that's also important to think about. So that also means that we in the last two years have experienced enormous transformation and we also identified a strong willingness to change into using digital needs, digital tools. And this transformation I also experienced in my own organization. So I'm gonna talk a bit about my work and our main task in PON is to give international mobility opportunities for Norwegian artists. So that means that we fund and stimulate the possibility for Norwegian artists to have touring opportunities international. And of course, you all understand that that has not been possible for the last two years. So we could not work in the same way as we used to but we really try to transform the way we worked as everyone else. And it was very important for us to maintain the relationship that we had internationally because these relationships we have been building up for several years. And it's also important for us to maintain this relationship for the artists so that we can go back and actually start touring again. We also have a traveling funding that we changed to fulfill the needs for the Norwegian artists. So we have a traveling funding that we also transformed into digital touring. They could apply for funding for digital touring. And of course, that also was something that happened for the last two years that artists started presenting the word digitally. And of course, that also identified some needs because it's hard to become a filmmaker from one day to another. So if we're going to talk about what we identified as like needs, are we there? You want me to go further? Yes, please go ahead. So then we need to develop skills to actually do this to actually present something digitally. And that would mean you need to understand the last panel was talking a bit about it that you need actually to present something digitally. And that is our own skill. You also need to have access to equipment to do it. For our independent artists in Norway or I would say everywhere, you don't have access to that equipment. And you might not even have access to a place where you can borrow that equipment. So of course, that is a need that we identified. Yeah, I think I can stop there. But yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you, Hadeh. Thank you, Abby. What I'm hearing is very clear articulation of the needs that we need in order to stay or to catch up with the digital world. And I understand also that probably the need of having an access to a right equipment or a good equipment is also a matter of being audible and visible well enough because also there's probably a rising competition in that very field. So if you have an access to the better tool, better you are ahead and visible, obviously. And I was wondering, so for that, that's a huge need. And this is also the moment where the notion of the equality in terms of the accesses applies. So I wonder whether there are any ways, we also talked about a little bit in the previous panel of any kind of legal structures and regulations that would support it also on a public level that would support, especially the independent artist. But there's also another layer that I found extremely important in what you were mentioning, both of you, which is the notion of the maintenance of the relationships that happened during the pandemic. And also this need to take a political stance like to take a certain position from which you are speaking and use indeed, in that sense, digital space as a public one or at least as a certain, let's say alternative to the public one. And I was wondering whether you could identify any elements or any particular features that made it possible and any particular tools, something that you feel was helping for both of you when it comes to maintaining professional but I guess also very human relationships with your peers and colleagues. So I wanna, yeah, I'm gonna answer your question but link it to something that's been said. So in the context of a political situation, for example, I'll give a personal example that I think was very pertinent. So the war in Ukraine started and I'm a Pakistani person living in Paris who refrains from indulging in much political stuff based on my own personal history and the current legal status and passport I have and stuff. So for me, I really didn't have a position in this situation and I didn't know how to offer anything. So for a few days, I was really like kind of walking around feeling all these things but not being able to do anything. And I got a phone call from my Polish friend and this is what I think is really interesting, this idea of like maintained relationships that you have that end up facilitating a different contextualization for the issue. So what happened is my Polish friend calls me because the Polish people were so deeply implicated saying, hey, Abby, you're in Paris, I've got a network, we're looking for places, can you help? And she just plugged me right in and all of a sudden I had a position and I knew that, okay, here's what I can do and here's somebody who's given me a context in order to actually do something about it and have a position even if like, and so I got removed from the equation and I just got plugged in. So this was a very somehow in a roundabout way trying to answer your question about this maintaining relationships and how this became a tool somehow, this earlier relationship with somebody that became a tool. And then I guess this isn't the bit about what worked well or is it? Because this is not about tools, I'm gonna maybe pass it on. But maybe just one additional question to what you just shared, which is beautiful example, but again, I'm wondering how much it was possible because you had already some connection beforehand based on the life encounter and whether there would be any examples of the solidarity or maintenance that was possible and that started over the digital world. Right, yeah, so with the field, the field is a network of socially engaged practitioners who've taken a step beyond their own practice in order to confront a social issue somewhere in the world and we're essentially a grant that was given to three people. It's a horizontal nomination process. So every year there's three people joining the network and they're really high caliber people like doing, who've already set up initiatives that are already making a huge difference. So it's more about recognizing these people who've already made a huge change in a way and just saying, keep going, we're with you. So what happened right as the pandemic hit was that, so this was just a network and these people didn't really know each other even though they felt like, okay, we're in the same network but the pandemic, right as the pandemic started, we started something called the kitchen calls which became this monthly call where the whole network was invited to just come online and exchange and share knowledge and this continued forward now even though at a reduced frequency because things have come back into real life things and people are more busy again but basically this kitchen call became a space to share political like ongoings. So the Kazakh contingent showed up and talked about the Kazakh situation that happened and so every time that kind of thing started happening but really during the pandemic, these kitchen calls allowed us to witness the network growing into a community and it really like this was just clear as day and all of a sudden we start to consider each other friends even if we've never even met each other but now we've, and we started producing more media elements. I think this is also interesting. Everybody started producing more videos and started like maximizing a media output because that's what we could do with the, and with the reduced budget, over zoom calls and stuff. So this, I think kitchen call was really something that kind of embodied solidarity and has now led to this community really feeling like a community who are now working towards an event so they can all meet each other and now whenever I meet somebody who I've already worked with for the past two years but I've never met, it's like, oh my God, you're shorter than I expected or you're really tall and I feel like I already know you and so this has been really a positive in essence. Thank you so much for sharing that. Would you like to share some example of maintenance that was possible? Yeah, I can talk about some of the activities that we did but that would be an example on maintaining our relationships and that would be, some of the things that we do is to have trade missions that we travel with the delegation of Norwegian artists to a marketplace and present the Norwegian arts and we have this huge event in New York every year. It's called Norway Now where Norwegian artists are meeting in North American presenters. So this event we needed to do digitally twice now and for us that's like so important to be able to be in touch with our network because as I said before this is like relationships that we have built up in several years and it takes such a long time also to build this relationship. So for us if this connection would be not, we wouldn't be in contact with them for two years that would be crucial for our work and it went very well. So the Norwegian artists, they pitched the work for the presenters. The things we also put out the event digitally on YouTube and the things that we could see is that we actually got a broader audience. We reach more people and of course things that we don't know that we don't have knowledge on today is if it actually succeeded in more invitation to touring. I don't have the answer to that but we definitely maintained our collaboration and the relationships and we also reached a wider audience. Thank you so much for that. And I'm also wondering because what I'm hearing is a lot of effort put into creating a space where the exchange is possible when in the offline world is absolutely not possible at a particular moment or is very much restricted. And I was wondering what do you think, what made it possible? Like what did you need in order to make possible either the maintaining the relations with the artists who couldn't tour at some point but still wanted to get in touch and continue the relationship with possible curators, presenters or what did it mean to create a space for the kitchen call? Like what made it possible? Like what kind of attitude, yeah, what kind of competence is there something that we could also maybe think of as a lesson to take with, for instance, maybe to give an example of a situation I personally experienced, maybe that would also help to situate yours. There will be the moment when we stopped and that refers very much what you said, I'll be about the efficiency. So that was the moment when being involved in different projects at some point we realized, okay, we really have no idea whether we will end up with any kind of product or outcome after that. What we need is a space to exchange no matter what or even if it's a little bit awkward because we don't have an agenda of the very meeting but we open the space. There is this project and part of Advanced Performing Arts project where we actually created this kind of campfire talks with the artists who were new to the network. So that felt very similar to your kitchen goal. And I wonder what do you think what kind of competences or skills we need for that? I'm also thinking about what was mentioned already in the previous panel, like for instance, the patience or ability to listen and maybe time. Is there anything that recalls with your experiences? Yeah, absolutely. I would say time is really the only thing I have to talk about here because I feel like our notion of time changed then and has kind of changed again now and continues to change because at that time of the pandemic, I think people just had more time. So you know, you could be in the room with important people that you couldn't find time to meet earlier for sure. But also I think that I remember we were having them regularly every month and then eventually we had to reduce them. And I remember at that time they were longer, they were an hour and a half and we were also like, I was programming, you know, like stretching and like, not exactly, but you know, just like animating it and finding ways to fill the time and think about the fact that people are at home and they're stuck at home and which now is different, right? Because we're not stuck at home anymore. So it's the shorter thing now and people are coming and going and I feel like people were just more present then because they had the time. Isn't it a thing that everybody started cooking during the pandemic? And you know, because people were just at home and they really could, they had a little bit more time somehow. We weren't commuting as much and we weren't traveling. So I think time was really, our perception of time was really key to making this possible. Yeah. Yeah, and we had a meeting before this panel. We shared some personal experience and it's like that in my job as well. I'm often talking with politicians and during the pandemic, it was so easy to get in touch with politicians. They were just sitting home and taking every call and yeah, but now that's totally different again. So I definitely agree with you that time has been, yeah. And probably be a challenge now when everything opens up again. But of course regarding your question, it definitely needs skills to present something digitally. It's a totally different thing. And I'm not sure, I don't think that we did it our best. I felt like we were in a survival mode, as I said, but we are a part of a EDU or Erasmus Plus project now that's called the Digital Leap, which is a program that we're trying to get more knowledge on how we will present something digitally and what kind of different tools that we could use to present performing art digitally. So this is a super interesting project. And yeah, I guess more projects like that we need. And it's also like important to have like conversation and conference like this that we go back and reflect that we're not just now move on because it was a lot of things that was going on these two years and it's a lot of different platforms. We have all different experience. So that's also important to identify all the digital tools that we used. But from what I'm hearing from both of you speaking, it feels real like time is key, but also a time that we are kind of deprived of at the moment being in a way able to continue to business as usual. And I wonder what's the way not to continue business as usual probably one of the strategies is to address the way how we are assessed, how our work is being assessed by the funders or by the decision makers. And I wonder whether you know any examples or initiatives or a dialogue that would take place on that very level because it really feels the need for change has to come as a grassroots movement, but it won't be able to make its reality if it's not addressed on the level how for instance we are assessed at what we have to do in order to continue the practice or receive another fund and so on and so forth. That sometimes can be a vicious circle, right? So I'm wondering whether you see any initiatives that would continue that that would sustain with the time that is not necessarily oriented towards the production immediately, whether there would be any educational for instance projects that would continue this way or maybe does the way how a field is developing or how do you see that? I mean, it feels like what comes to mind is the project Correspondence which was initiated in response to the blast in Beirut by a bunch of people who were affected by this, Lebanese people and but then with quite a connection to France and they started this platform. The reason I mentioned this is because it was so open. This was what was magical about it was that it was it wasn't like we're looking for this kind of people these kinds of people to give funding to or to give opportunities to. It was just like people in Lebanon, artists and cultural practitioners who need anything can apply for anything, for however much from you just express your desire and this goes back to what again, Alma was talking about this idea of like oxygen. It was this idea that they just needed oxygen. They just needed something, anything they needed, whether it was a camera or whether it was like a relationship with somebody or whether they needed to fly somewhere, whether they needed residency. So it was just a space that was created a platform online where Lebanese artists and it was circulated through word of mouth predominantly and people just found out about it and got on there and asked for whatever they needed and then kind of case by case those things were met. And then yesterday I heard in conversation over dinner that they actually got some funding from the French, some French funding basically. So that was also an interesting way to kind of pull in French funding for a cause that is not necessarily French related. So I think that's an interesting example to think about. Can you say that your question? Of course, I was wondering whether, yeah, there is a way to sustain the initiatives or that were created in a way in the survival mode or probably correspondences also an example of that as an answer to an emergency situation. And it feels like these are the moments or the kind of raptures of the everyday pace, right? Of the ongoingness of the constant production. As we all know, very often it's an overproduction. And I was wondering whether there would be, whether you recall any initiatives or examples of, yeah, ways of thinking, again, initiatives, projects that would rather focus on maintaining this luxury of having time just to get together and think, not only as an answer for an emergency or not only when the other is not possible. Yeah, no, I don't know. I can't give you an example on a project on that, but I think it would be crucial for every organization and everyone to live in our hybrid world from now on. And of course, that means that you need to have skills. You need to make sure you have fundings for that artists could produce something digitally. Yeah, so of course, I think that's the future. We need to live in this hybrid world now. And it feels also that probably we have to think about the multitude of voices here. I mean, with a singular voices, we will not probably make that happen. But that brings me to another question related very much to the actual political, social, economic context we operate at the moment that is also very different in the case of each and every of us. But there are some emergencies like war in Ukraine that feels there isn't that to address. And I was wondering whether you have, what are your thoughts about what do we need in order to, or can we, do you have that experience, use the digital tools as a way to a secured exchange when it's not possible because of the circumstances, because of the war, because of the very severe and hostile political context. I'm asking that question also because knowing that there is a lot of ambiguity in that very one, but also because I really feel we are in the moment where we might tend to think, oh, digital will kind of save the world, but we also probably know already it won't. Or it might be very helpful, but to a certain extent, and I wonder, yeah, how to grasp it? How can we make the use of it? And what we should forget in order not to end up in this, yeah, haunted and unfulfilled dreams. Yeah, that was a big question. I think that like using the digital tools and they, of course, can, you actually had a question for us in, you said, we're on the fourth now, right? Yes, how can digital who use help to secure free exchange? You asked us and that question made my brain boil a bit. Because that is a huge question. And I think that, of course, if digital tools are going to save the world, that means that everyone, we need to make sure that everyone has access to it, that you need to have some basic. Everyone needs to have Wi-Fi. Everyone needs to have computers. And of course, we know that not everyone has that. I think also that, but this new digital world could also help us with access in removing financial barriers by traveling, for example. It could also be easier for people to connect time wise. We could also, it could also assist with translation or like language barriers and also disability barriers. So it's a lot of barriers that could be solved digitally. But when you ask this question, I also wanted to talk a bit about the ideal of a free exchange. And I told you guys that I want to share a story, a personal story. And this is a story that happened to me like now in February. I'm going to read it because I feel my English is a bit limited and I want this to be very precisely. So I want to share an experience I had in February this year when I went to an art festival in the northern of Norway in a city called Kirkenes, which shares a border with Russia. The art festival is called Baran Spatakel and it's built on cooperation with the countries in the Baran region. It's Finland and Russia. And this year festival had a title, where do we go from here? And was reflecting on the two-year close down between these countries because of the pandemic. The pandemic had really made it difficult for the festival to maintain artistic collaboration with Russian Finnish artists. And still at that moment, the border was closed. So the festival program had a lot of digital talks with both Norwegian and Russian artists. This festival, it opened the February 23rd. And the next day, Russia went to war against Ukraine. And the festival continued as planned. All the conversation continued as well. But we were no longer talking about the pandemic. We shared the grief over the invasion of Ukraine. And those days felt like the last day we had like an open and free conversation with the Russian artists. And the final artwork at the festival, everyone traveled to the border of Russia to experience a work of art where two artists on both sides would send sound signals to each other across the border. And a sound signal was sent from the Norwegian side, but there were no response. And just one day later, we learned that Russia sends such social media platform and you could risk 15 years in prison if you spoke negatively about the invasion. And I want to share this story because it made a huge impact on me. But also it kind of puts out a dress that did the tools for free exchange. You also need to have freedom to speak. And that will also be some of the basic that we need to have in the world. And do you see any, let's say, dark web outside official channels that may let us keep in contact with the one who are on the resistance position but cannot leave the country for this or that reason? Yeah, I think that exists today. Yeah, definitely. But of course, it's not open. It's not free. It's not accessible to everyone. But it's a tool, definitely. Yeah, I'm just thinking about anything that may keep sending the ones who are left maybe not on the side that they would have chosen. No. Thank you so much for sharing that experience. Yeah, to add to that, I would say these ruptures have created a situation where people working on the fringes, whether they're hackers or people doing things differently because of their given situation are now allowed to come to center stage in a way. And so all these, yeah, alternative realities that people are trying to build are all of a sudden very interesting for us to co-opt and make the mainstream again, the way that the whole thing is set up, the structure that is capitalism that we all are deeply entangled with. And I mean, so I'll link that to the idea of the roots, which I think that they're often overlooked and we don't often enough talk about the funding bodies and how they are actually ruling the show. Or when we talk about internet and access and we say that everybody should have access to internet, I mean, we are rarely talking about the very few telecommunications companies who actually own the internet of the whole planet and how that is a monopoly in itself. And if we're going to talk about the dark web and stuff, then there's just so much that we don't know and that's not transparent there. So this is why people working on the fringes, I mean, I read something yesterday about the blockchain and NFT and this whole new world came from or part of it, a lot of it came from exactly this kind of investigation that people on the sidelines were doing illegally, let's say. And now all of a sudden it's very interesting for all of us to talk about NFTs and blockchains and how it's become useful for us to think about organizing differently and imagining a different reality. And then that along with, I would say, the title of this event that you mentioned, like where do we go from here, I think is also very on point in the sense that we were asking the same questions. We developed a study program where we started inviting. We took the opportunity to say, OK, well, if our network is growing by three people every year, what about these other people who almost made it? What about the shortlist of 12 other people? And so we created another moment of a study program online, which we're continuing this year. And last year it was called Together and it was really asking this question of like, what can we do together with three different angles? And this year it's about the construction of ableism. So I think these questions of taking language barriers. So I wanted to mention that one of the limitations that we experienced through this entire process was language. As much as the network became a community and we so many things flourished and we all of a sudden literally a field became independent over the. You know, it was just a project and now it's like kind of an organization. One of the main limitations was language. We realized that we were just functioning English and we weren't really opening enough to allow for our Spanish contingent and for our Portuguese contingent to show up. And so then they just wouldn't show up. So and now, you know, and I think these are the kinds of things where that rupture creates the possibility for us to be like, oh, wait, this is where we can improve. And so then, you know, we're slowly trying to integrate to improve our practices and care more about otherness and how to integrate that into what we do to make the plane more horizontal. Thank you so much for sharing that. What I'm hearing is that maybe one of the competences that we might all need in the field is to really get more specialized in the dark web or get more specialized in this actions that is actually developing quite a lot at the moment, which is this position of being a cyber elf. My dear friend who is a theater maker theater director completely withdrew resigned resigned from her practice as a theater maker. Her name is Magda Specht. She's based in Warsaw in Poland and she started really to focus all day long on the Internet activism, which means being a cyber elf. So fighting against the Putin propaganda. So answering, it's really going very deeply to dismantling the fake news, really contacting people on a personal layer, informing them what's going on really and so on and so forth that maybe that could be one of the tools or one of the spaces were also the artistic tools and the way how to think about it as a performative gesture could very much help. But at this moment, I would really love to open the conversation to our audience both here present with us and online. Do you have any questions or immediate reactions towards that? I have a question and I have a microphone. And I would love to invite you to see your name, describe yourself and say, what's the organization you might represent. Sorry for the dictatorship of the microphone. My name is Katie. I work for On the Move. I have curly hair and pale skin and a striped shirt. Is that good enough? OK. Thank you to the three of you for your contributions. I speak to what I've been interested in developing personally for the last two years at the intersection of journalism and digital projects in addition to the work that I do with research and publications at On the Move. And this is, I apologize, I'm one of those comments instead of questions people today. I have to say that what I've observed personally and also in discussions with other people is that there's been a real resistance to the idea of how much these projects can cost in terms of time and investment. I think that and I think that also, generationally, the people who are really tasked with upskilling themselves digitally are people who are younger in these spaces. So people who broadly are already dealing with all kinds of structural issues and barriers, including just being less well-paid because we're younger and then we're tasked, we're often tasked with go figure out how to make a digital project or sometimes we task ourselves with that because we can see possibilities that people who are older just can't by virtue of many different factors. And one thing that I've encountered and observed is we acquire an enough knowledge to go to people and say, if you really want to do this well and pay everyone fairly, this is how much it's going to cost. And I think that there's a real resistance to it because somehow there's this thing of when many of these products are well done, it's like, oh, it's easy or it doesn't take that much time or stuff like that. And that I think is a real problem. And so I think where I'm at, it's also like we need to help each other have the skills to defend the resources that we need to transition to this kind of digital space and have the language to go to funders or go to partners and be like, this is not an adequate budget for the ambitions that you have related to this. And I think that it's something that I find particularly egregious in the context of the arts where why is it so difficult to get someone to accept that that's how much intellectual and digital artistic labor costs when it's easy to see how much work and time goes into making a theater production, for example. And so speaking generationally, I want the people who are in more positions of power, I want us to work together to understand how we can defend the resources that we need in order to upskill and produce things of quality and not just produce something for the sake of producing it that because when things are quality, they have more potential to be spread and be impactful, basically. I don't know if any of the speakers want to react to that. We can both react to it. No, I totally agree with you. And we can stay here to talk about all the good experience. But I totally agree with you that it's been a survival mode for many of us. And the quality has not always been very good. So if we are going to do this for the future, we need to have more skills. And we need to have funding for it, definitely. I would like to, yeah, I definitely agree with you. I think one of the most important parts of what you've said is that the people in the power positions need to be the ones that kind of hand it forward, that continue to, as we talked about last night, again, at dinner, this idea that you need to hand it forward. You need to make sure that those pay people, make sure you pay people appropriately, and make sure that your colleagues are paying people. And we're all culprits, I feel like, because sometimes the budget is just what it is. And so then you end up outsourcing the work from a different country for the same work, because you have to, and you just have to make it work. But I think the more that we, I wouldn't say pressure each other, but hold each other accountable and kind of support each other in making that happen, I think that's for the people who are sitting in positions of power where. And then on that note, I would like to share an initiative called the Ethics of Collecting. It has to do with the art world and collectors in the art world. And a bunch of collectors have come together to write a code of ethics. And they've based it on codes of ethics that exist in other fields, because there isn't one in the art world. And they're predominantly talking about the ethics of collecting, but it's really a good, they're creating a tool which is open to conversation and they're happy to adapt it. But this is the kind of movement that we need, especially in the art world, even more than, I would say, the cultural sector. Because again, I think the cultural sector still has a little bit more structure, even though I think people are still being exploited. And then on the question of quality, I think that on the one hand, we can say that we don't want good quality things. But on the other hand, I think it's really fascinating again to notice how somebody making memes 10 years ago wasn't that, that wasn't considered quality. It wasn't considered something interesting or even subversive. It felt like you were wasting your time. Or like computer nerds or like people who were spending their time playing video games or making video games. And this was all considered a waste of time somehow in many ways in many professional fields. And all of a sudden, these are the skills that are now really like memes are actually a really advanced version of contemporary critique, not all, but they really are. And so this is a lot of it's interesting how the question of quality, I think, can change. Because when you say quality, I see high production value, high lot of money. But we've seen so much high production value, a lot of money put into really bad things, like really final basic stuff. So, yeah. But it also feels as we are addressing here some of the key issues that should stay in the offline art world as strong as they are, like acknowledgement of the labor, especially the emotional labor that is needed in order to make the artistic practice happen and so on and so forth. And I'm wondering maybe then indeed the code of ethics. And that would also be helpful in understanding what we might mean, for instance, as to what are the values that we want to rely on in this digital world or in many digital worlds. And how do we understand them? Maybe that could be indeed one of the first steps. Another example that comes to mind is like, how much time do we actually need to debrief after every single Zoom call? Do we even think about it? How much of the emotional labor is needed in the hosting this type of a conversation that is online? It's not only shutting off your screen or muting yourself. It's really, there is some space needed also to prepare and then to breathe again afterwards, which we seem to be very short of. But just as another, yeah, possible, maybe next step based on everything that you shared. Are there any more questions? Yeah. Hello, I'm Felix. I'm male, white and have blonde hair and beard. And I have a question. I was talking to a lot of Russian artists in the past two weeks who tried to leave the country. And one of the argument I heard quite often was that actually I'm not in danger right now, but I cannot use the software anymore. So my, completely my financial, I cannot evolve financially because I cannot walk anymore. And I mean, we like, we strongly rely on certain set of softwares like, I don't know, for instance, having access to Adobe products is really crucial for a lot of artists. And we are very used to pay like six euros a month to have that access, but it's one company. And like either a state can decide to sanction it or the company itself can decide to sanction it. And that made me realize again, how important it is to have knowledge on piracy maybe in a certain way. That's also what you said about like learning the dark web. And on the other hand, it's really important to keep on evolving or like developing open source softwares even if there is like a, like a main product. Let's say that's really good. It's important to have that open source development going on. And I was wondering if that's actually something that, oh, what's your opinion about that? Should that be part of cultural funding actually? Or should that be part of like cultural education to a certain degree? Because right now it's not as far as I see. Do you want to react to that? Yeah, I think definitely. It should be part of fundings to make sure that everyone has equipment to, like, yeah, to be digitally. And I guess that's a very special topic you, or what do you say, example that you addressed there? But the other thing you said that it should be should it be in the training? And definitely, so my expertise is not visual art or that's performing arts. And of course, to perform, to film something that are performed live, it that needs good skills to do. And if this is something that performing artists needs to do in the future, it should definitely be a part of their education because it's hard, as I said, it's hard to become a filmmaker from one day to another. And that is basically what you need to be. You need to understand how you can make the virtual experience and use the digital equipment as you are addressing also in the other conversation. I'll respond to you about how as much as it's, you know, difficult to be a filmmaker, this event is purely being manipulated by one screen and a bunch of these robotic situations. So I find that quite fascinating and sophisticated as technology that's succeeding probably to create a very advanced documentation of this event. So I think technology people will argue otherwise, even though I'm not saying that making is easy or anything, but to go to your question, I basically think that, yeah, you're talking about policy and advocacy, and I think that, yeah, if culture institutions could make it a priority to, because the question is really about private companies. So Adobe, for example, would, you know, what is, who can convince Adobe to stop being a private company and, you know, and share their resources with everybody, you know? That's the question. I'm sure somebody can and who is that person and how can we, and if a bunch of, you know, cultural workers, especially supporting the visual arts and what to come together and push for that, I'm sure they could offer Adobe a deal that would work out, you know, it's just a matter of if we can actually convene to allow that to happen. We, you know, I feel like this is that question of hierarchy, you know, people in the position of power are just not here, or maybe they are, but, you know, oftentimes it's like, those are the important people, and I feel like everybody else, you know, the artist usually, and everybody around the artists are always like, yeah, we should do this and we should do this, and it's like falling on deaf ears usually, you know? So this is a good platform for that kind of thing, I think, to, and it's important, again, to just pass it forward for us to kind of hold on to these practices, to call people out, to call your friends out, but not in a, don't like disown them, just, you know, we need to grow together and support each other to evolve. But maybe that's also a space for artistic projects, like one that comes to mind is Collectivize, Facebook that Jonastal initiated some Dutch-based artist, visual performing performance artist. He started this project and he has different gatherings taking place in different spaces, trying to collectivize what we own by don't own, meaning all of the content that we put to Facebook, and he tries to hijack it. And it's one of the main, let's say, features of his artistic practices. Maybe that's one of the examples or initiatives that we could learn from. Is there any reaction to it? Hello. My name is Hilde Hütte. I work for Teen, for theater in for Finland. I'm a male, white fin. I still have some hair in my head. I have a beard. I'm dressing mostly red now. And he or him, because even we in Finnish language, we don't have, we have only one sex. It's Hannah. I'm on my seventies, which means that I have a totally analog background. And Henke was talking, giving us an example from Kirkenes. Appi mentioned the project called Correspondence, and Marta told about Magda in Warsaw, about fake news and these kinds of things. So the main skill that combines all this is the combination skills. Even we are in a digital or analog world, how to communicate. And because I'm representing theater or performing arts, the communication is more and more important in performing arts. If we are talking about participatory performances, if we are talking about immersive theater, if we are talking about such specific works, so they are full of communication with audiences, with local artists. So how to learn more and develop communication? Absolutely. I mean, I completely agree. The communication and managing people, and this kind of makes me think about my artistic practice more than my cultural practice in the sense that it's constantly playing with behavioral culture and finding ways to, yeah, think otherwise about how a situation can be. For example, I've been working for many years on a project called the Silent Dinners, run by Honi Ryan, an Australian artist. And it's really just that. It's a silent dinner that you have with a bunch of people that you maybe don't know in advance. Usually you don't know them. And what happens there is completely other. And this is actually an experiment in communication. And this is an artistic project that allows for so many other ways of communicating that emerge, which are not, it's uncanny because it's not like, you're okay, how are we gonna improve our communication? It's a bit like, what if you remove communication from the moment and create and focus on how else we're communicating without language? The hierarchies are shifting completely. But yeah, I think, I mean, I would just agree with you. I think that's a very astute observation that it has. In fact, I was thinking recently that all the money that I've made in my life, like everything that I've ever been paid for, ultimately, predominantly has been for my English language skills. It's because I write well and I speak well and I articulate myself well. And it's like, and this is just how it all boils down to this. So I think you're really right. I mean, yeah. No, it's okay. I don't need to respond to that. I totally agree. It's very important. Yeah. I saw that there is another question or comment in the room. I'm not sure. Thank you. Hi, I'm Laura Gangasnemi from the Performance Arts Center in Finland. And I have a, my question is two-fold, but it has to do with the other side of the occasion. It's just the audience, I think. And in your experience, as we all know, the online audience has a very short attention span. And have you noticed that the change in the medium and space as we move partially, at least, into the digital agora? Does it change the medium and expression of the art itself? And because the audience is, audience reach is potentially bigger, but does it lack interconnection between the artist and the audience? And are there new audience qualities that might compensate for that? And secondly, maybe, especially directed at Hege, that in your experience, can live and performance art, as it is now, ever truly be transformed into digital space when the connection between live audience and the artist is not there or is at least drastically different? And it would be interesting hearing if you have any good experiences when that has been successfully made. And yeah. Yeah, as we had a meeting before this event, and I told these guys that, for me, it's kind of hard to stand here in this and talk about all the good things about being digital, because I represent an art form that really only exists live. So of course, there are good examples that we, that he has a potential, but I wouldn't say that I have myself experienced very good performance digitally today that I could say this is the way to do it, I think, but I guess it's a potential there to develop it. And there's a lot of new technology like VR that could be used to make it more, to give the experience more, to have more quality. So I can't give you any good examples, I would say today, but of course, the thing that we see is that there's a lot of, especially the theater institutions, because they have a lot of money, you know? So in the pandemic, many of them have experience with streaming their performances and have actually reached a huge, much broader audience. And of course, that would be very interesting for them, but it's also a study, I think it's Wolf Brown that has a, have a study, they have studied the audience experience. And the thing I found interesting with that audience, that research is that they also point out that the audience also need to have good technology equipment if they're going to have a good experience. So if you're going to sit home at your, watch a performance at the television, it needs to be a very good quality. If not, they won't have a good experience. So that would be, the artist should have a good equipment to make the, to do the digital, the virtual travel, but also the audience needs to have a good equipment to enjoy it and to have a good experience. Can I add to that? I would just like to add an example because basically I have a friend, her name is Zerik Emma, then she goes by the Monica Slowspin and she's a musician and a visual artist. And I witnessed her hosting a workshop as she's a sound artist basically in this context. And she hosted a workshop on Zoom. So the point of what I'm trying to say here is the size of the group online. So she hosted a workshop for like five people or something. And I happened to tune it, tune in, but this was a slightly longer, like they were all engaged a bit longer than me. I had just came in to see my friend play a show and it was just a sound meditation. And what I witnessed there within like a 40 minutes set that she played, it was just music, tech-wise, she, because I called her later and said, how did you get your sound functioning and stuff? And she said, actually, I didn't even have to, I tried a few things and I ditched the technology of plugging my sound into the Zoom and sending it like that. In fact, I just played it in my space and let my computer take it. And I realized that worked out best for me. So she went with the low tech version, but it was really, it was so powerful. These people in the workshop were then feedbacking, saying like, you, I've never had the room to feel these, and the way that she set up the sound bath it was for, it was an emotional space that she created for people to really feel through the sound and stuff. And it was shocking. I was shocked to see how moved people were by this experience. And I was like, whoa, okay. So my friend is a contemporary shaman, making spiritual sound baths by, you know, and I just found this really fascinating how effective it was. And I think a lot of that has to do with the size of the group and the engagement of the group. Whereas if I think if it was a big broadcast, then you just have people coming in and out. Thanks so much to both of you for reacting to that. I saw there is another question. How come? Not really, no. Can we exchange? Yes, yes. Yeah, now it works. Leticia, I am a consultant based in London. I am middle age, mid 40s, short white, a short gray, not white yet, but it will come. Short hair, jacket, what else she and her. Interestingly, that you mentioned the low tech and the frugal sort of approach to digital. I'm interested to hear what's your take on the digital well-being, the notion of digital well-being and how it affects our relationship to time. How, I mean, for many of us with care, responsibility, the pandemic hasn't been a time where we could relax the, not only obviously the homeschooling and all the invasion of other responsibilities we had, but also the how the digital, the working through digital has really expanded our working time, potentially the invasion of work on our daily life. So how it impacts our mental well-being, but also our physical well-being, we've changed posture, we're all curving down from the virtual column. I'm doing yoga aside, and that's very important notion. And but also how digital well-being also affects our relationship to time in an accelerated mode in a sort of like vein quest of catching up with innovation. And I feel that, I mean, there are, obviously there's a really technical innovation that we need to get right if we want to produce really good content. But meanwhile, it puts a lot of pressure on a sector, on a sector, a cultural sector or every sector to sort of catching up with digital innovation that we will never really, I mean, completely master, right? So there are constantly these sort of buzzwords that are coming in. So now it's the metaverse two, three years ago was the blockchain, and then before it was the VR. So we all like, so it is a question of generation, obviously, so we talk a lot about the digital pressure on children, how interacting only through screens modify their brain development. We talk a lot about all the elderly people and how they are not equipped mentally with engaging with digital. But I think it concerns also all, I mean, all generation and how the, yeah, the acceleration of time is inevitably producing, and Nova is inevitably participating in a capitalist over-prediction notion of time. We have really last two and a half minutes to react to that, would you like? Okay, I can take that, that's fine. The, I think that the paradox has existed before. I think the acceleration movement has existed before the COVID and everything. So, and then the reason I call it the paradox is because there's something to be said about the fact that I can speak very quickly and when I can speak to you very quickly then our ideas can move really quickly and grow really quickly and we can build something quite quickly. And that is a very easy, lovely space for a lot of us, especially in language barriers, we'll speak in French because we can and it's easier as soon as we know we can. And on the flip side, there's the slow care, which like now we really have to care for everybody and allow for more spaces for care. So, I mean, it's a very basic answer is, I think we're all aware of it, but we need to implement it more as balance. It's really about balance and really caring because, and also I think it's cyclical. I think that, you know, soon it will become really way more important to be disconnected and for the kids to have a really spent time playing with real toys and this kind of thing, you know, and it will come back around for sure. And it's, or maybe it never really left. I definitely think, you know, we don't need to build cyborgs. I think we need to stay in touch with the real world, with the natural world. Thank you so much for sharing that. It immediately made me think of the shamanism, all the kind of cyber shamanism that you were describing. Maybe that's also the way to experience different pace. I'm afraid we really need to wrap up now. So, just wanted to say thank you, Abhi, thank you, Haga, for this conversation. And I really hope it's just the beginning. I will not dare to conclude anything. We are definitely not in the moment to have any conclusions, but what I just would love to underline as a kind of main takeaway from this conversation, a proposal for the further food for thought, is that to think about the digital space as a very political one all the time, it's never enough of saying and voicing that out and explaining and articulating it this way. And then understanding from which perspective the politicality unfolds in which way would be a super interesting next step. Thank you so much for that, Marie. Thank you very much for this free of view and for this very rich panel and also for all the questions that were raised. We have also more than 55 people following us online, so which is great, like very attentive audience. There was no specific question, but there were like some comments. And I would just say too, because I think it's important to share them. One of the recommendation, and I guess it goes in line with what you are saying, artists needs to be in the same place as leaders of funding organization and come up with realistic and practical roadmap. So also in line with the topic of professional development program, but not only. And there was also a special request to maybe for the next maybe edition. And I guess it falls very right with the next edition that we will hear about tonight for the cultural mobility series to focus also very much on the African context in some of digital professional development program. And I would like to highlight that online, we have André Le Roux from South Africa who wrote also an article on the experimentation of a digital mobility fund for musician in South Africa and it's in the cultural mobility yearbook. So I just wanted also to share that in a way on behalf of the group that is following us online. Thank you very much once again. You have a good one hour break. We come back at 1.30 PM time in Finland and we will move to a related topic, digital mobility still, but more from the perspective on environmental sustainability. Thank you very much. Thank you.