Night on Earth

GENERAL CONCEPT:
Night on Earth -
Connecting Urban Art Scenes in Berlin, Helsinki and Shanghai
Concept paper by Jani Joenniemi, Tuomas Laitinen and Mika Hannula

INTRODUCTION
Night On Earth - Connecting Urban Arts Scenes in Berlin, Helsinki and Shanghai is an innovative new project, which connects together a series of urban arts events in Berlin, Shanghai and Helsinki during the spring and summer of 2008. The idea is to generate creative interaction between artists and public both in each of these locations but also in-between the sites.
This series of intertwined events is an international co-production that is based on the current chance and challenge of building networks between these three growing and rising cities. They are chances and challenges that we seek to activate and evaluate. The series of events borrows its title from a contemporary ﬁlm classic, Jim Jarmuschʼs ﬁlm where events are taking place simultaneously in different parts of the world but events which are then poetically and thematically tied together. The task is to connect cultural activists and participants in a fashion that will create new chances for producing works, collaborative efforts, communication and distribution.

In each of the three cities Night On Earth events will be presented during a concentrated two-week period of time. There will be exhibitions of contemporary art combined with club nights where DJs and live acts perform in interaction with VJs and visual artists. There will be a carefully planned and executed interaction between the visual means and the sound landscapes within each cityʼs contextualized situation. Each location will have its own content-driven speciﬁc focus.
In Berlin, the focus is more on site-speciﬁc works that take place in the cutting edge, which unites the public and the private spheres. In Shanghai, our focus will be on media based works, concentrating on living images done and presented in wide variety of ways. Helsinki will bridge these both approaches while highlighting the results of the whole process.

Night On Earth will function as a platform for a great diversity of urban music and visual art. The festival aims to build closer ties and enhance communication between the urban arts scenes in East Asia and Europe. The aim of the three-part event is to build up and to develop a new type of a network that brings together the artists and producers in these three different scenes and cities. It will be a network based on shared interest and aims of dialogue and collaboration.

ARTISTS
Night On Earth will feature a mix of both upcoming and acclaimed artists from the European and East Asian urban music and visual art scenes. The focus is on artists whose work is fruitfully and creatively crossing the formal borders of different means of communication. They are artists whose works are no longer about what they do, but how they do it - combining different working methods and styles. We will support experimental artists looking for new contacts and connections.
The festival will be build around a core group of artist from each city in question. This core group will be presented in all the events and hence creating a creative and meaningful link between the internationally spreading festival. In addition to the core group of artist the festival will feature more local artists in each of the festival cities making each happening unique.

SCHEDULE
The ﬁrst Night On Earth will take place in Berlin in April 2008 as a part of inter-disciplinary Helsinki-Woche project. Second part will be organized in June 2008 prior to the Beijing Olympics in Shanghai and third part in Helsinki late summer /early autumn.

WEB PLATFORM
The Night On Earth events will be linked with an innovative web/mobile platform reﬂecting the different Night On Earth club nights and exhibitions. The platform works as a link and experience exchanging channel between the different internationally spreading events and urban arts scenes. Both the Night On Earth events and the web platform support each other by providing greater visibility for both: the festival events provide content for the platform and give Night On Earth a local presence and relevance in the festival cities. The platforms role is to provide international visibility for the festival and a channel for urban arts that reaches far beyond the festival events and the boundaries of the website. The platform sets out to be an real urban arts forum and community that will inspire both artists and audience to share their thoughts and arts projects with others by posting video, images and comments on the site.

LONG TERM
The long-term goal is to make Night On Earth a well-known brand for the dialogue between Europe and China and a platform for communication and exchange between the different urban music and arts scenes. Our claim is that there is an evident need and also a possibility for such a network that stems up from grass-roots levels of cultural activist. An innovative network that grows and develops through each event, accumulating cultural capital and experiences in international events and collaborations. A network that is based on the same aim and interest and which is developed through sharing experiences and knowledge, and, hopefully, leading to speciﬁc sites and situations of sustainable conditions of cultural production.
Night On Earth festival and its web platform aims to become an important critical and reﬂective forum generating communities and networks between the visual arts and music scenes of East Asia and Europe. It aims to activate and to deepen understanding and tolerance between different sites and cultures.

MAIN PRODUCTION
Myymälä2 (www.myymala2.com) (FIN)
Jani Joenniemi, Mika Hannula, Tuomas Laitinen
CO-PRODUCTION
BERLIN:
Berlin-China Cultural Bridges (www.berlin-china-bridge.com), Anne Rottig (GER)
Trinity Concerts (www.trinityconcerts.de), Martin Rabitz (GER)

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