Workshop by Saša Nemec
The artist Saša Nemec will conduct an artistic digitization and historization workshop on the cultural heritage of the Suvilahti area and the recently closed-down Hanasaari Power plant.
The participants of the workshop will familiarise themselves with the artist’s work in the field of so-called “artistic digitization”—a term she coined herself. Her practice positions digitization (the conversion, processing, and storage of objects, images, sounds, or signals into binary code) as a means of preserving not only tangible cultural heritage objects but also intangible heritage itself. Drawing on open-access photographic and textual archives, documentary photography, 3D scanning, open-access geographic and geodetic maps, 3D rendering, computer-aided design and fabrication, and video projections, the artist creates new networks of objects and projections that combine to form new artworks. Through this work, she preserves cultural heritage—particularly the intangible—and presents the digitization of (intangible) cultural heritage as a way to preserve and engage with a past that is often unsettling, as well as its consequences in the present.
The aim of the workshop is to create a small digitization archive of the Suvilahti and Hanasaari area.
The participants are asked to bring:
- – mobile phone with capabilities of access to the internet (web browser with access to Wikipedia and Europeana.com)
- – mobile phone with capabilities for photo, video and sound capture
- OR photo camera, video camera and a ZOOM recording device
The workshop will last up to 3 h and will be held outside, the starting point of the workshop will be in front of Tiivistämö, Kaasutehtaankatu 1, 00580 Helsinki. Please be prepared for windy or rainy weather.
About the artist:
Saša Nemec’s (*1986, Nova Gorica) practice spans between exploration of new technologies and the use of age-old techniques – from creating garments with 3D scanning technology to mending a loose button.
Most visible is her textile-based research with the Repair-a-thon (2016 -) project and continued phygital textile research with the Threading (2018 -) project. Her digital explorations further steer towards artistic digitisation of cultural heritage with the project The Flickering Paths of Coal (2023, 2024), Hanasaari Power Plant 1909 – 2023 (2024), and Mercurial Threads (2025).
More information about the artist and her work: www.sasanemec.work
