A Decentralised Festival
The 19th edition of Pixelache Festival explores the theme of distributed systems and decentralized models for organizing society, technology, and creative practice. Through exhibitions, performances, workshops, and talks, we examine how peer-to-peer networks, commons-based approaches, and collective intelligence can help address ecological and social challenges.
Curatorial Framework Turmoil
In 2025, Pixelache is organising a series of events as part of an art festival under a shared theme: Turmoil. Turmoil explores different struggles and practices of resistance against capitalism, neocolonialism and neofascism with diverse local and international communities, artists, thinkers, and activists. We asked members and collaborating institutions to propose their emergent project ideas concerning the contemporary as an event/program for the festival where they can discuss and share critical questions, strategies, and values with the public through various programs and diverse practices, including but not limited to workshops, lectures, film screenings, audiovisual performances.
Background
Fascism excludes people of diverse backgrounds such as gender minorities, immigrants, people of colour, and ethnic minorities under violent nationalism and Western primacy. Neo-capitalism has exploited and destroyed nature as resources for the accumulation of capital. Resisting against those oppressions, how can art events mediate the diverse background of people’s struggles? Can artistic tools and strategies create space for diversity and practice solidarity? In a collective state of turmoil, how can we assemble and resist in the face of fascism, patriarchy, nationalism, and capitalism through mediums such as technology and media?
Aim
Turmoil aims to construct a communal space where different subjects’ memories, recovery, healing, reparation, and solidarity will be addressed and put in circulation. The programme will encompass a series of events that produce critical discourse about colonial memories and alienated life. It unfolds subversive and dissident stories from different cultures by expressing the meaning of resistance and challenge, through creative responses around destruction, human rights, and cultural diversity in a communal city.
Programme
Turmoil explores different struggles and practices of resistance through various public programs and diverse practices, including but not limited to workshops, lectures, film screenings, and audiovisual performances.
Students of Art School Maa and Pixelache organize I thought the earth remembered me, a contemporary art event series pondering questions around digital storage and memory. Art School Maa, Myymälä2-gallery and the caves of Suomenlinna. Project Coordinator: Irina Mutt (Irene Ruiz Perez)
Shadow will showcase how, on a personal level, confronting and expressing repressed elements of one-self can serve as acts of resistance. Project Coordinator: Ahmed Barakat
Monuments engages with public monuments and memorial sculptures in the context of Helsinki and questions how societies choose to commemorate their past. Project Coordinator: Emma Hovi. Production Assistant: Jon Irigoyen
build a larger table proposes dinner gatherings with Helsinki grassroots associations and collectives to discuss strategies, tools and challenges of collective organisation within the capital, in collaboration with Station of Commons and lumbung radio online platforms. Project Coordinators: Irina Mutt, Mathilde Palenius
House4Resistance 𝐇.𝐎.𝐌.𝐄 (𝐇ᵒˡᵈⁱⁿᵍ 𝐎ᵘʳ 𝐌ᵉᵐᵒʳⁱᵉˢ 𝐄ᵛᵉʳʸᵈᵃʸ) is a series of events that explores the home as a living archive of diasporic memory, bonding, care and ways of being. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘢 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘪𝘵, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳? Across four weekends in November 2025, artists are invited to open their homes in Helsinki as intimate spaces for holding grief, pleasure, and solidarity. Through collective cooking, sewing, listening, and reimagining, everyday gestures and rituals that anchor us become practices of home-making, community care and resistance against a world that increasingly urges assimilation. The project was initiated and curated by Phan Nguyen
