A travel report from the Arts and Culture Magazine Publishers Forum’s network activities in Helsinki and Tallinn. The Forum is a network connecting contemporary art and culture magazine publishers in the Baltic and Nordic countries: A Shade Colder (Estonia), Artnews.lt and Echo Gone Wrong (Lithuania), EDIT (Finland), Kunstkritikk (the Nordics), Art in Iceland (Iceland) and WunderKombinats (Latvia). The trip took place on 19-22 November 2024. The participants in the Forum were Vitalija Jasaitė, Danutė Gambickaitė, Keiu Krikmann, Rosa Kuosmanen, Viivi Poutiainen, Sanna Lipponen, Eva Lín Vilhjalmsdottir, Hólmar Hólm, Mariann Enge and Elina Kempele.

The network aims to continue and establish new and close working relationships between publishers and writers, to better disseminate critical writing and artistic creation in the region, and to share knowledge and experience about working practices, in order to tackle the challenges of cultural publishing, and look for solutions together, highlighting and supporting emerging voices.

Travelling as an art critic, along with ten editors and publishers of art magazines from Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Iceland, could easily be a dream or a nightmare. After all, (art) publishers tend to have a reputation for big egos and possibly snobbishness. On the other hand, being able to attend several exhibitions over the course of three days in November 2024 and discuss all artsy things with ten people from different backgrounds who precisely love to analyse, decorticate, criticise and praise all things cultural sounded exciting to me. Not to mention the geographical variety of backgrounds, which always makes things more interesting, especially considering that the connection between the Nordic and Baltic countries became a red thread through our conversations. As a French person living in Norway, I love to see how the Nordic/Baltic ties play out in the contemporary world, between historical antagonisms, shared struggles and cultural (mis)understandings. There is often as much that divides these countries as there is that unites them, which makes the dialogue between them fascinating to follow.

The reason for me joining this trip was to take part in this budding network of art editors and critics as a writer, with the larger aim of the Forum to diversify the pool of critics and expand the network. I found this a noble and useful mission. So I accepted my fly-on-the-wall position, watching the network grow in front of my eyes, listening to, and participating in, rather unanimous discussions about the state of art publishing in the region.

At this point, I should say that the magazines we are talking about are all independent, high quality, and low funding, with the exception of Estonia’s A Shade Colder, which won a government grant competition to be published for the next few years. The lack of public and private funding was quite naturally a big topic of conversation, as printed publications have been impacted massively by the decline of printed magazine and newspaper sales, and online magazines face the dilemma of putting articles behind a paywall to secure some revenue, but thereby limiting access, or going for free content, which in turn requires alternative funding. Most of the editors around me had other jobs, at art centres, cultural institutions or writing for other newspapers, to pay the bills. Recruiting writers was another topic, as the pay is low and the good old days of ‘I would publish an article for free for the sake of the publication’s reputation and associated glory’ are long gone. Norway was collectively voted as the best country in terms of funding for art publications, although Kunstkritikk, the Nordic magazine with its main office in Oslo, has also been hit by the difficult times.

During a meeting with Maria Arusoo, the director of the Center For Contemporary Art Estonia, there was talk of how private foundations make a huge difference in funding art and what we could call the free press, although most media outlets are still state funded, and I learnt that in Finland it’s the elevator manufacturer Kone that distinguishes itself by its generous contribution to the arts through the Kone Foundation created in 1956.

Even more interestingly, Arusoo told us of the instrumental role the Soros Foundation played in the Baltic, and how it created the CCA in 1992. George Soros is a Hungarian-American self-made financier and philanthropist who was born in 1930 and made his fortune primarily in hedge funds and currency speculation. In 1979 he laid the grounds for the Soros Foundation, which initially sponsored scholarships for Black South Africans under apartheid. It then developed into the Open Society Foundations, established 1984, which aim to promote democracy, human rights and education.

The OSF played an active role in the Baltic States at the fall of the Iron Curtain, by notably funding civil society organisations, promoting free elections, and supporting independent media. The OSF also pushed for the revival of cultural identity post-Soviet rule, not only with the creation of the CCA, but also for example with the Open-Society Fund-Lithuania, of which the mission is to make Lithuania open to the world’s heritage of culture and knowledge, and the Baltic-American Partnership Fund (BAPF), which has provided multiple grants to art initiatives and institutions.

In this vein, it was very interesting to hear Maria Arusoo, as well as Keiu Krikmann, the editor of A Shade Colder (published by the CCA), discuss the identity crisis that the art scene in Estonia went through in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They described the energy and appeal shrouding Estonia and the Baltic States in the aftermath of the Cold War, with Western investors and art collectors rediscovering this part of the world and proclaiming it exotic and therefore of great interest. But as the newness factor faded and prices increased, making Estonia much more similar to its Western neighbours, Arusoo summarised: ‘We are not exotic enough any more, nor cheap enough.’ The Latvian and Lithuanian editors nodded approvingly.

The Finns were clearly sympathetic to their Baltic counterparts when it came to Soviet domination, as Finland was a grand duchy in the Russian Empire from 1809 until its independence in 1917. And that history has left a bitter mark. As the editor Viivi Poutiainen told me, it is still not a good idea to joke about Lenin in the presence of older Finns. However, the revival of the cultural identity in Finland took place a century ago, and the geographical position and ties of Finland to Scandinavia make it more steadily attractive to tourists, art audiences and investors.

This dissimilarity, between Finland’s stable and self-assured (albeit darkly cynical) status, and the Baltic’s ongoing struggle for cultural differentiation and promotion, felt quite visible in the exhibitions and institutions we visited. In Tallinn, there was a clear DIY, edgy, strong energy oozing from places as established as the CCA, and as punk as the EKKM (Center For Contemporary Art Estonia). In Tallinn, we met editors from Müürileht (Aleksander Tsapov), kunst.ee (Andreas Trossek) and Sirp (Juhan Raud); the three were all tired-looking men who obviously worked too much for too little pay, but they shared the same desire to stimulate free expression, to celebrate critical thinking, and to challenge the status quo. The EKKM in particular made for an energising visit, with its artist-run and queer-punk vibes backed by solid curation, as evidenced by the arresting show on display when we visited, the solo exhibition by the avant-garde artist Ene-Liis Semper (more on this later). On the other side of the Gulf of Finland, we saw lavish contemporary art exhibitions in Helsinki, noticeably backed by big money, but there was a certain lethargy and conformity that is reminiscent of the Scandinavian art scene in general.

Nonetheless, big money and Scandinavian aesthetics can still rhyme with excellent exhibitions. That was proven by the solo show by the Palestinian-Danish artist Larissa Sansour at Amos Rex in the heart of Helsinki, Amos Rex being another example of the main role of foundations, as it is largely funded by the Amos Anderson Art Museum Foundation.

The new location of Amos Rex in Lasipalatsi, a ‘cave’ turned into a vast underground modular art space, seemed to have been made for Sansour’s exhibition: the cavernous high-ceilinged labyrinth led the audience along seven video and installation works, for a combined duration of 92 minutes, retracing Sansour’s exploration of trauma, memory and speculative futures.

The technical qualities of the installation were splendid, with the very high-quality (and expensive) audio and video set-up creating a perfectly immersive environment for Sansour’s stunning cinematic video works. In addition to the carefully crafted videos which, frankly, left me enthralled, I should also mention the installation Monument for Lost Time (2019). As I rounded the corner to find it, the massive black orb seemed to jump out from the darkness of the exhibition hall, and as I moved to face it from different angles, it looked as if it was eerily returning my gaze. The five-metre sphere is composed of fiberglass and steel, and coated with a deep black pigment, which gives it a void-like appearance. It was both a captivating and sensual experience to be in the presence of this vision of space, installed on a floor comprised of hand-painted tiles crafted by artisans in Nablus (West Bank, Palestine).

Back to Tallinn: we witnessed another striking exhibition, also a solo exhibition, also by a female artist, and also impressive in its scenography and use of space, evoking personal and collective trauma; but the comparison ends here. The solo show by Ene-Liis Semper at the EKKM is rough, at times uncomfortable, and radically avant-garde, even to this day, when it sometimes feels that everything has been said and done. It is never provocative for the sake of it, but rather uncompromising, revealing still-pervasive gender norms and body constraints, dealing blows to our consumerist and commercialised society, but also using strong visual elements to question our psychological experience of our surroundings. The artist and the curating team used the building to its fullest, placing Semper’s works in the nooks and crannies of the historically rich building. Indeed, the EKKM is a not-for-profit organisation that offers free entry to its museum, and which is housed in a former heating plant (Tallinn Old Power Station) that it first squatted in before being officially allowed by the municipality to use it.

These were the highlights of the trip, to which I can add a memorable snow-slush-storm that hit us on our first (and only) day in Helsinki, which gave way to a beautiful blue sky and crisp air as we crossed by ferry to Tallinn. (Was the Weather Goddess trying to tell us something?)

Arts and Culture Magazine Publishers Forum is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture.