Ivor Stodolsky, co-founder and co-director Perpetuum Mobile (PM), Artists at Risk (AR) and Ecologists at Risk (ER)
Ivor Stodolsky is co-founder, co-director and curator of Perpetuum Mobile (PM), Artists at Risk (AR) and Ecologists at Risk (ER) with Marita Muukkonen. He is an internationally active curator, writer and theorist. He received joint honours in Philosophy and Mathematics at Bristol University and completed his MRes at the London Consortium (Birkbeck, Tate, BFI, ICA). His doctoral research at Helsinki University was centred on the Russian cultural underground of the 80s and 90s. During his time in academia, he was a CIMo and Ehrenrooth Fellow and worked for several years at the Alexander Institute. Prior to this, he worked in global media as Associate Editor of Project Syndicate, “The World’s Opinion Page”. Earlier he co-founded alternative art projects and spaces in London, Vienna and St. Petersburg. Today, aside from curating and institution-building, Ivor is an editor and contributor to journals and publications and a speaker on art, politics and philosophy.
Ivor has curated exhibitions and events at international biennials including the Arts Assembly (Manifesta, Murcia 2009), the Perpetual Pavilion (Venice Biennale 2009), the Street Art Assembly (Ekaterinburg Biennale 2012), Re-Aligned+Media Impact (Moscow Biennale 2013), the School of the Displaced (Kiev Biennial, 2015) and the AR Pavilion (Athens Biennale, 2017), along with participation as a speaker at others, including Dak’Art (Senegal, 2016). Museum shows include “The Raw, The Cooked and the Packaged – The Archive of Perestroika Art” at Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki (2007), “Re-Aligned Art from Russian, Ukraine and Belarus” at Tromsø Kunstforening (2013) and the series “Outside Insiders– Pluriculturalism in Contemporary Art and Culture” at Moderna Museet Malmö (2013-2014). In public space, Ivor has curated events such as “Re-Public – Russian Art in the Streets” (Kiasma, Urb Festival 2013), and the 10-day “To the Square 2” (Checkpoint Helsinki/Helsinki Festival, 2014) and “Safe European Home” (Hungaricum, Berlin, 2014). He has also contributed to galleries and art-spaces such as Another Vacant Space (2009), Momentum (Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin 2014) and Forum Box (Helsinki 2014). He has taught and held workshops at academies including CAFA (Beijing 2011), Aalto University (Helsinki 2011) and the Beaux-Arts (Paris 2012).
Currently, Ivor Stodolsky’s curatorial practice centres on Artists at Risk (AR), a Perpetuum Mobilezation (PM). PM develops larger-scale thematic projects and platforms that encompass exhibitions, conferences, workshops, residencies, publications and films relating to art, politics and philosophy. Recently, he curated the symposium “Institutions and Resistance – Alliances for Art at Risk” with Marita Muukkonen, Peter Weibel
Teresa Retzer and Philipp Ziegler at the Center for Art and Media | ZKM Karlsruhe. Academic articles include A Multi-Lectic Anatomy of Stiob and Poshlost’, and art-related publications include The Raw, The Cooked and The Packaged – The Archive of Perestroika Art, Paths Not Taken, The Square, and recent articles such as 21st Century Re-Alignments in Art and Politics.
Ongoing thematic projects include the Re-Aligned Project, with over ten iterations including Helsinki, Berlin, Moscow, Tromso, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Yekaterinburg, Moscow, Edinburgh, Cairo; the Perpetual Romani Pavilion with iterations in Venice 2009, Berlin 2013, Moderna Malmö 2014-2015; the Arts Assembly with iterations in Helsinki, Manifesta 8, Moscow Biennale, Ekaterinburg Biennale; Sino-Fi at CAFA, SIWA, CAA; the PM Commons Collection; PLURIiversity in Helsinki neighbourhoods; and the Artists at Risk(AR) Pavilion, with AR Pavilions in Athens 2017, Istanbul 2017 and Madrid 2017, Berlin 2018 and Helsinki 2019.
Artists at Risk (AR) is a network-institution providing residencies for threatened art-practitioners initiated by PM in 2013. The AR-Safe Haven Helsinki residency for visual art practitioners and musicians at risk secured funding and gained national recognition, winning the “Annual Art Act Award” at ArtHelsinki in 2016. AR has launched new residencies in Athens in collaboration with the Athens Biennial; in Berlin in collaboration with SAVVY Contemporary; at Saari Residence in Mynamäki, Finland; and Wysing Art Centre, near Cambridge, UK. AR-residencies in Rome, Abidjan, Tunis, Barcelona and a total of 12 different localities are being developed. AR received the Finnish State Thematic Prize in 2017. Artists at Risk (AR) platform was in 2016 honoured with the “European Citizen’s Prize” (Civi Europaeo Praemium) of the European Parliament.
