PARTICIPANT INFO
This page is for KUBU 2025 Summer Exhibition & Program participants.
https://kubu.fi/artist
(last update: May 14, 2025)
What is in this document:
• Welcome to KUBU
• How to get to KUBU
• Accommodation Info
• Food and Drink Provisions
• Invoicing Info
• Quick Update on Marketing
• Meeting Schedules
• General Programme Briefing
Welcome to KUBU!
In advance of your trip, we have prepared some guidance for how to get to the house and some support to prepare for your trip. We advise when coming to visit or work at KUBU that you prepare for staying on site. So bring what you need for work and pleasure.
KUBU (Kulturhus Björkboda) is located in rural Southwest Finland The Archipelago Sea is a part of the Baltic Sea between the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland and the Sea of Åland. While the island is connected to the mainland of Finland and close to areas of outstanding natural beauty, access to it and to supermarkets, bars, restaurants and other amenities when on the island is not possible without a car, bike and/or other modes of transport.
KUBU is also a former school house. The architecture and atmosphere of the house is still very much like a school. Hundreds on the island have been educated within its walls and so close to the hearts and minds of some of our local audience. In transforming the site into a space for catering too and supporting local cultural production and creative expression, our audience are our local residents, senior citizens, families and young people.
In establishing KUBU in 2022, we have spent the last few years building up the local audience. 2025 marks the first year, to explicitly work in an international manner. Moving into this new phase, we see KUBU as an opportunity for rural retreat. Sitting outside of the dominant norms of the urban gaze, we see it as a space for testing, sharing and showing new and existing work with local and other professional communities.
We look forward to your visit! Below are some practical guidelines relating to your stay, including invoicing, contracts, marketing and the programme brief.
How to get to KUBU
Below directions are orientated towards those traveling from aboard, public transport and/or by car. Notice, the region is bilingual, with swedish speaking majority over finnish speaking, place names have the swedish version first, few important examples:
Kimitoön = Kemiönsaari (the island)
Kimito = Kemiö
Dalsbruk = Taalintehdas
KUBU’s address:
Kulturhus Björkboda
Smedskullavägen 3
FI-25860 Björkboda
info@kubu.fi
From abroad
When planning a visit to KUBU from abroad, options for travel are by air, land and ferry. From northern Europe, take a train via Copenhagen to Stockholm and day or night ferry to Turku and bus to KUBU (see https://www.sales.vikingline.com). If you fly, Turku airport is the closest (1h drive, 1h30 by bus) and small and effortless Airport. From Helsinki airport, you can look for a bus connection to Salo or Turku and follow the guide below.
By train+bus from Helsinki
Helsinki central railway station (address: Kaivokatu 1) has a train connection to Turku, but you get off in Salo. You can also take a bus from Helsinki to Salo, from Helsinki bus terminal in Kamppi (Urho Kekkosen katu 1). From Salo, you can take a bus to Björkboda or arrange a pickup with us. In Salo, the bus terminal is 200m from the train station (address: Vilhonkatu 11). KUBU has a busstop (Björkboda koulu) 200m from the front door.
Train tickets can be purchased from the stations, with app, or pay in train (more expensive), buy bus tickets online or from the bus bus.
From the Helsinki airport, we recommend a local train to Pasila (on stop before central station) and transfer to Helsinki – Turku train and get out in Salo as above.
Train tickets:
https://www.vr.fi/en
(Helsinki – Salo)
Bus tickets:
https://www.matkahuolto.fi/en
(Helsinki – Salo)
(Salo – Björkboda)
By bus from Turku
From Turku airport or Turku harbour (satama), take the city bus (line nr.1) to the Turku bus terminal (Linja-auto asema). You can pay the city bus with the contactless credit card (or phone/watch). From the bus terminal, there is a direct connection to KUBU (Björkboda). Turku-Björkboda tickets online or from the bus.
Turku city bus
https://www.foli.fi/en
Regional bus to KUBU:
https://www.matkahuolto.fi/en
(Turku – Björkboda)
By car / bicycle
From Helsinki, you can drive via Salo-Perniö-Kemiö or Tammisaari-Perniö-Kemiö. From Kemiö, drive/cycle 13km towards Taalintehdas on road #183. Slow down at the SEO service station and turn next left. Continue 200m. Parking is available at the front of the house. Signs for KUBU are on the road. Cyclists can take the bike via train (or bus) to Salo and cycle three different routes to the island, one with small ferry via Kokkila – Angelmniemi.
Cyclist info:
https://www.bikeland.fi/en/reitit
Island tourism info:
https://www.visitkimitoon.fi/en
Exhibition Dates:
Exhibition dates are 5.6.–31.8.20205
Press Preview Thursday 5th June 15.00
Opening Night: Thursday 5th June, 18.00-22.00
Opening hours:
Tuesday-Sunday 11-17, (Saturday 11-15), Mondays closed.
Private tours can be organised outside these hours, contact: info@kubu.fi
Entrance fee 10€
Accommodation
When you arrive at KUBU you will be greeted by the hosts Tuomo and Sari, and the KUBU team. Who will go through the house and show you to your rooms. Coffee/teas and snacks will be available when you arrive.
Provisions for sleeping on site include:
x1 self-contained studio flat and 2x single sleeping beds with working space.
x2 single sleeping beds, in annex off the main library.
Pictures from the residency
https://photos.app.goo.gl/hWaZPNBZCRt7pvwc7
As KUBU was a school house, the windows and rooms are large. Blackout curtains are installed to support sleep. Showers and accessible toilets are all on site. We provide towels.
At peak times, when the house is full. We also provide accommodation for visiting artists, workshop facilitators, performers and guests through local hotels and AirBnBs. If you do not have a car, we will drive and pick you up from your accommodation.
Food and Drink Provisions
During your stay we will offer simple breakfast ingredients (coffee/tea/cereal or toast and fruit). The house opens at 11 and has a Pop-up Café. The offerings of the café varies but usually some soup lunch is available. When working in KUBU lunch and dinner will be organised, often cooking together.
A mini kitchen is available to use (micro, fridge, stove) which is located in the library. As this is also an exhibiting and working space, we ask you to consider the activities that might be taking place here before using it. For residents we will provide a trip to local markets as needed.
**Please note: The main KUBU Cafe kitchen is not available for general use during café hours.
Contracts, invoicing & payments
Some of you have already signed a contract with us. If you need a signed contract, provide the following details for us and we can prepare the contract for you.
• artist / group name
• invoicer name (individual/company)
• invoicer street address
• VAT number if applicable
• artwork name
• insurance value
Contract template:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uGKSPLNvs2QGv4558QyMTw_ZBddql-sga4FY1GOMOTs/edit
Invoicing & payments
We have agreed compensations with all of you. When the final costs from shipping and travels are known, you can invoice us. Please check the total sum with Tuomo before invoicing. We can also do invoicing in your behalf (self billing) if you prefer.
Invoice details needs to include the following:
• KUBU 2025 summer exhibition
• Fee (as agreed)
• Travel & transportation costs (as agreed)
• Material & misc costs (as agreed)
Marketing
When the scheduling, texts and media material is cleared we start promoting artworks and the program in KUBU social media channels:
https://www.instagram.com/kulturhus_kubu/
https://www.facebook.com/kulturhuskubu
https://www.linkedin.com/company/kulturhus-kubu
https://mastodon.social/@kulturhus_kubu
https://bsky.app/profile/kulturhus-kubu.bsky.social
We’ll be making a new low-energy website that we’ll be sharing in the coming days.
In preparation for this we have collected press images from your artworks and projects:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zQo9-ry6uKs2ER5uqede_RpR-h1OvgZi
Check your own, propose better alternatives /& better resolution with photo credits.
Meetings:
Over May, Fridays 10.00-12.00 (GMT) we’ll be online for check in.
This will be an open Zoom link here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89688074973
Key Contacts:
For any practical questions, chat / email to
Tuomo Tammenpää +358 40 525 4636 (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp) / tuomo@kubu.fi
Contact on programme direction:
Teresa Dillon +44 75 424 59 251(Signal, Telegram, Whats App) teresa.dillon@polarproduce.org
General Programme Briefing
Notice, this exhibition info and schedule will be removed from here to the project microsite when finished. Do not share this page as reference to the project. This section is for fact checking and giving all particpants overview of the summer program.
THE GARDEN AND THE HEDGE
The Garden and The Hedge is Kulturhus Björkboda (KUBU) inaugural international summer exhibition and programme, developed in partnership with the artist and researcher Teresa Dillon.
Focusing on the garden and the hedge as interfaces and borderlines that shape our understanding of nature and our relationship to it, Kubu’s setting—a former school building nestled in the rural heart of the Kimitoön municipality on an island in the Archipelago Sea, Southwest Finland—provides a unique and rich context for exploring these themes.
Conceptually, gardens and hedges are deeply rooted ways of shaping and navigating earth and soil. Gardens have long symbolised idealised visions of paradise—sanctuaries that connect to the divine or serve as complex expressions of control over nature. While these spaces often reflect power, wealth, and colonial connotations, for many cultures, nature’s rich diversity was never something to be enclosed or controlled. While the hedge, the aita, in Finnish and the häck in Swedish denote ideas of fencing or partitioning. For many who work and live off the land, our relationship with the soil is much symbiotic and adaptive, where interaction with nature was seen as a continuous, call-and-response dialogue.
In 2024 the Save Soil movement warned that 95% of the Earth’s soil may be degraded by 2050. From rewilding, permaculture to carbon sequestering and improving soil vitality through our understanding of microorganisms. Contemporary soil practices now emphasise collaboration with nature rather than domination, with the hope of fostering a more caring and responsible relationship to the earth, others continue to focus on exploitation and separation.
With Kimitoön celebrating 700 years since its first recorded mention in 1325. The island’s location in the UNESCO’s Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve, and its rich histories of soil work, through iron mines, farming and fishing. KUBU is the perfect location for the inaugural international curated programme.
With 35 artistic works, performances, and workshops, the exhibition explores soil health, care, and community. It invites reflection on visible and invisible boundaries, resilience, and how we listen and respond to the land beneath us. With the exhibition, through installations, performances, workshops, and our learning programming, emphasising the importance of soil care, its environmental significance, and the ways in which it connects to our larger ecological, sociocultural and political landscapes and soil stewardship.
Exhibiting Artists:
Exhibiting works from the Finnish and Iranian art duo Kalle Hamm and Dzamil Kamanger, their projects Garden of the Undocumented (2013) delve into the connections between migration and plant life, reflecting on how gardens and hedgerows have shaped the lives of refugees and immigrants in Europe. With the works Removing Defenses (2014) and Band of Weeds (2017, 2019) exploring plants modes of perceptions and sensing. Scottish artist Constanza Dessain turns the sap of docks, sticky willies, and ragwort into prints, work In the Skin of a Meadow (2024), captures in print her tending of wildflower meadows in her home in the south of
Scotland.
Clambering outside over the Kubu roof, the Finnish-UK duo Andy Best and Merja Puustinen inflatable sculpture, Flowers of Evil/Fleurs Du Mal (2022), considers the evolution of plant morphology in response to soil contamination. Digging, organising, and rearranging soil, Finnish artist Antti Laitinen, Forest Square III (2013) emerges from the act of physically removing a section of forest, extracting its various elements—soil, moss, wood, and pines.
French-Welsh artist, Paul Granjon’s kinetic sculpture Mud Machine (2013-ongoing), takes local soil and electronic waste as the bases for creating an evolving machine that will live in the main gallery and can be augmented over the opening weekend, through hands-on workshops. Alongside Mud Machine, Granjon’s collaboration Garden Lab Whispers (2023) with the media art centre, Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) and the designer and accessibility advocate Ruth Hendrell will be on display. For several years the British artist Magz Hall has been using radio as the medium for her artistic practice. In Radio Air Garden (2023-ongoing) she taps into traditions of electroculture, which involve capturing and directing atmospheric electricity into the soil to enhance plant growth, based on the idea that plants, like cells, have electrical signals.
Finnish artist Teemu Lehmusruusu senses changing fluctuations in soil moisture and temperature through his sonic, sensor-based sculptural work, Pulse (2022). Blending art, technology, and environmental science, UK-Polish artist Kasia Molga and Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) present speculative narratives through their piece By the Code of Soil (2019)—a video work that draws on a European soil-sensing network and satellite data. South African researchers, cultural producers and sonic selectors, Nombuso Mathibela and Sibonelo Gumede share their research into how soil and land degradation shaped the sonic expression of the Zulu Princess Constance Magogo Sibilile Mantithi Ngangezinye ka Dinizulu, including that relating to her acoustic, bow instrument making and the sound traditions in South Africa.
Finnish musician and composer Timo Kaukolampi draws inspiration from fungi and soil microorganisms found in the region to create a new sonic mixtape for the island that will be specially designed for a specific walking route. Kaukolampi will also use the sounds to create live performances at the opening weekend.
Summer Residents & Book Store Collaboration
We have four residents on site across the summer programme including roving science educator and researcher Marc R. Dusseiller, Taiwanese artist and design researcher Shih Wei-Chieh and Finnish-UK cultural producer Andrew Gryf Paterson and !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo). Dusseiller, Wei-Chieh and Gryf Paterson will contribute workshops to our opening and closing weekends.
In July !Mediengruppe Bitnik will extend the Island Social of Social Autonomy (ISSA) – a digital resource library that will be housed at Kubu and connect to their work on the Croatian island of Vis. This library will become a permanent resource documenting the work of Kubu and provide ‘how-to’ pamphlets relating to our workshop and on-site builds.
In collaboration with Zabriske, the Berlin-based, independent book store, who specialises in nature-culture topics, we have selected a dozen books on the topic of soil, gardening and nature based topics.
Key Opening Weekend Highlights:
Opening Weekend: 6-9th June
Artists Paul Granjon, hands-on kinesthetic mud sculpture workshop using local soil and electronic waste and Constanza Dessain plant-based, cyanotype printing workshops. Family friendly and suitable for all ages.
British author Jon Drori, will share insights from his books Around the World in 80 Plants and Around the World in 80 Trees.
Roving science educator and researcher Marc R. Dusseiller will run a live soil sampling and listening station across the opening weekend, with Taiwanese artist and design researcher Shih Wei-Chieh will share their work on dye-sensitized solar cells for making new art works.
Other key summer events:
Build greenhouse from recycled materials with carpenter Jussi Puustjärvi
Create a traditional willow hedge with artist and gardener Sara Ilveskorpi
Tap into plant reproduction systems with artist and acupuncturist Aino El Sol
Develop your own plant inks with Ronja Tammenpää and Marjut Nordberg
Closing weeks ferment your own beer and food, build a seed library and forage for season food with researchers from University of Helsinki’s Centre for the Social Study of Microbes and join Andrew Gryf Paterson for his work on kitchen composting with worms, through a playful VJ session.
PROGRAMME
JUNE
Thur 5 June
13.00-14.00 Hybrid Exhibition Opening & Programme Launch
14.00-17.00 Hybrid Workshop, Phoshoza (Nomusa Mathibeala & Sibonelso Gumed)
18.30-19.30 Welcome Reception and Exhibition Opening at KUBU
20.30-21.15 Live Performance, Timo Kaukolampi
During the evening, one-to-one concerts by Antti Tolvi
Fri 6 June
12.30-13.30 Friday Hybrid Conversations with author and environmentalist, Jonathon Drori. Moderator, Teresa Dillon.
14.30-15.30 Liminal Routes Audio Walk, Timo Kaukolampi
18.00-20.00 Artist Dinner with Guests
Sat 7 June
11.00-14.00 Cyanotype Plant Printing Workshop, Constanza Dessain
11.00-14.00 Listen to the Soil, Drop in Station, Marc R Dusseiller
Sun 8 June
12.00-13.00 Solar Panel Experiments Show-and-Tell, Shih Wei-Chieh (施惟捷)
13.00-16.00 Look at the Soil & Make Your Own Microscope, Marc R. Dusseiller
13.00-16.00 Mud Machine Workshop, Paul Granjon
Tue 10 June
11.00-17.00 Love The Poo, Horse Manure for garden fertiliser at KUBU Green House Station.
Thur 19 June
11.00-13.00 Sauna Vihta Making Workshop with local specialist
14.00-17.00 Bloom Workshop, Aino El Sol
JULY
Fri 04 July
12.30-13.30 Friday Hybrid Conversations with artist, gardener and organic farmer, Sara Ilveskorpi.
Sat 05 July
11.00-17.00 Kiila Soundday Excursion
Sun 06 July
11.00-17.00 Build A Traditional Willow Hedge, Sara Ilveskorpi.
11.00-17.00 Completion and Opening of New Green House, KUBU
Sat 12 Jul
11.00-17.00 Plant Dyes and Natural Inks, Part 1, Ronja Tammenpää & Marjut Nordberg
Sun 13 Jul
11.00-17.00 Plant Dyes and Natural Inks, Part 2, Ronja Tammenpää & Marjut Nordberg
Tue 15 Jul
13.00-15.00 Island School for Social Autonomy (ISSA) Library Extension, Drop-In, Open Access Workshop with !Mediengruppe Bitnik
Wed 16 Jul
13.00-15.00 Island School for Social Autonomy (ISSA) Library Extension, Drop-In, Open Access Workshop with !Mediengruppe Bitnik
Thur 16 Jul
13.00-15.00 Island School for Social Autonomy (ISSA) Library Extension, Drop-In, Open Access Workshop with !Mediengruppe Bitnik
Fri 18 Jul
12.30-14.00 Friday Hybrid Conversations with !Mediengruppe Bitnik, including sharing of Island School of Autonomy (ISSA), Library Extension
Sun 27 Jul
13.00-17.00 Andrew Gryf Patterson & Eisenia Fetida aka Manure Worm VJ Clew
AUGUST
Sat 16 Aug
13.00-15.00 It’s just Wild Microbes, Honey, Part 1a, Will LaFleu
Sun 17 Aug
13.00-15.00 It’s Just Wild Microbes, Honey, Part 1b, Will LaFleu
Fri 29 Aug
12.30-13.30 Friday Hybrids, Lunchtime Conversation with the Centre for the Social Studies of Microbes and collaborators.
13.00-15.00 Creating Seed Libraries, Faidon Papadakis and Ellen Tabak
Sat 30 Aug
11.00-12.30 The Centre for the Social Study of Microbes (CSSM), Hybrid Talk
13.00-15.00 It’s Just Wild Microbes, Honey, Part 2a, Will LaFleu
13.00-15.00 Archiving the Seasons through Fermentation, Part 2, Maya Hey
18.00-23.00 Harvest BBQ Sauna, Forage, Toast & Party & DJ Kamm
Sun 31 Aug
13.00-15.00 It’s Just Wild Microbes, honey, Part 2b, Will LaFleu
13.00-15.00 Archiving the Seasons through Fermentation, Part 2, Maya Hey