Off Places is a collaborative project by artists Henri Airo and Toivo Heinimäki, combining urban research, archive building and sculptural interventions to interrogate the politics, conflicts and values associated with the built environment. The work is an ongoing process consisting of two parts, a growing image archive and a series of spatial interventions based on it, which oscillate between the practice of archiving and life unfolding in the cityscape.


1. The archive

Moving through the space the artists home city of Helsinki, Airo and Heinimäki are involved in a constant process of photographing architecture, scenes and observations that catch their eye. They regularly print out the resulting images in a colour darkroom and store the photographs as an accumulating image archive of the city. In addition to photography, the archive consists of collected architectural materials such as planning documents, blueprints and architectural periodicals. The design or purpose of the archive is not fixed, making space for an atmosphere-oriented mapping of the city that attempts to flee the logic of maps and city-planning.


2. Intervention

The archive is routinely activated through interventions, where Airo and Heinimäki combine material from the archive with elements collected from the cityscape to construct site-specific installations. These interventions are staged in architecturally or socially layered spaces and form dialogues between history, spatial planning and architectural ideals. In addition, these interventions are used as a platform to reflect together on the meanings assigned to built environments, the use of urban space, and residents’ rights to built cultural heritage through workshops, lectures and other public programming. After each intervention, the images and material returns to the archive.
 

The project has received support from The Finnish Cultural Foundation and Arts Promotion Center Finland.