Video in the mobile sauna by Stein Henningsen, photographed by Priam Thomas for Art Spin.
Mobile Sweat
Toronto, Ontario
Presented by
Art Spin
Mobile Sweat is a nomadic wood-fired sauna and platform for contemporary art, featuring a unique program of sound and video art to be experienced while you sweat, a series of sound bathing performances and visiting Nordic sauna guides.
Winter like the Nordics! Art Spin is proud to present Mobile Sweat with indoor and outdoor experiences as part of Harbourfront Centre’s Festival of Cool. This unexpected space for creative experiences, invites people to immerse themselves in discovering the values shared by so many sweat bathing practices: community, connection and care.
Also on site: Sauna Obscura, the tent edition, a newly commissioned project by Finnish artist Heidi Lunabba. During daylight, the interior of this sauna functions as an immersive camera obscura where the surrounding environment is projected onto the walls and bodies of sauna goers inside.
Mobile Sweat is open to all on a first come first serve basis, participation only requires that you bring a bathing suit and towel.
Sauna Hours:
Weekdays – 5:00pm to 10:00pm
Weekends – 12:00 pm to 10:00pm
Closed – Monday, December 12 for sauna maintenance and cleaning
Event Supporters
Stein Henningsen has an engineering degree in electronics and a masters degree in international sales and marketing. After working for Norwegian companies for ten years, he wanted to change his life. Stein began working as a photographer in 1997. Four years later he had his first exhibition. Photography soon led him into installations and performance art. His first performance work was with the project “Crosses of Liberty” in 2005 (crossesofliberty.com). Stein still does photography and video, but his major works are within performance.
Stein has a great desire to share his experiences of the Arctic with other artists, and to raise awareness of how rapidly the Arctic is changing. One step has been to invite artists to experience the Arctic, to show the world its uniqueness and beauty. To that end, he created the Arctic Action International Performance Festival, founded in 2015 (www.arcticaction.info). Stein curates one festival each year, inviting international performance artists to create works inspired by its landscape. He believes it is extremely important at this moment in time to eschew isolationism and develop cultural networks in the current climate of international capitalist hegemony.
Heidi Lunabba is an artist working with socially conscious and community art. In their work they explore questions on identity, gender and communication, in public and private spaces. Heidi holds an MA in Fine Arts from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and is based in Loviisa, Finland.
Kenneth Bamberg (b. 1981, Åland Islands) graduated with a Master of Arts from the Aalto University in Helsinki in 2011. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Bamberg has held solo shows in The Finnish Cultural Institute in Madrid and at Gallery VU in Quebec City. He has participated in group shows in The Museum of National History in Copenhagen as well as in The Photography Museum Winterthur in Zurich. He has received numerous esteemed awards and grants, including two three-year working grants from The Finnish Cultural Foundation and The Kone Foundation.
Sami Kero (b. 1979) is a Finnish photojournalist who works for Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest subscription-based newspaper in Finland. He has covered international conflicts and crisis around the world, for example in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Haiti, Israel and DR Congo though most of his daily work takes place in peaceful Finland. Sami has also held photography and street photography workshops. Sami speaks annually at University of Tampere about crisis journalism.
Jussi Puikkonen is a natural at capturing the essence of people and scenes. Raised in the Finnish woods, based in Amsterdam, this down-to-earth man of the world effortlessly gets along with everyone from CEOs to sauna champions. He is co-founder of the world’s most melancholic magazine, Kasino A4, which was awarded by a number of domestic and foreign competitions (D&AD, Best of the Year, Top Ten Independent Style Magazines, etc.) He published his first book, On Vacation, with Swiss publisher Edition Patrick Frey and is currently working on his second book.
Mari Keski-Korsu is a post-disciplinary artist from Finland. She explores how ecological and socio-economical changes manifest in everyday life. The work is based on collaborations with different kinds of communities, individuals and species. Her current practice is focused on inter-species communication and creating emphatic environments to enable empathy towards whole ecosystems. She is interested in relations in between art, activism, politics and science from permaculturic and ecofeminist perspectives. The practice can be for example interventions, documentary, performance, virtual worlds and installations. The works has been exhibited in Europe and in several other countries around the world. She collaborates with artist groups, researchers as well as organises and curates different types of projects.
Tone Bjordam is a video artist from Norway. Transformation in nature, changes in society and in the human mind: geological, climatic and biological processes are central aspects of his artistic practice. Bjordam explore forms, patterns and processes in nature, in micro and macro perspectives, and communicate this in combination with scientific research. Bjordam works with video and performance, photography, drawing, painting, soundscapes and sculpture installations.
Saunakonkeli provides sauna guidance and down to earth sauna-activities for groups and individuals. They are Tampere based sauna guides who operate all around Finland. Their heartfelt mission is to bring back the connection between human and the natural elements through sauna. Fire, water, earth and air can all be found in nature, in ourselves and in a sauna. Sauna offers us a safe place to align with these elements in their purest form.
