Messing around with the commercial space here doing events and things the time was ripe for a non-commercial effort, a be-in if you'd like. On thursday, we lugged a part of the vinyl collection and the 1970's pioneer stereo to the office, got some beer and sat down to open the joint. Apart from the usual cast of characters revolving around Hastur, we didn't have any idea who might come in.
Slowly people started flowing in and after a few hours the room was full of students from the local art school who'd come to see the space and the paintings. How very comfortable. Hasturvision (our advertisement use telly) had some problems with the connectors, no matter, lively conversation and being happened. I went out to get some more beer and found these two ladies drinking out on the street in the cold. Asked them to join in and after a lengthy explanation of the nature of our event/space, the came along. And turned out they were art students as well. Might have known. =)
Well the party happened, we got a nice group of people, most of them I've never met before who had heard about our space on the radio or from a friend. It was very nice that people found camp hastur, we were well pleased.
On friday, I set off to spend the night there keeping the doors open and wondering what would happen. The town was really quiet, I noticed not too many people walk the streets there later in the night, the bar district is a bit further away and gets all the night time traffic. Some people passed by but were hesitant to come in. Outside, I bumped to this lady who was taking photographs and invited her in. Turned out that she's involved in a community project to bring life into this town through communal art/whatnot projects. Nice!
We had a long chat about the town, it's people, the art-scene and our space. The lady pointed out that Camp Hastur is what you'd call 'a third place', a freeform communication space. Some really interesting questions were brought up in the conversation. Tornio has never had this kind of space and we're curious about the response.
During the party I noticed that some people were hesitant to stay, asking 'is it really ok for us to hang out in here?'. I think the key question is justification. In a bar/coffee shop setting, one buys the justification of being there by buying a drink or whatever. At camp hastur we're bringing up the possibility to have your own exhibition or an event. I sort of woke up to the fact that some might feel that this approach might feel like you have to have an art show in order to hang out at the camp. Anyways it's much easier to buy a cup of coffee than to build an art show. And where does it leave the people who are interested in car-tuning or hunting?
I guess that the point is sharing. Sharing your energy and inspiration is the justification to hang out. Sharing a beer or coffee. Sharing a moment. That's it. And you can share by just dropping by and saying hello.
On our side of the 'fence', hours when nobody comes over to say hello are boring and wasted in commenting on friend's baby pictures on facebook. People in Tornio, let us not go bored, come and say hello.
Camp Hastur opening times and things are on the facebook Camp Hastur page , please keep an eye on the space, comment and share!
Over and out
Sami
Hastur
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| hanging the singboard |
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| tricky |
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| the signboard just won't hang straight |
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| something looted from the summer camp |
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| Paintings by Mika Hyvärinen |
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| observe the square shelf for ladies handbags =) |
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