Sezgin Boynik (1977, Prizren), lives and works in Helsinki. He is a Phd candidate in Jyväskylä University Social Science department. He is working on thesis "Cultural Politics of Black Wave in Yugoslavia from 1963 to 1972". He has been publishing on punk, relation between aesthetics and politics, on cultural nationalism, Situationist International and Yugoslavian cinema. Co-edited reader "Nationalism and Contemporary Art" (with Minna L. Henriksson, Rhizoma & EXIT, Prishtina, 2007), and co-authored book on "History of Punk and Underground in Turkey, 1978-1999" (with Tolga Guldalli, BAS, Istanbul, 2008). Apart from scholarly work he is also active as conceptual artist. Recent articles include "New Collectives" (Retracing Images, Brill, Boston & Leiden, 2011), "Cultural Policy of Dusan Makavejev" (Kino! Journal No. 15, Ljubljana, 2011) "Discontents with Theoretical Practices in Contemporary Art" (Journal of Visual Art Practice 10:2, London, 2011) "Art of Slogans - in two parts"(TKH no 19 and 20, Belgrade, 2012). Art works are installation "On Lenin: Atlases, Herbariums and Rituals" (Anders Bergman Galleri, Helsinki, 2012) and art-book "Counter-constructivist Model" (co-authored with M.L. Henriksson, Labyrinth Press, Stockholm, 2012).

Minna Henriksson (1976, Oulu) lives in Helsinki. She has worked in many Southeast European cities and has lived in Istanbul for several periods since 2003. She studied art in Brighton, Helsinki and Malmö.
One of the topics in her artistic work has been dynamics and power-positions in art scenes. In 2010 she realized a permanent public artwork in Trabzon, Turkey. She has been working with the issue of nationalism in her artistic work as well as theoretically, in connection to contemporary art, together with sociologist Sezgin Boynik. Currently, with the aim at better understanding the political operations of today, she is interested in exploring history, and its narration, especially regarding the legacy of the Left.

-- 

During their stay at GeoAIR residency Sezgin Boynik and Minna Henriksson implemented following activities: 

Minna Henriksson - Launch of the newspaper Golden Dragon and Silver Star - New Georgia: Change of Symbols after the fall of the Soviet Union. The newspaper was the result of an art workshop around the topics of power, politics and symbols and was a collaboration with the Center for Contemporary Art Tbillisi. 

Sezgin Boynik issued and presented his publication ‘Still Stealing Steel: Historical Materialistic Study of Zaum’. Still Staling Steel is ideological diary which attempts to theorize zaum as an indispensable political language, and experimenting on ways how to conceptualize the use-value of such expressions.

After the presentation some copies of the book was offered for sale with a price of a couple of dengi’s.

Then Boynik played music with sounds of punk/jazz/fire jazz/new wave/rock-in-opposition and other kind of similar mutant danceable obscurities, while a variety of Yugoslavian and Albanian films from the 60’s were screened in the background.

Interview with Sezgin Boynik and Minna Henriksson in Copyright Magazine #9 

The residency stay at GeoAIR was supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.