Noises and Voices. Languages, Media, the Arts in Nordic Literatures

4th DINO (Diversity in Nordic Literature) Conference, October 6–7, 2016, at the University of Turku, Finland

Sirkkala Campus Area, Kaivokatu 12, Turku

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The Noises and Voices conference wishes to explore multilingualism in the Nordic literary field from different angles, in its texts, literary canons, genres, and national literatures.

The Conference Program (you'll find a link to the abstracts on the left-hand side)

                      Wednesday, October 5

 18.00-20.00 Get-Together (The lobby between Minerva T 52 and Artium T 53, see the campus map)

                       Thursday, October 6

 8:30 Registration & information (The lobby)

 9:15 Opening of the Conference: Heidi Grönstrand (Janus Lecture Hall, Kaivokatu 12)

9:30 Plenary Lecture: Hassan Blasim (Helsinki/Finland): Between the Margin and the Taboo (Janus)

 10:30 Coffee (The lobby)

11.00 Plenary Lecture: Helena Bodin (Stockholm University, Sweden): ”So Let Me Remain a Stranger”. Multilingualism and Biscriptalism in the Works of Finno-Swedish Writer Tito Colliander (Janus)

 12:00-13.00 Lunch (Restaurant Upseerikerho)

 13.00 Workshops

     Avian Voices in Estonian and Finnish Literature (panel) (room 223)

     Theoretical and Practical Considerations of the Concept of Voice (room 225)

     Multilingual Language Play, Literature and Technology (room Tempo)

 14.30 Coffee (The lobby)

 15.00-16.30 Workshops

     The Voice (or Voicelessness) of the Translator (room 223)

     Multimodality & Iconicity (room 225)

     Silent Voices (room Tempo)

 19.00 Conference Dinner (Restaurant Koulu, 'The School')

                        Friday, October 7

 9:30 Workshops

     Migrant Voices (room 223)

     Multilingualism & Multimodality in Contemporary Literature (room 225)

 11:00 Coffee (The lobby)

 11:30 Workshops

     Multilingualism across Media and Cultures (room 223)

     Re-examining Mother Tongues (room 225)

     Voice, Silence and Memory (room Tempo)

 13:00-14.00 Lunch (Restaurant Upseerikerho)

14:00 -15:30 Plenary Lecture: L'usage du mot, or: Noises, Voices, Languages, Media. A Reading and Conversation with Cia Rinne (Cia Rinne, Berlin/Sweden, Julia Tidigs (University of Helsinki, Finland & Markus Huss, Södertörn University, Sweden) (Janus)

 16:00 Dino Research network meeting (Evaluation and discussion of the next conference)

Workshops (you'll find a link to the abstracts on the left-hand side)

Thursday 13.00–14.30

 Avian Voices in Estonian and Finnish Literature (a panel)

Karoliina Lummaa

Elle-Mari Talivee

Kadri Tüür

Room 223

Theoretical and Practical Considerations of the Concept of Voice

Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov: From Voice to Noise: Theoretical Considerations

Andreea Stefanescu: The Voice of Finnish Literature through Translation

Maria Mäkelä: The Feigned Voice of the People in Finnish Media: A Narratological Counter-Reading of Authenticity and Alterity Effects

Chair: Julia Tidigs

Room 225

 Multilingual Language Play, Literature and Technology

Karin Nykvist: Multilingual Language Play in Scandinavian Contemporary Hip Hop Culture

Kukku Melkas: Re-shaping Language and Literature – Gender, Voice and the New Order

Bengt Lundgren: Remote Control. Telecommunication in Two Plays by August Strindberg

Chair: Ralf Kauranen

Room: Tempo

Thursday 15.00–16.30

The Voice (or Voicelessness) of the Translator

Kaisa Koskinen: Translational Noises and Voices in a Literature Event: The Case of the Poetry Marathon 2016

Olli Löytty: Follow the Translations! The Transnational Circulation of Hassan Blasim’s Short Stories

Eszter Éva Hörcher: The Appearance of Demonstration in Contemporary Finnish Novels

Chair: Elisabeth Oxfeldt

Room: 223

Multimodality & Iconicity

Mia Österlund & Katarina Jungar: Racist Practices in Finnish Picture Books

Ralf Kauranen: De-bordering Comics Culture – Multilingual Publishing in the Finnish Field of Comics

Veijo Pulkkinen: The Silence of the Page: Iconicity in the Typography of Aaro Hellaakoski’s Hiljaisuus

Chair: Markus Huss

Room: 225

Silent Voices

Clemens Räthel: Look Back in Anger! Voices of Disease, Suffering and Death in Jonas Gardell’s Don’t Ever Wipe Tears without Gloves (Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar)

Jarkko Oraharju: Silent Days – The Obmutescence in the Short Fiction of Raija Siekkinen

Kaisa Ahvenjärvi: The question of language in Sámi literature

Chair: Rita Paqvalén

Room: Tempo

Friday 9.30–11.00

Migrant Voices

Maïmouna Jagne-Soreau: Rinkebysvenska, Perkerdansk and Kebabnorsk: The Rising of the Postmigration’s Generation in Nordic Literature

Kristina Leganger Iversen: “Å få en degos til å oversette en perker”. Representations of the Migrant Voice in Poems by Yahya Hassan and Pedro Carmona-Alvarez

Natia Gokieli: Noise or Voice? Language and 'Immigrant' Identities in and around Jonas Hassen Khemiri's Novels

Chair: Olli Löytty

Room: 223

 Multilingualism & Multimodality in Contemporary Literature

Markus Huss: “Conversations in Misspelled English”: Partial Comprehension and the Depths of Language in Tomas Tranströmer’s Östersjöar (Baltics).

Julia Tidigs: What Have They Done to My Song? Recycled Language in Monika Fagerholm’s Novel The American Girl

Gerd Karin Omdal: The Visual and the Dialogical Aspects of Voicing and Language in Athena Farrokhzad's Vitsvit/White Blight

Chair: Kukku Melkas

Room: 225

Friday 11.30–13.00

Multilingualism across Media and Cultures

Sirkku Latomaa: Multilingual Voices in the Making of Art

Katri Talaskivi: Non-dominant Language Writers in Finland in the 2000's and 2010's: A Survey on the Relationship of Writers and Their Language(s)

Kendra Willson: Saga Style in a Finnish Peking Opera

Chair: Ralf Kauranen

Room: 223

Re-examining Mother Tongues

Elisabeth Friis: Rearticulating "The Mother Tongue"

Kristina Malmio: Multilingualism in Late Modern Finland-Swedish Prose

Elisabeth Oxfeldt: Refugees, Poetry, and Postfeminism in Aasne Linnestå’s Morsmål (2012)

Chair: Kukku Melkas

Room: 225

Voice, Silence and Memory

Michal Kovář: Silence and Text in Bengt Pohjanen’s The Realm of Faravid

Kristian Lödemel Sandberg: Jerry Dørmænen as the Silent History of the Finnish Civil War in Kjartan Fløgstad’s Grand Manila (2006)

Heidi Grönstrand: Translation as a Negotiation of Bordering Practices

Chair: Satu Gröndahl

Room: Tempo

Confirmed key note speakers

Hassan Blasim

Helena Bodin

Cia Rinne

Hassan Blasim is a filmmaker and short story writer. He was born in Baghdad in 1973, but has lived in Finland since 2004. He writes in Arabic but his books have been translated to several languages, including Danish, Finnish, Icelandic and Swedish.

Blasim's debut collection in English, The Madman of Freedom Square was published in 2009. It was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2010. In 2010, Blasim was described by The Guardian newspaper as “perhaps the greatest writer of Arabic fiction alive”. His second collection, The Iraqi Christ was published in 2013. A selection of stories from both of his two collections was published in the USA in 2014, by Penguin USA, under the title The Corpse Exhibition.

In 2014, The Iraqi Christ was announced the winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – the first Arabic title ever to win the award and the first short collection ever to win the award. In 2015 Blasim won the highly esteemed Finland Prize.

Helena Bodin is  Associate Professor in Literature at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University (Sweden) and The Newman Institute (Uppsala, Sweden).

Her research concerns the functions of literature at boundaries such as between languages, nations, arts and media. She has particularly studied modern literature's engagement with the Byzantine Orthodox Christian tradition, from the various perspectives of cultural semiotics, intermedial studies, and translation studies, including aspects of multilingualism.

She has published the monographs Bruken av Bysans [Uses of Byzantium] (2011), including chapters on Hagar Olsson and Tito Collliander, and Ikon och ekfras [Icon and ekphrasis] (2013), including chapters on the poetry of Gunnar Ekelöf. Recently, she has also published articles on Sophie Elkan’s ambiguous dream of the Orient, the childhood narratives and pictures of Ilon Wikland on her exile from Estonia to Sweden, and the issue of Byzantinism from a cultural semiotic perspective, all of them from 2015.

From 2016 she is one of the members of the research program "Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures”, with a project on representations of Constantinople in literary fin-de-siècle and high modernism, by that time a multiethnic, multireligious and multilingual city with a diversity of writing systems in use.

Cia Rinne (b. 1973) is a transnational poet and artist, born in Sweden to Finnish parents, living in Berlin and with a relationship to many languages. Her writing is intensely multilingual, as well as exposing the material qualities of language – its auditive as well as visual aspects – and takes place on multiple material levels: in the shape of printed poetry collections (zaroum, 2001, notes for soloists, 2009); in digital, online versions (archives zaroum, 2008); as sound collages (sounds for soloists, 2011, together with Sebastian Eskildsen); her live, singular performances, as well as performances in art museums and exhibitions.

Aside from her poetic work, Rinne has written about seven different Roma communities in The Roma Journeys/Die Romareisen (2007/2009, together with Joakim Eskildsen). 2016 sees the publication of Rinne's newest collection of poetry, l’usage du mot (oei editör).

Organizers

The Steering Committee for the research network Diversity in Nordic Literatures (DINO): Satu Gröndahl, Uppsala University and Sámi University College; Heidi Grönstrand, University of Turku; Vuokko Hirvonen, Sámi University College;  Markus Huss, Södertörn University; Olli Löytty, University of Turku; Elisabeth Oxfeldt, University of Oslo

The Multilingualism in Contemporary Literature in Finland project (Kone Foundation),  University of Turku,  monikielisyys.fi

For further information, please contact:

Heidi Grönstrand, heigro[AT]utu.fi

Ralf Kauranen, ralf.kauranen[AT]utu.fi

Olli Löytty, olselo[AT]utu.fi

Kukku Melkas, kukku.melkas[AT]utu.fi

Julia Tidigs, julia.tidigs[AT]helsinki.fi