HALO MANASH

Live performances:
Saturday 14.2.
Sunday 15.2.
Friday 20.2.
Saturday 21.2.

The events start at 19.00 on all days. Arrive early, as there is very limited space in the gallery. Entrance fee: 7 €.

Photo exhibition and films screenings: 16.2.-20.2.2009. Free of charge.

HALO MANASH is an audiovisual, multi-medial sound- and performance project founded in Northern Finland in 1998. The members presently consist of founder and initiator Antti Haapapuro and Aki Cederberg and Mikko Pöyhönen.

Halo Manash manifests itself through various mediums: audio records, films, performances, artworks, photographs and cultural artifacts. By their various works and productions, the project aims to uphold the values of artisanship and handicrafts in the face of mass-consumer culture.

The performances of Halo Manash aim to be multi-medial (utilizing a combination of music, film and performance), as well as multi-sensory (utilizing carefully orchestrated lights, scents [incense], and other sensory substances and stimuli). Using primarily organic soundsources, various traditional and self-made instruments, combined and shaped in an electronic medium, the music of Halo Manash ranges from serene serpentine ambient to frenzied and rythmic outpourings of primal ecstacy. It is the aim of the performances to be both spiritual and visceral, and ultimately, transcendent experiences. They seek to broaden the boundaries of ordinary live-shows by creating an intense and multi-sensory experience, both for the audience and for Halo Manash itself.

Halo Manash has repeatedly performed in various countries, such as in Finland (Oulu, Helsinki, Tampere), Belgium (Antwerpen), France (Paris, Lille, Brest etc.), Russia (St.Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Izhevsk), Poland (Torún) etc. They have released six complete albums and one film. The year 2009 will see the release of the third and final part of their “tree-logy” of albums, the first one of which is ‘Language of Red Goats’, the second the newly released ‘Am Kha Astrie’, and the final forthcoming part being ‘Taiwaskivi’, as well as a film relating to the trilogy.

The work of Halo Manash has been well received in the fields of music and art internationally as well as in their homeland, as it has been perceived as ground-breaking, innovative and original. Their approach of combining archaic spiritual themes and organic, elemental sounds with modern experimental music and soundart reflects a strong sense of timelessness and continuity that is dominant in all their creations.

Merging archaic techniques with modern technology, Halo Manash could be seen as a spiritual archeology in the form of sound and visuals. The artistic intentions of Halo Manash are rooted in the need to explore and portray the dormant spirit(s) of the fennoscandic region and beyond. The group seeks to gather, to reflect, and to resacralize the ancestral memory and knowledge of their primordial culture, both ancient and modern. It is also the aim of the personnel involved in Halo Manash to seek, explore, experience, study and decipher reflections of the ever-shifting shapes and spaces of different worlds. The group believes that the representation and resacralization of ancient elemental landscapes and ancestral threads, that reflect the sacral and eternal, offer present and future generations a chance to view their own roots and their place in the larger scheme of things.

Rather than a group or band in any traditional sense, Halo Manash is an entity, a being in and of itself, drawing its life-force from beyond all limitations. The members of Halo Manash are the Dream that It dreams, the mask that It wears. And as all things pulsating with life and death and dreams, Halo Manash is constantly shedding its skin and remains in a state of never-ending metamorphosis, toward ever clearer forms, deeper shades and the One beyond All.

Halo Manash is a means through which to communicate, a vehicle for bridging the worlds of being and non-being, for journeying to the depths and heights. It is a call -a symbol, a mark ever-present and thus not bound by limits of time and space. Halo Manash signifies both the one and the many at the same time: the abstract and the concrete, the hidden and the revealed… the ever-flowing; evolution, expansion, the cyclic yet progressive continuity.

Halo Manash is a pilgrimage to the borderlands of dreams, pure consciousness, and primal being- and beyond.

Caickuwi Cauwas Walkeus will be comprised of an exhibition of photographs, the premiere of a new film titled Taiwaskivi (as well as screenings of an earlier cinematic work), and a series of special performances.