BUDZINE #1

ISSUE #1 MAR–OCT 2022

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

Editors in Chief Mia Ojapalo & Anna Viertiö Design Lead Timo Lemmetti Graphic Design Matias Ylikangas, Timo Lemmetti, Sini Henttonen Publisher BUD & BBO Creative Contributors & Special Thanks Nick Tulinen, Jori Pasula, Antti Angeria, Tuomas Ahva, Ringa Manner, Jonne Heinonen, Janne Räisänen, Ina Niiniketo, Jani Toivola, Asa, Aqqalu, Ossi Paloneva, Rebekka Lily, Benjamin Suomela More Thanks!

Advertisers who helped to make BUDZINE happen: Dr. Oetker, Good Life Coffee, Makia, Ant Brew, Thinking Holidays All rights reserved BUD & BBO Creative Wanna be part of next BUDZINE? We all love good stories that bring out fiery visionaries, interesting misfits, moving phenomena and art with a message. If you’ve got an original story idea that you’d love to be presented on the pages of BUDZINE, send us a message to bud@hellobud.fi and let’s find a way!

contents SIX HOUR STROLL: UUDENMAANKATU

4

MY VOICE: INDIE STAR RINGA MANNER

12

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MEMES

16

MEET AQQALU, FINLAND'S ONLY INUIT

21

CIRCULAR DESIGN

26

JOUTEN

28

WILLEM HEEFFER

30

ANT BREW

32

LOVIA

36

DICK ON FLOWERS

38

MEET THE CREATORS OF BUD

44

CRAVING GREENS

48

NFT ART – WHAT IS IT WORTH?

56

JANI TOIVOLA – MAN OF LOVE

62

FLOWERS OF THE ZODIAC PART I

66

REBEKKA LILY – FLOWER CHAMPION OF BUD

74

BUD UP, ASA?

78

BACKPAGER

81

PHOTO TIMO LEMMETTI

welcome to the world of bud!

F

irst ever BUDZINE in your hands - that's big. We’re beyond excited to invite you to explore the world of BUD, full of colors, inspiration, art, design and more. Above all, BUDZINE is a magazine about doers and thinkers; bold and visionary people who dream the world better, and then go and make it happen.

our mission when it comes to BUD, and what our evergrowing fam presented in this magazine happily signs, too.

We all love to bring the fruits of our creativity for our people both near and far to enjoy - be it art, up-cycled fashion, NFTs, memes, food, flowers, design or beer.

Result? A magazine that’s one kind of a love story about the colorful and passionate people of Punavuori and beyond.

With a touch of renegade attitude and free-flowing joie de vivre, of course. Enjoy!

We believe in what Manu Chao, a humanitarian and lead singer of Mano Negra, once said: you can’t change the world, but you can change your neighborhood. That summarizes

■

Independent & nonprofit for the glory of makers & doers of Punavuori and Universe.

5

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

SIX HOUR STROLL: uudenmaankatu What happens when you spend six hours aimlessly strolling up and down one of the most epic streets of Punavuori with a camera and recorder? Read & figure.

TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY ANTTI ANGERIA

I

t’s Monday and raining. Our strolling-team starts the big mission by heading for an easy start to meet up with a still unknown friend-of-a-friend, who should have his working premises in the very beginning of Uudenmaankatu. Very soon, we find Jose Riikonen waving his hand – let’s start the day.

13:00 Jose Riikonen’s workspace Jose Riikonen is a freelance journalist known for his in-depth articles about Finnish music stars (and cars), published in the biggest and most beautiful magazines of the country, aka Helsingin Sanomat and X-lehti. We take a tour in his workspace, boil hot water for some instant coffee and burn our mouths. Time to get to know the man.

So, Jose, it sure is Monday today. What does inspiration mean to you – and do you have any lessons learned to share with us creatives?

—For me, inspiration is a mix of three: fear, excitement and anxiety. (laughs) And about creativity, then – what would be the least douchey thing to say? At some point, it helped me when I understood that however frightening or challenging a task is, it’s almost always still doable and only a matter of the level of misery and fuckuppedness: you basically need to get ready to face the fact that doing stuff sucks.

Another tip would be to just do stuff, not only plan and get ideas one after another. Most of your doings will be shit, but something really good comes out of it occasionally, too.

Do you have any work philosophy?

—That’s something for others to evaluate. But I do try to understand people and be empathic. Not to nail them down but stay curious.

That’s beautiful. Do you find life ironic?

—Everything in life is ironic and always a little bit behind the curtains. (laughs) Time to get serious: if you were Miss Universe, what world problem you’d solve?

—Pathetic, but it’d be climate change and biodiversity. No matter how well you have it in your life and in society, that’s an issue that always hangs above the head. It’d be nice to get it solved. Because of climate change, everything is always fucked up – this coffee cup, table and especially my BMW. It’s hard to stand it. We don’t always need to have it easy.

Not with this, at least.

Yep, 100 %. Thanks – and one last tough one. What sort of movie would be made of your life, if given a chance?

13:00 JOSE RIIKONEN'S WORKPLACE —Oh, that’s bad. Actorwise, Jonah Hill looks like a 35-yearold-baby – so he could play me. And I think David Lynch could direct it… Something like his second movie, what was it, yea, Eraserhead!”

14:00 Blue Lagoon Right after leaving Jose’s premises, we see Milla Malkki and Sanna Noki having a team meeting in beauty salon called Blue Lagoon. They wave us in, and the vibe is harmonic and beautiful – as you’d expect.

Milla & Sanna, why Punavuori?

—It’s urban and everything is close – from restaurants to bars and nice little boutiques. People here are relaxed and kind. And just across the street you can find one of our fav lunch places, Sushi Bar & Wine. It’s great for having a glass of wine in lunch break.

What have you learned in the great School of Life and would like to share with our readers?

—To see possibilities in everything – and to never say never.

We also like to celebrate openness in our team in general; it’s important to be open about what you want and how you’d like to develop.

Cool. Milla, how about the best compliment you’ve ever received?

—That I look happy. That’s when I’ve probably been in great energies!

14:30 C. Hagelstam Antikvariaatti Bit further along the street, we sneak into an old bookstore to find Katri Arjava, a library assistant, inside. She’s worked with books for more than 35 years and lived close by in Ullanlinna since 1963, witnessing the area turn livelier througout the decades, with new boutiques and restaurants popping up.

What have you been most surprised about working here, Katri?

"everything in life is ironic and a little bit behind the curtains.”

—That we have so many youngsters as customers. They’re great, buying philosophy, art and fiction. They are polite and know what they want – often Nietzsche, Thoreau, Murakami, ancient philosophers, and Russian classics.

People love that they can find real book gems from here.

Which are your top authors? And what kind of book you’d be?

—That’s a difficult one, but I do love Bruce Chaplin and

7

15:00 NOLLA

Jane Austen. And as a book, I’d be a historical novel, very old-fashioned.

Carlos, you started with the brewery a few years ago in 2020, how has it been?

We love that.

—The reception has been great, we’re lucky to be always on full capacity and selling everything we make. People seem to really like our beers, which are served in great restaurants such as Bonafide, Harju 8, Sakebar and Basbas to name a few. But yea, in the beginning we had no clue on how to make the beer, and we simultaneously had a strong vision to make it differently than it had been previously done here. It’s been challenging, for sure, but we got some help and are well on our way now.

15:00 Nolla, Carlos We cross the street and head to restaurant Nolla, where Mamu Brewing is busy making beer every Sunday and Monday. Beermakers and top chefs Carlos (also one of Nolla’s founders) and Berta open the door for us and show around in the beautiful nanobrewery focusing on fresh, low alcohol beers with local ingredients, such as Finnish grains and berries.

Mamu Brewing is an interesting concept – something Nolla as a zero-waste restaurant also has.

—Yes. After already succeeding with Nolla, we wanted to come up with something special with the brewery’s concept, too. With multicultural and immigration led Mamu Brewing, we want to communicate that we’re proud of our beers and of being mamus, turning the usual meaning of the word around. The reception has been really good; there hasn’t been any hate messages. And yes, all our people come from different backgrounds; we have Turkish, Brazilian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Serbian, Spanish here – and Finnish people, too.

There’s a rumor that your staff loves sports. How does that go along with alcohol?

—It’s true that we’re quite sporty here: our goal is to be the fastest brewery in Finland in running. Alcohol and its after effects don’t really support a healthy lifestyle, and that’s why we love our low alcohol beer – which turned out to be harder to make than stronger ones, by the way. And yea, also, there was a gap in the market: many breweries seem to currently favor the strong IPA’s, for example.

Do you dream about going big?

"it's a happy marriage of food and beer."

—Mass scale isn’t what we’re looking for, and Nolla doesn’t want be a brew pub either. We do dream of having a different facility for doing more things. For example, noalcohol beers need different equipment.

Gotta admit that this place is pretty epic and has such a beautiful vibe, too. Do you work closely with Nolla?

—We like to keep the brewery separate from Nolla and create whatever we want – and zero waste ideology doesn’t

15:00 NOLLA

9

16:30 SOKOS HOTEL ALBERT fit in with brewery business, at least yet. But at Mamu Brewing, we’re all also chefs: for example, in addition to Nolla, I’ve worked in restaurants such as Chez Domique and Olo, and so it’s a happy marriage of food and beer. We work a lot to make our beers food friendly and easy to pair, it’s natural for us.

15:45 Nolla, Berta As Carlos hurries back to brewing – something critical is just about to happen timing-wise – we have time to chat with Brazilian-born Berta Schneider, who’s been in Finland for 4 years and already worked also at Olo, Villd and Teemu Aura.

How did you end up to this brewery, Berta?

—I’m passionate about restaurant business and all the new stuff happening in it. I met Carlos four years ago as a customer, and sustainability, local ingredients and so on have always felt very aligned with my own thoughts. Before Finland, I used to work in Piemonte, Italy, in a winery. I always thought wines and beers to be a very exciting industry. And we do make a good team: Carlos is more into the sour beer world; I like more ales and largers.

Why Finland? That’s something everything likes to ask.

—My father had a small hotel in a Finnish utopian colony when I grew up, and a small ice cream factory called Suomi Ice Cream. Since 18, I’ve been drawn to coming to Finland, back and forth. And I do love Finnish restaurant business: here, you can be in the industry and still have a social life.

It’s one of the best markets to work in.

Cool! How would you describe people working in restaurants?

—No one normal works in food industry. People in this industry are always exciting and a bit underground, a bit crazy people. There’s a lot of space for creativity, but a lot of hard work, too – that’s something you need to find balance in, to also create new recipes and so on.

Fermentation has a special place in your heart. Tell us a bit about it and how do you find working with Finnish ingredients in general?

—At Teemu Aura, I worked with baking, which was amazing as fermentation process is never the same. That’s what maybe got me here, it’s exciting to know that each batch is going to be different. I also learned a lot at Villd about Finnish ingredients. It was a bit of a shock, going foraging and using wild foods. Still, that gave me a lot of palate and memories, which I can now put into beers. In general, I like good, well-made food with great, grounded flavors. I like when people get excited, I don’t do it just for myself. If I do

a dish, I want it to have no imperfections. Good aesthetics, like a good virgin. (laughs) That ideology goes for the beers, too.

Was Punavuori familiar to you before working here?

—Not really, even though I’m from Helsinki. But I have genuinely – and fast – learned to love the area, it has great restaurants, like our customers’ favorite Liemi, just a couple of blocks away.

Any last words about life and continuous learning?

—Keep your knees healthy, mind clear and keep on moving.

Somedays will be boring, some days there’ll be sunshine.

There’s always the next day. And about learning: in the beginning I wanted to just sit here and cry. It’s the process of challenging yourself, and there can be accidents here and there, but we also need to think solutions – how to do this, how to fix that.

Any golden life tips to share?

—Haha,I believe in treating others how you’d want them to treat you. That’s an old classic but it works; for example, I work in customer service, and do give and get a lot of energy from our customers – they are all so nice and our good service makes them happy.

16:30 Sokos Hotel Albert

17:00 Public toilet (end of the street)

After a few excellent beers at Mamu Brewing, we head on for a little pause at Sokos Hotel Albert. In the lobby, we meet service manager Jari-Pekka Järvinen, who’s just started at the hotel two weeks ago.

It’s getting darker, but we do make our way heroicly to the end of the street, which has a public toilet as a landmark.

In here, Uudenmaankatu ends and shifts into legendary Sinebrychoff Park aka Koffin puisto. The park has seen sunnier days, so we turn around to search for day’s last adventures.

17:00 PUBLIC TOILET

11

17:15 LENZISHOP

17:15 Lenzishop Something bright and unsual catches our eyes. Lenzishop sells anime, cosplay and kawaii products, and its owners are inside giving the shop it’s final touches – they tell it’s been open for just 3 days.

Well, congratulations for the new shop! Who are you and what is this place?

—I’m Kalle Nikara, from Jyväskylä. As a young man, I wanted to leave Finland to travel, and ended up to China for seven years – where I also met my wife. Now we’ve made it to Finland. Here, it’s easier with the family and I also felt ready for a change. This shop has been one of my big long-term plans. The cute fashion we sell here is mainly for youngsters between 13–25, but there’s also some 30+ people who like to wear Japanese street fashion. This kind of clothing is very popular in Japan, people get together and dress in cosplay uniforms. In Finland, it’s also a fairly big scene with around 100 000 people dressing up every now and then.

What made you choose Punavuori?

—Actually, my wife’s brother opened a Chinese restaurant called Pikku TaoTao just a few blocks away. I had been looking for a store space for quite some time, and it felt good to be close by.

18:00 Cafetino We’re hungry, it’s dark and quiet, and our expectations for anything special to happen are dropping low. But no need to worry – we magically walk straight to a Creek restaurant (a local gem!) Cafetino, and find inside its owner George, a second-generation chef doing some evening chores.

Hello, George! Tell us about you and your place!

—I am Creek, from Crete, actually, and came to Finland because of my Finnish wife. I opened the store in 2015. I like the street, the place, the neighborhood, I work very hard. I love that my place has soul and people get to know each other here – maybe first me, then each other, too. The food I serve is Creek, absolutely, and everything is handmade and fresh. I only do a certain amount of portions each day – so when it’s gone, it’s gone, come next day again. There are enough eaters to keep me busy, and we’re open every day. I am very satisfied and happy.

That’s great to hear and you’ve clearly found your place here. What would you like to say for people thinking about their path?

—For all my life, I have done what I love. So I’d say if you don’t love what you do, you need to try to change it and try something new, study something new. Young people

have dreams, and they need to be able to follow them. My dreams for Cafetino? Come on, I just renovated the place and I am happy here!

delicious moussaka and some toast with Cretan olive oil and sea salt sprinkled on top. The food tastes heavenly after a long day out meeting people – thanks George and big thanks everyone opening their worlds for us this rainy Monday in Uudenmaankatu!

■

Amen. After a chat and learning a lot about Greek people (go to Cafetino for a real Greek vibe check), we’re offered

18:00 CAFETINO

"My dreams for Cafetino?

Come on, I just renovated the place and I am happy here!”

13

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

MY VOICE: INDIE STAR RINGA MANNER A couple of months before the pandemic hit Finland, musician and sound designer Tuomas Ahva started a podcast series to interview musicians just about to perform in Kontula Electronic 2020. As the world closed due to Covid and the festival got cancelled, Tuomas decided to carry on and release the podcast on its own – with too many musical gems to miss.

TEXT TUOMAS AHVA PHOTOGRAPHY JONNE HEINONEN

L

ucky us! The star of the day is one of the most loved indie/electro stars in Finnish scene, Ringa Manner. She’s a singer and musician who plays in Ruusut, The Hearing and Pintandwefall, to name a few. Known for her characteristic voice, she uses live looping in her performances, looping both instruments and her voice. But how did she end up doing just that?

RINGA: Hello you! Yea, welcome to the studio of Ringa Manner here in Helsinki! I sing and play in bands called Ruusut and Pintandwell. In addition, I play solo as The Hearing and sometimes as Ringa Manner. Under my own name, I usually play improvised sets. Overall, the musical genres and styles vary a lot. It depends on the band and project name.

Let’s hear what Ringa has to say about finding her own voice.

TUOMAS: Do you play something in Ruusut or is it just singing?

TUOMAS: Hello! So, who has invited me to her studio for this interview?

RINGA: I used to play guitar on a couple of live versions, but we don’t really play those anymore, so currently it’s just

OMA ÄÄNI PODCAST Oma ääni introduces Finnish musicians, composers, sound designers and artists and their unique way of using their own voice or sound. The idea is to make good use of the audible format: guests bring instruments or any musical devices to the interview and get going – letting us know why that exact instrument has been essential for the musical path of the guest.

15

FIND OMA ÄÄNI IN YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP AND LISTEN TO THE WHOLE EPISODE – MUSIC, SOUNDS AND AN IMPROVISATION BY RINGA MANNER INCLUDED.

singing. When making music we are all equal composers. My ideas usually come from singing kind of choir harmonies on top of a demo song and thus developing the demo further. Sometimes I come up with a guitar riff or a chord progression on a piano, and then I develop it from my viewpoint as a vocalist. Sometimes I decorate the demo, sometimes I work more on the arrangement.

TUOMAS: So, you kind of compose from the standpoint of a player or singer.

RINGA: Yes. In Ruusut, we’ve also used Against The Clock method: each member takes their laptop and we start counting 10 minutes. Everyone creates something and then we play those to each other.

We’ve gotten great ideas from those. The Hearing has a song called Weltschmerz, which started from one of our Against The Clock sessions. The idea felt so good that I also wanted to use it for my solo.

TUOMAS: What program do you use when making music?

RINGA: I use Logic. I usually start by creating some kind of a beat from samples. Lately, I’ve also played a lot of guitar. I’m not a phenomenal guitarist so I have to do many takes to get it right. But that means that I need to work on it for a long time, which again helps in developing new ideas. Everything comes to life piece by piece. When I have structure in place, I start creating the vocals and vocal harmonies. I sang in a choir when I was young, I guess the harmonies come from there.

It was in Pintandwefall that I learned to overcome my prejudice of “not being able to play because no one has taught me”.

This 4-women powerhouse aka Pintandwefall has played a significant part of my musical growth. The whole starting point of the band was to choose instruments which we had not played before. Learning new instruments and learning about being in a band was hard, but it was also rewarding and super nice. I could hang with friends and play gigs.

TUOMAS: If someone wants to become Ringa Manner, what would you suggest?

RINGA: Ha! Here’s my recipe: wander around and out of mere luck be in the right place at the right time. Forget about some of your responsibilities, be cool-headed and don’t worry if you don’t necessarily know how you can pay next month’s rent. Somehow it will be figured out.

It was in Pintandwefall that I learned to overcome my prejudice of “not being able to play because no one hasn’t taught me”. There’s no such thing! Just grab an instrument and see where it takes you. When playing live, it’s not the end of the world if you make a mistake.

More seriously, I started playing piano when I was six, and since the third grade I started attending music class at school. I was not the best musician, but I really liked playing with other people. I sang in a choir and attended music-oriented high school. It was the first day of the last year of high school in 2006 when Ninni Luhtasaari asked if we should form a band. We did and formed Pintandwefall.

■

17

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

A Brief Histo — FROM ANCIENT MASS HYSTERIA TO A MICRODOSED PARTICIPATORY CULTURE Memes are everywhere. Just think about Elon Musk and Free Britney. Meme stocks, meme elections, meme movements. And although we've actually always (surprised?) had them, they still seem like a novel concept. Let’s have a little stroll through the memeverse and see, what has actually changed when memes went digital - or has anything, really?

TEXT JORI PASULA MEMES OG CREATORS AROUND INTERNET

Memes are cultural genes

I

n 1976 evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins introduced the concept of a cultural gene and coined it as a meme – a cultural and communicative unit that replicates from person to person, just like genes do. A meme could be an idea, a behavior or a style that for various and often mysterious motivations gets imitated in our humankind.

Dawkins’ approach got a lot of hype (and dispute) in the academic community and became a thing in psychology, philosophy, anthropology and folklore. Scientists got interested in how ideas jump from one mind to another and how hosts of these memes spread them forward.

in Victorian England – lead-based beauty products were causing some pimple-popping, so the elite painted shapes over them and the masses followed.

A century and some decades later we went bananas on Marilyn Monroe’s and Madonna’s (fake) beauty marks.

Some fell in love so badly they wanted a ‘Madonna’ piercing on their lip-cheek corner. And as the beauty spot appreciation has now gotten more natural and inclusive lately, we still tend to love perfectly imperfect beauty spots on otherwise spotless faces.

Old memes were pushed top-down

If emperors, royals, and queens of pop have had the muscles to spread memes so have advertisers, politicians and media institutions. During the roaring 1920’s women in the States got the right to vote and first wave feminists were fighting for more equality.

Actual memes are as old as our civilization and can live forever – or at least for centuries. Think of beauty marks, for example. In Ancient Rome, people didn’t really dig pimples and moles on their faces, so the upper class decided to paint them as beauty marks and make up metaphorical meanings for them. Boom. Viral meme was born as everyone in Rome started copying this behavior. Same thing was trending

That’s when infamous public relations and propaganda pioneer Edward Bernays got a brief from Lucky Strike – they wanted more women puffing cigarettes. Drinking and smoking was booming at the time, but smoking culture was only for men – ladies’ public smoking was a taboo. So, it was time to capitalize on social progress by introducing the PR stunt of the century: “Torches of Freedom”.

memes ory of meme memes Bernays hired a group of women to smoke while marching in the Easter march of 1929 and smoking as a feminist act went viral all over the press. Torches of Freedom was trending from the New York Times to The Telegraph and Lucky Strike got in the symbolism of progress. Gran Prix for woke capitalism, indeed.

interpreter and remixer of it. Bloggers, Insta activist and Youtubers will call out on bullshit, but meme creators will actually murder it with razor sharp satire crystallized in a golden combo of text and image. The thing is, that advertisers don’t possess the privilege to produce memes anymore. So, while memes used to be poured top-down, they now move peer-to-peer, and bottom-up.

Torches of Freedom boosted cigarette sales quite some, but it wasn’t too remarkable as people already knew when advertising tried to push memes. More remarkable is how cigarettes lived on as torches of freedom in our popular culture. We all know empowering and independent female characters presented in movies puffing a liberating cigarette torch. Maybe it’s due to the visual power of the cigarette or sponsoring, but the meme is still here.

Cultural movements and phenomena start in connected online communities, where memes can argue and the arguments can spread. Memes mobilized the BLM movement and freed Britney, so they most certainly will point out tone-deafness and wishy-washy jargon. This is something that big players from the entertainment industry, fashion or advertising shouldn’t be afraid of though. The same old recipe of staying true and leaving some room for realization, interpretation and creativity on the receiver's end will still go a long way.

Memes are an epitome of participatory culture

Participatory culture is all about low barriers for artistic expression and civic engagement, communality and extending the original story. Big players just need to understand that. Understand that they cannot force a meme. Memes are born within the collective creativity of the people – and these people need to be participated.

Shit like Torches of Freedom wouldn’t fly nowadays. Pepsi tried it with a “Kendall Jenner and the soda can of unity” demonstration ad spot and it definitely didn’t. It’s because we live in a digital participatory culture where nobody’s just a consumer of content anymore but an active spreader,

19

The meme fiction award 2021 Tapping into the wider Suomi coffee meme culture, the piece by @metasotkut recontextualizes the legendary presidential encounter in an empowering, Juhla Mokka embracing way. Pure art. Check out the whole saga on @metasotkut instagram page.

Memes are mental microdoses Currently, the meme spread is happening at a crazy pace and the lifetime of one single meme has gone short. But does any internet meme really get the meme status that Dawkins described almost fifty years ago?

The thing is, internet memes as a culture have become a meme itself. In this culture, memes can also be just pure pleasure. They can be absurdly hilarious, random dopamine bumps we use to smoothen our daily grind.

Memes can be a mood. Mood that gets instantly replicated in our brain, a mood that our minds want to imitate. They can encourage and empower us on a level that is hard to describe. They can show that we’re not the only ones with random, stupid-ass problems, struggling with thoughts.

They can simply tell us that some of our worst traits are actually quite okay, universal and nothing to be too anxious about.

And yes, they can make us feel personally attacked, but in a good way. They can teach us some self-irony and reflection skills. They can teach us about cultures, subcultures, and people in them – constantly searching for the right tone in taboo topics.

Memes discuss the roles of the joker and the ones being laughed at, describing how the tone changes when the view changes. Memes represent minority life, middle class life, love life. In full spectrum. They can romanticize nostalgia and slide into our childhood memories and make us reflect them. Most importantly, memes can validate us.

Make us understand the universal factors we share as humankind and appreciate our nuanced differences. They make us feel connected to something.

Modern memes don’t change our minds overnight like old memes could have done. They change our behavior and attitudes subconsciously, over time. This is obviously the possibility – and danger – of memes and social media content in general. While they can be used as a weapon, in their core they represent networked humanity and ever-evolving social discourse. That’s why we should be happy microdosing them – and making us more whole, understanding, and connected.

■

The starter pack meme award 2021 This piece by an unknown creator crystallizes history education into image macro format and lays some solid arguments on the everlong question – have we always had fuckboys?

The memetic brand award 2021 The epic surge of Arc’teryx memes proves in a crystal clear manner that the Canadian brand has stolen the throne from Patagonia as the official brand of urban hiker bros. Not the biggest thing I felt personally attacked by through a meme, but definitely one of the truest.

21

W a n n a t a s t e ? Order us for complimentary office tasting!

OFFICE LIFE JUST GOT GOOD

Your people are real champs. Make them count: order freshly roasted coffee full of aromatic goodness, delivered straight to your (home) office door.

Get in touch! sales@goodlifecoffee.fi

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

MEET AQQALU, Finland’s Only Inuit TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY NICK TULINEN

23

Mean, dark, indigenous-inspired and plain irresistible rap music from the deep Arctics. By happy coincident, we happened to meet Finland’s only Inuit in Inari, Lapland. Fast forward, we found out that this gem is also a cultural super hero, true artist and visionary. Have a read – and never think about eating healthy the same way.

TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY NICK TULINEN

Hi Aqqalu, how are you?

We saw you were in Norway lately, where are you now?

—Good!

—I’m in inari, just got back from Norway 2 weeks ago. I was doing a performance “This Is Our Body” with an Oslo-based artist Hanan Benammar, in the church where she was baptized. The project was based on Hans Egede’s 300 yearmark of stepping into Greenland, where he Christianized and colonized Inuits and banned their religion and cultural expressions, along with general cruel behavior such as whipping shamans and threatening women & children.

We met you by coincidence in Inari while we (BBO's creative peeps) were shooting brand photos for our client. We knew right away that we must stop and have a chat with you. But how did you end up in Inari?

—It’s a love story. Basically, I work in culture – music, films or whatever comes in hand. Some years ago I was doing a work trip to Berlinale, Berlin as a DJ. There I met Sunna, my now-fiancée, whom I then met coincidentally in Alaska (our first date!), and then coincidentally again in Norway (second date!). That was it – we decided to become a couple, and half a year later I moved to Inari.

Ok, wow. What was “This Is Our Body” like?

—It was a combination of theater, mass, concert, and ritual, bringing in also Egede in a form of huge pieces of him as a bread statue. I played the main role and was also the main musical act, playing Christian music backwards, combined with electronica and Inuit throat singing. The church was full and a lot of people attended the performance – an interesting piece of art.

You are a Creative/DJ/producer. Right? Something else?

—Yea, I’m a music producer and DJ. I’m also an activist.

When Black Lives Matter – movement started bringing colonialist statues down, I’m now trying to make in happen in North as well. I also mainly work with indigenous people.

25

Your stage name is Uyarakq. What does the name stand for and do you have different artist personalities?

We find you and your work extremely inspiring. What inspires you?

—Uyarakq means stone – and it’s also a slang term for weed.

But whatever the name, I am always just me.

—My inspiration comes indigenous artists, e.g. called Red Tribe and Tanya Tagaq. I am inspired by these artists.

Native Twitter inspires me a lot, too. Over there, we inspire each other to do something great. Just going to my studio inspires me, too. Anything can happen there, I can create any sound in the world.

You have been working together with many musicians within multiple projects. How do you choose your projects?

—I work as a producer and sound engineer as a mixer.

Basically, I’m sending beats to musicians and then working with them. Before Corona, most of my money came from DJ:ing, now it’s the producing stuff. Sometimes the artists pick me up to their projects, sometimes I do. In any case, I

Is there something specific you want to say with your art?

—I want to spread the message of creative freedom. I like making music about sexual freedom, too. I just made a

"In Greenland, it feels half of the people are artists of some kind, and the other half are administrators." just love to be creative in the studio and have fun. If it’s not fun to do it, then better not to do it all.

trilogy called “eating healthy”: eat dick, eat pussy, eat ass. I also have an album coming out 2022.

You made a track using sounds that your Twitter followers sent to you. Quite a unique idea – what & why?

Thanks for the interview, what are your plans right after this one?

—Yea, this was at the height of Corona lockdown. When everyone was socially distancing, I got this idea to get together virtually. I got myself to Twitter, asked for music samples and got 27 submissions. It was something social and fun to do, and people loved the music!

How would you describe the music scene in Greenland?

And what about Lapland?

—In Greenland, it feels half of the people are artists of some kind, and the other half are administrators. Music wise, it’s mostly rock and rap. It’s sort of similar to Iceland, it’s an island community, it’s just different.

—I’ll go and make music.

SPOTIFY: UYARAKQ

■

*Nielsen Suomi pakastepizzat 2021

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

r

C

i

A DESIGN r L

U

C

Can someone’s trash truly become another’s treasure? Jori Pasula dove deep into the world of circular design to learn how different creators can make us love stuff that was already gone. Read how to get wasted materials upcycled – with textiles, beer and interiors.

TEXT JORI PASULA PHOTOGRAPHY EACH COMPANY'S OWN PHOTO COLLECTIONS

The natural world is the perfect circular economy

C

ircular economy has become sizzling hot lately as companies are starting to get the beat of reducing, reusing and recycling. About time, amigues – we’re discarding two-thirds of materials taken from earth as we’ve been rocking the linear “take, make and waste” roll since industrialization.

The simplified goal of circular economy is to form a closed loop where products, their materials and cash circulate without waste being generated. This would feel like a huge concept to adapt if it hadn’t always been here. As the resident-explorer of National Geographic, Dr. Enric Sala reminds in his book Nature of Nature: “Everything is reused or repurposed in nonhuman ecosystems. The natural world is the perfect circular economy, where everything, even after its lifetime, becomes a source for something else.”

all while innovating with new technologies and business models to reuse and recycle materials more efficiently.

One could still argue that the usual recycling case is downcycling, where materials are broken down to then produce a recycled product of a lesser value – and should thus be the last option in our aim for circularity.

Designing away waste isn’t simple. As ‘design to last’ needs to be the basis, we need to benchmark natural processes

This is where upcycling has brought itself up in its renaissance. This design process where an end-of-life object is turned into a more valuable piece through repurposing, was ten years ago mostly known through (sometimes a bit kitschy) DIY-projects. But upcycling has turned pro – even haute couture brands like Louis Vuitton are creating from deadstock textiles and the Silicon Valley visionaries are now bringing upcycling to the food industry.

As a craft and a creative process in which a wasted object is turned into a unique piece that sparks meaning and value to its owner, upcycling is not only about environmental sustainability – it’s about rethinking through design and transmitting inspiration. Let's see how different Finnish companies are doing it – and get inspired!

29

01

JOUTEN

– EMBRACING THE BEAUTY OF IDLENESS WITH LUXURIOUS REPURPOSING

J

outen is a Helsinki-based lifestyle brand and an experimental design studio inspired by rethinking everyday ordinariness. Jouten creates gender neutral collections from repurposed hotel towels. Designer duo Emmi Lonka and Eljas Pajamies shared their story and thoughts on creating an upcycling-based brand.

Hi Emmi and Eljas. Could you open up the philosophy behind your brand a bit?

EMMI: Jouten is an ode for hazy idleness, kind of a homage to being at ease. It’s a relaxed and free state of mind in which not much is happening, but where one is truly being present. That’s what we want to cherish with the design language, color palettes and the visual world of our brand. Being Jouten helps to reflect on the past and imagine the future – new ideas need Jouten time.

How did you end up starting the project?

EMMI: Back in 2015 I had this desire to design and create surf ponchos. Used terry cloth towels turned out to be the most efficient material for it. I was scoring the towels from recycling centers and lost & founds of the swimming halls. There were piles of this abandoned, dumped potential just laying around everywhere. It was fulfilling to bring the terry back to life in a new repurposed context.

I’ve always found comfort and inspiration around water and back then I felt that the surf poncho encapsulated

the mindset of post-ocean bliss. The Jouten philosophy started to evolve from there, and we took it further when Eljas jumped on board.

ELJAS: In 2019 we really started to craft our own ethos and develop the brand further. We wanted to expand the Jouten world from beach and spa vibes and bring Jouten world to the streets, everywhere. We needed a solid supply of secondhand terry and thought about hotels – the luxury feel of towels wear off easily for hospitality standards, but the material is still top quality.

is second hand. Obviously the circularity is a selling point, but we don’t want to highlight it too much. We focus on crafting Jouten in a way that repurposes the used material in an inspiring way.

EMMI: I guess it’s about seeing beauty in places it hasn’t been seen before. But more importantly about how this beauty is then introduced and transmitted. How the pieces are designed and sewed, what’s the mood and mindset the brand is welcoming one into. I’d say it can be more difficult to design from used material, but it’s also more rewarding.

It requires some spaghetti being thrown to the wall to see what sticks, but it’s worth it.

We ended up pitching for Comforta (subsidiary of Lindström) who manage the towel game for pretty much every hotel in Finland. We basically had some designs, the brand philosophy and the storified visual concept to present with and they got pretty excited. Previously the towels were recycled as industrial textiles or broken down to fibers, and they really believed our vision for a more upcycled use.

We’re living in a world of forgetting, where pieces are easily abandoned and then forgotten. I think our mission has been in highlighting the wonderful aspects of the material, but making people forget that it’s used.

How does wasted potential turn into a unique piece?

ELJAS: I think the most important factor is in taking the material out of its original context by finding a new purpose and meaning for it – creating a new world and reality around it. There needs to be something immersive in the whole concept to fade away the fact that the material

Wanna share some love for terry as a material?

EMMI: Terry is lovely – soft and furry. It’s kinda giving these “I wanna fondle and pet that” vibes when seen worn. Maybe it’s triggering some animal instincts in us. But definitely for its usual context it’s associated with soothing environments and mindsets. Being at a spa or sauna, taking a meditative bath or a dip in the sea – at least not working or stressing.

"our mission has been in highlighting the wonderful aspects of the material, but making people forget that it’s used."

I guess that terry as a material subconsciously might have had an impact to the birth of the whole Jouten philosophy.

And it has helped to spread it.

How about expanding Jouten movement to different materials?

ELJAS: We’ve sort of waited that we’d run out of used terry – so we would have to imagine a new canvas and learn how to express Jouten on it to take it to new dimensions. But our material partners are super happy with the collaboration and we too have heaps of ideas and passion left for terry.

It’s definitely tempting to try something new and also kinda huge for our brand – when we do it we want to finesse it great.

EMMI: That would be fresh. We’ve been philosophizing with this – when you’re Jouten you are open to observe the environment and open to seek for new possibilities in surprising places. Would be lovely to create this positive cycle of new ideas, material uses and creative processes within Jouten.

■

31

02

Willem Heeffer

– EXPERIMENTING INTERIOR DESIGN WITH INDUSTRIAL EXCESS MATERIALS

W

illem Heeffer is a Helsinki-based Dutch designer that loves to work within the intersections of product design, interior design and architecture. Alongside his projects with artists and museums he’s been experimenting with repurposed and upcycled design on industrial excess materials. His inventories around Helsinki industrial sites have led to brilliantly minimalistic design lamp collections – created from washing machine drums to industrial coffee boilers.

"I think it’s simply about taking an object and really thinking it over – working to transform it into something else."

Hi Willem! How did you get started with repurposed design products?

the same material to create these 100 to 150-piece limited collections that I like to create.

—I guess it’s that I have a thing for ready-made objects, I’m just fascinated by them. Working like this limits me enough. Otherwise I would have endless possibilities and I can’t handle that kind of freedom.

After getting the initial idea it comes down to finding the sources and making the right connections. With coffee boilers I got together with Paulig – that was awesome since I have the supply directly from their production facilities.

How do you turn waste into design pieces?

They actually wanted to buy the first batch of lamps I created to use in their trade shows – that was quite a funny cycle.

—I think it’s simply about taking an object and really thinking it over – working to transform it into something else. With the coffee boiler lamps many people that wanted them had no idea of their previous life. That gives me the feeling that I’ve succeeded.

What are you working on right now?

—In terms of my own products, I have this quite a long project that I’m begging to get finished. Old phone cables used to go through this tiny ceramic cup – and these pieces were produced by Arabia in the 1920's or 30’s.

But whatever the product is it needs to form a connection to its user for its life to be prolonged and cherished. In this, I guess the upcycled purpose helps, it can add value to the story.

I managed to get my hands on these – they have the stamps and everything and that is something truly Finnish to me.

So, I’m working with a talented ceramics artist to rebake them and to design tiny beautiful lamps from them. It's a laborious task and always a bit of a struggle but we’ll get there, for sure.

How do you score the objects?

—I’ve always loved looking for scrap pieces and bringing them to my studio. But the problem is in finding enough of

■

33

03

ANT BREW

– LAHTI LOCALS SHAKING THE BEER WORLD WITH COMPLETELY WASTED POTENTIAL

A

NT BREW achieved worldwide fame last year with a Wasted Potential series that included a stout smoked with hand-picked goose droppings. Lahti brewers are still all about keeping the beer game real, green and local.

Originally started as home brewer co-op ANT FARM in a renovated bike basement in 2016, the community eventually took over the legendary Malski brewery in 2020 and turned into a brew pub – breathing life into the urban culture of the windy city.

One of the original ants – Kari Puttonen – opened up their philosophies on brew business and sustainability, taking us through the extraordinary processes of the Wasted Potential series.

Hi Kari! There are heaps of craft breweries everywhere and tons of beer brewed in Lahti. What’s your philosophy?

I think ANT FARM sums it well – lots of underground work and action, then bustling on the ground with collaborative beer releases and events. Beer is the sugar that gathers the ants together.

Beer is actually quite a boring product but a great catalyst for human interaction and creativity. We’ve always been tight with the culture scene of the city and we want to contribute to the local community as a whole. Our first beers were created for the legendary FC Lahti football team and the Kaupungin Äänet -festival and we’ve gotten even tighter with local design students, artists, musicians, sports team and festival creators ever since.

We have a passion for beer and we really want it to work.

It’s the base that allows layers to be built on top of it.

Rather than letting the beer apps and rating culture guide us too much, we are driven by curiosity – we’re constantly on the search for new angles and experiences.

35

"Obviously cleaning Lahti parks is quite satisfying, but mostly we were motivated to show everything can be reused with innovation and willpower."

really wanted to throw a challenge to the whole industry on innovating with ingredient circularity, but how do we tell the public why this beer simply has to be made?

So, we decided to broaden and deepen the series. Finesse it in a way that it can be taken seriously. Curate quality ingredients from fresh wild herbs and quality waste foods like out-of-date fruits and berries to make it ambitious and interesting. Then have the goose dropping beer as a part of the series. But it was still quite risky – I told our crew we’re jumping on sloppy ground towards the unknown.

How did you get it done?

There’s an enormous power in collaboration. We teamed up with Ossi Paloneva (that was like winning a lottery), and he taught and showed us how to source wild herbs and other fine ingredients , like moss, sustainably.

It was quite a ride still, as the time frame was tight. And we initially planned for three beers but ended up with seven – for all of them we had a clear vision that the ingredients really need to taste in the end product.

So the goose droppings beer then tasted like...?

Green tea, actually. It’s basically grass that has gone through one system. We collaborated with experts to find a safe, clean and delicate process to smoke the malts using the goose waste. The smoking process released a unique green tea type of flavor to the stout. It was actually so delicious that it made all the hand-picking of the droppings around Lahti parks worth it.

Wasted Potential series definitely was a new perspective – what was that all about?

Lahti was elected as the European Green Capital in 2021, so they asked us to jump on board with a special beer highlighting sustainability. We promised to think it over and get back to them.

How was the reception for the Wasted Potential series?

I’d say we’re green pragmatics – taking small steps to impact the bigger picture. Our sustainability values come quite naturally from our focus in locality. The malt comes from Viking Malt of the local grain cluster and we use outof-date products of neighboring grocery stores that are still great for brewing. 95% percent of our beer is sold within a kilometer range of our brewery – that allows us to use reusable Eco Draft kegs in an efficient way.

Mind-blowing – 50 million media hits globally after the release. Swiss TV, The Telegraph, CBC and food & drink media around the world featured us. And most importantly, they got the point – everything can be reused and recycled with innovation and the right attitude. I hope this inspired some of the bigger players in the industry as well.

What’s next?

But for the Green Lahti project we wanted to do something crazy. When Lahti’s creative agency TBWA came up with the idea of using goose droppings in brewing, that resonated and made us jump on board. Obviously cleaning Lahti parks from doodles is quite satisfying, but mostly we were motivated to show the whole industry that everythingcan be reused with innovation and willpower.

We’re continuing the Wasted Potential series after we’ve taken a short breather. There’s a beer coming that deals with – and raises awareness to – the sustainability concerns of our local lakes, in addition to other wasted potential creation. Our box is quite wide at the moment and we’re still willing to go outside it.

We try to keep the bar low for experimentation but high for quality. An experiment is not an intrinsic value by itself – it needs to have a meaning for us, our customers and the community.

So, goose shit in beer brewing. Sounds risky.

It was. For a young company like us it was a huge thing – if that beer ends up as a joke our whole brewery is a joke. We

■

37

04

LOVIA

– IMPACTFUL & TIMELESS PIECES FROM PRE-CONSUMER SCRAP FLOWS

F

innish bag designer brand Lovia draws inspiration from Finnish mythology. Loviatar is the powerful matriarch witch of our national epic Kalevala and lovi is a crack between two stones, mythologically a gate between two worlds. For Lovia’s founder and designer Outi Korpilaakso these worlds are timeless yet relevant design and excess material flows that the industry needs to learn to appreciate.

How did you get started with Lovia, Outi?

In 2014 I realized that I can’t continue as a designer unless I contribute to solving the problems of the fashion industry. In my previous positions I have witnessed how products can be created without the slightest idea of their actual origin or the people behind the processes. This can be the case with not only consumers, but with designers as well.

I wanted to place the appreciation for people and the environment to the core of my business. Lovia was started with a focus on excess materials.

changeable straps, and all our pieces are designed with maintenance and repair in mind.

As the concept of circular economy wasn’t that buzzing back in 2014, I first had to find the sources of material overflows and link up with right connections. And, of course, pitch our ideology over and over again.

Available materials determine our design process – the excess pieces and their forms define a large part of the product being designed. To be fair, the work can be tricky and finding solutions can be a struggle. I think that design, especially the circular type, consists mostly of problem solving. How to turn scraps into aesthetic ensembles. I’m intrigued by the concept of timelessness, and that I’m trying to study – how the classic products face the test of time and what are factors and nuances behind this phenomenon.

That is the ultimate challenge in design.

Your brand has drawn some inspiration from Kalevala, but transparency seems to be an even bigger theme.

What’s your ideology behind it?

I feel that change is only possible with brutal honesty. Each and every one of our bags has a ”DNA code” that lets the customer dig into the detailed background of the product.

We want to understand the journey of our materials, the details of our production process thoroughly and open it to our customers transparently.

For me, a product is a tool of activism - our product can communicate a message of circularity and spark conversation on how we can impact on different levels – as individuals, as companies and as a society.

Designing and producing products has an impact and our products leave a footprint to our environment as well – we want to be open about this. By gathering more knowledge through which we can develop our processes, we can produce long-lasting products that in the future have an even smaller carbon footprint.

■

How about your material and production flows – what, where?

Majority of the leather and textile is sourced from furniture factories, such as Isku and Hakola. In addition, we use fish skins that are excess from the food industry – all the material used to produce our bags is excess from other industries.

At first it was difficult to find the right partner to produce our bags. Many declined, not wanting to change processes and work on the terms of the scrap pieces of material. With our current partner, Clio (based in Milan) we have been able to solve these issues together and to create a process that works for all. Clio’s team is inspiringly motivated in doing things differently.

How can the scrap pieces be turned into luxurious design pieces?

I think a perfect piece can be both relevant and timeless at the same time. It must serve and delight its users year after year. We’re pursuing beauty and practicality – the bags and purses have adjustable and

39

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

DICK ON FLOWERS Fire Dick is a pseudonym for Nick Tulinen, a photographer who’s been hustling photos full-time over a decade. Norm-core alchemist since birth, he’s been shooting with his distinguishable style in fields of journalism, music and fashion – and lately in big-ass branding and advertising stuff, too. Nick is a father of two sons and a devoted neighborhood freak, a true Hagrid of Helsinki.

TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY NICK TULINEN AKA FIRE DICK

Hello Nick! These photos look super cool, what are they?

—Frozen, melted, wizened, burned, refrozen flowers and flower bouquets. Pictures taken at different stages during the process of sculpting flowers.

What does nature photography mean to you?

—I’ve always been a people photographer. In my opinion, there has never been a good enough picture of nature or flowers. These things are simply too beautiful to take pictures of – and should be enjoyed IRL. In my opinion, people end up taking fake looking pictures of them and they don’t resemble the original object at all.

But opinions can change and so can points of views. These are – yes – pictures of flowers, but also kind of fictional movie-like mystic scenes born through a process of sculpting and playing around with them. These are pictures of the process, not pure flower photos.

What’s the inspiration and story behind this photo series?

and I had nothing interesting to shoot. But what I did have, was shitloads of flower-bouquets I got from my previous exhibition, laying around the house. I took them out to our backyard, probably ended up doing something else, and forgot them in a plastic box. So, there they were, in the rain and freezing again and again. Bored as I was, I started to sculpt these moldy flower cubes. Since then, this has become a more controlled method of producing this kind of pictures. The process is still full of mystery and surprises, as the elements work in such a peculiar way.

Aesthetics of flowers?

—Plants, all kind of flowers has always been a meaningful part of my daily aesthetics. We have a very plant-filled home, and we regularly get bouquets from BUD to bring colors to our life. But the thing is, I also enjoy watching the end part of a bouquet’s life... It becomes another bouquet after being torn down, ready to be thrown away. So, keep em’!

Forget them! Enjoy them again! I recently started this web shop of my pictures, so you can also get a print of these explorations, if you are a true flower person. Go check them out: www.firedick.shop

■

— Around spring 2020, during the first quarantine, I started this “I have to come up with shit”-project. The epidemic had obviously prevented me from being in contact with people, BUDXPLORATIONS Various artists explore the world of flowers in their own ways. What'd you do?

41

43

45

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

MEET THE CREATORS OF BUD About the time! We got Anna Viertiö, the owner of BUD, to sit down and share her glorious, BUD-ful visions with us all. And because every power woman needs a mad-enough sidekick, we also had a quick chat with Huuko Koski, a creative who’s been one of the core people in bringing BUD into reality.

TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY NICK TULINEN

Anna, hello! Let’s jump straight into it – how did you get the idea of BUD? —Hey there! The truth: one dark, stormy and moody November evening I got an idea that was not that carefully considered – more like a happy-go-lucky kind of a lightning.

Basically, we needed more space for our advertising & branding agency BBO Creative, and my original idea was to somehow combine an abundant, beautiful flower shop with an inspiring creative space. After a quick decision, everything started flowing fast.

Why Punavuori?

—Punavuori is definitively our place to be. We want to do our part and help in giving the whole neighbourhood a new, charming glow. My original idea was maybe a bit

more down to earth, but BUD is fast becoming a kind of a local “funhouse” for art, design, wine, music and people – according to who we happen to meet along the way (already so many!).

The name “BUD” has raised a lot of interest. Tell us about it!

—Ha ha. For us it resembles a kind of cool, relaxed and wonderfully easy-to-approach “hillbilly” attitude. We wanted to find a name that’s warm and unique. Of course, BUD also stands for actual flower buds, friends and a bud of something that’s on its way to bloom. That goes with our unwritten mission: we want to support the blooming of all kinds of good buds with potency – be it people, ideas or something else.

47

It’s already been a few years of full action. BUD up?

—Well, now when I stop to look around here in BUD – this is all just truly amazing. I sort of thought that when we get BUD open, it’d be kind of ready. But I feel everything’s still evolving, and of course covid restrictions have slowed things down, too. Generally, I believe that when you have a vision and then allow the universe to have its own ways alongside of you, everything usually grows into something much bigger than your original plans. BUD is a great little creative spaceship slash platform to get to know and bring together entrepreneurs, artists, designers and creatives around the Punavuori district, Helsinki, and beyond.

Any highlights?

"I’d love to say ‘be brave’ but – and ha ha, I know this is a bit lame – life has taught me that babysteps are usually the way to go."

—There's many! The flower side of BUD is blooming: since beginning,, we've worked a lot with gorgeous collabs, stylings and installations orders. People at the neughbourhood have found us as their local go-to flower shop and we also have a new "flower Netflix" service called BUDscription for ongoing orders.

Creative Huuko Koski made BUD’s design decisions together with Anna.

On the art side, we've had amazing artists in the house, including Janne Räisänen, Nick Tulinen, Timo Lemmetti, Jouko Lehtola, Niina Mantsinen and many others. BUD is also a great place for intimate, local music gigs, and we are excited to get more of those now when the world is opening up again!

"Be real, creative, bold – and foolish."

Anna Viertiö, the owner of BUD & power woman behind it all.

Huuko, hi! BUD’s interior design is exceptionally glorious and seems to inspire just about everyone stepping inside. What’s the secret?

Future of BUD – where is this flowery space-ship heading?

—In short: “you nice, me nice, let’s hang out.” But yea, I think we’re on the way to creating our version of Heaven on Earth – flying boldly towards the new with open jacket and heart, bringing together good people and getting inspired by them, and all kinds of bold, moving, weird, and/or beautiful collabs.

—BUD was designed to be a space for people we relate to and who inspire us – everyone who are truly themselves and do what they love. We started the design process by really digging deep and trying to understand, what kind of space would make us feel inspired and tempted.

■

Anna and I made the final design decisions, but we got a little help from Essi Nador and Helena Orava in the process, too.

So, I feel like the secret is the symbiosis between the space, us who designed the space and the people and things that we absorbed inspiration from. In the end, it’s the people that make BUD. Anything to add, Anna?

—Before us, Uudenmaankatu 11 used to be a fur shop. In the beginning, we took everything down, revealed the gorgeous old floor and saged’ the space to let the old energies go & be free. BUD’s secret is the combination of something industrial, decadent and beautiful. When things are just a bit off, the beauty of people, art and ideas comes through in a new way. And everything’s still evolving, which I think is the best way to build concept with a lot of soul and life-force.

BUD can be rented for meetings, workshops, parties and other events. Why choose BUD? Anna: Inspiration and creativity truly flow in spaces where you feel good and free. That’s what BUD is all about. You can rent either our Silent BUD backroom with all meeting equipment treats, or the whole of BUD, which comes with the Mini Bar. Everything’s made to be nice & smooth Huuko: Yup. And where else can you have a kick-off meeting or a development discussion with your employees, literally surrounded by flowers? No but for real, whatever event you are organizing, BUD definitely will flourish your creativity and thinking.

Anna, you mentioned BBO Creative in the beginning.

How does creative agency benefit from Flower boutique-Mini bar-Creative Space combination?

—A big part of BUD’s birth story is the fact that we needed more space. At BBO, we’ve been in the same roof floor, in the same block, for decades. Through BUD, we got more space which is also in the street level. It makes connecting with new people and projects very easy and has already led to some really nice new customer projects. To have our own workshop and meeting space is a definitive everyday plus, too.

49

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

CRAVING GREENS Chef, recipe developer and cookbook author Ina Niiniketo is known from her delicious recipes. Try out this decadent bunch of green-loaded yummy ones to get your body and taste buds happily buzzing!

TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHY INA NIINIKETO

Green Curry Paste 1 pound coriander 1 pound of Thai basil piece of ginger 2 green chilies 2 pieces of lemongrass 3 cloves of garlic 10 lime leaves 2 pieces of lime 1 teaspoon cumin 1 teaspoon coriander seeds 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 tablespoon light miso

51

Pickled Jalapenos 1 dl rice wine vinegar 1 dl sugar 1 dl of water 10 fresh jalapenos Cut the jalapenos into thin slices.

Boil vinegar, sugar and water.

Put the jalapenos in a glass jar and pour the broth on top.

Matcha Basil Lemonade

For 4 people /// cooking time: 30 min 1 pound basil 1 tablespoon matcha powder 4 tablespoons agave syrup 3 pieces of lemon juice 3 pcs lime juice 1 liter of water Ice Mix all ingredients in a blender without water. Add water and mix.

Pour into a glass over ice.

Green Curry Pea Soup

For 4 people /// cooking time: 30 min 500 g frozen peas 2 tablespoons green curry paste 1 jar of coconut milk 1 lime juice salt Boil the peas with coconut milk and green curry paste.

Use a stick blender to puree.

Season with salt and lime juice.

53

Spinach “Tarte Flambee” Pizza base 5 dl of milk 7 dl wheat flour 1 tablespoon salt On top: 1 jar Creme Fraiche 100 g of spinach 2 cloves of garlic olive oil herbs e.g. parsley, tarragon, watercress, mint 1 piece of burrata black pepper salt

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Start with the pizza base. Mix all the ingredients together and knead until the dough comes off from the bowl. Roll out the dough as thin as possible and place it on baking paper for the oven plate.

Fry the spinach in a hot pan in olive oil. Grate the garlic. Season with salt.

Spread a thin layer of creme fraiche on top of the dough base. Top it with fried spinach.

Bake the pizza in the oven for about 10-15 minutes or until it has a beautiful color.

Top with fresh herbs, burrata and black pepper.

You can also finish it with grated lemon zest and a sip of olive oil.

Avocado Toast

Green Dukkah

For 4 people /// cooking time: 30 min

1 dl whole almonds 1 dl peeled pistachios 1 dl sesame seeds 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 tablespoon dried thyme 1 tablespoon dried tarragon 1 tablespoon cumin 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar

4 slices of levain bread 2 avocados 4 tablespoons cream cheese 2 tablespoons pickled jalapenos 1 pound coriander 1 tablespoon green dukkah 1 tablespoon olive oil Toast the bread slices in olive oil in a hot pan.

Roast all ingredients in an oven at 180 degrees. You can also toast in a hot pan.

Cut the avocados in half and slice the halves into thin strips.

Spread cream cheese on top of the bread, place half of a sliced ​​avocado on top and sprinkle dukkah on top.

Finish in a blender or cutter.

Finish with coriander and pickled jalapeno.

55

Artichoke and pistou Artichoke barigoule broth: 2 pieces of shallots 2 cloves of garlic a few branches of thyme a few bay leaves olive oil 2 dl white wine 7 dl of water 1 lemon salt Pistou: 1 pound basil 2 cloves of garlic 0.5 dl of olive oil lemon peel salt and black pepper

Start with Barigoule broth. Cut the onions into strips.

Freeze onions and herbs in olive oil in a flat pot. Add the white wine to the mixture and bring to a boil. Add in water. Season with salt and add the lemon zest and juice.

Boil the artichokes in the broth for about 30 min – 1 hour, depending on the size. Check artichokes’ softness from their bottom side with a small knife. Lift them out of the broth and cool.

For the pistou, mix all the ingredients in a blender and season with salt and with black pepper.

Dip the artichoke petals in the pistou and eat the soft part of the leaves.

■

Yhdistimme ajattelun kehittämisen ja lomamatkojen rentouden vastuullisuudesta ja laadusta tinkimättä.

thinkingholidays.fi

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

— WHAT IS IT WORTH? Ossi Paloneva is a vegan chef on a personal journey to make it in the curious and much-hyped world of NFT’s. Are NFT's worth the hustle?

Read and figure.

TEXT & IMAGES OSSI PALONEVA

I

drew a picture on my laptop. Is it art or just a picture doesn’t really matter – I could upload the .PNG file to OpeanSea for sale and ask any price I liked in Ethereum or Polygon crypto currencies. Chi-ching – money in my crypto wallet, easy living doing something I love! Unfortunately, the file is worth nothing. I’m not Britney Spears, my name doesn’t generate value. No-one is interested in owning an NFT of an unknown hustler – even if I gave it away for free.

I’m a semi-celebrity chef and closed my vegan wild food restaurant due to Covid. When events and catering went down to zero, I started putting time into writing and painting, but also into crypto. Bitcoin crashed along with my investments, which meant digging deeper into the digital rabbit hole seemed like a clever thing to do to pull

it eventually off. I probably made all the mistakes on the way before finding some sort of peace with the game.

What’s an NFT anyways?

NFTs have been around since 2017, but the phenomena broke out big time in the spring of 2021. In crypto space you find everything from meme coins with five holders to multibillion dollar tech companies, and I can tell you, NFTs are quite something else. A signed tweet, meme dog GIF or picture of a hand drawn elephant looking like it’s made in the preschool art class, can trade for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

59

At the same time, The NFT collage ‘Everydays, First 5000 days’ by Beeple (Mike Winklemann) sold at Christie’s auction house at the price of 69 million dollars making him the 3rd most valuable artist alive and NFTs a legit form of art. NFTs are the next big evolution of the art scene, a completely new platform displaying the creative process.

chasing the new high score also financially appealing.

Future games are metaverses where you can buy the land, hire an architect (a real person, obviously) to design and build you a casino. Maybe the NFT is the flipper machine you place in the corner of your virtual saloon for making passive income while you sleep in the real world.

Before the NFT markets, 3D-animators’ work had value only through its utility. Animation was a part of a movie, ad, game, app, any form of digital & visual entity. By itself, it wasn’t considered as a tradeable store of value, like a physical painting was. The current situation is obviously a candy store for native digital artists, but what about the rest of us?

If any form of art can be digitized and sold as an NFT, why not yours? And a big one: can any contemporary artist even afford blindfolding themselves from the on-going progress,

Facebook recently changed its company name into ‘Meta’, underlining the direction of their future direction and R & D. Instead of a public page, you’re going to possess a virtual home base where you’re able to work, interact and create, maybe invite friends over. What are you going to wear?

Gucci’s or Prada’s NFTs? What’d be hanging on your wall, unless NFTs? Planning to go to see the show? You already know what the ticket is.

“And a big one: can any contemporary artist even afford blindfolding themselves from the NFT world?” sculpting the future environment of their craftsmanship?

Whereas two bitcoins are equal to each other, NFTs or ‘Non-fungible tokens’ are unique, no two matching ones. They are anything digital, attached to and traded on blockchain and the content or its utility is limited only to one's imagination and beyond. NFTs are bound to re-shape the entertainment, sports, porn industry, and of course gaming. Most of us have spent thousands of hours playing SIMS, GTA or Counter Strike, only for the fun of it. Play-to-earn makes

This development makes me wanna sprint into the wild and cover myself with the real-life dirt, but I suppose the dApps, launchpads and web3 just don't care. Supposedly no-one believes Instagram, internet and credit cards are the final achievements of humans. Crypto currencies seem to replace money as we know it. Blockchain, yes. Decentralizing data and finance, yes. Meme GIF NFTs, sounds silly but yes. NFTs play an important role as keys opening a vast variety of doors in the real and artificial future worlds.

Back to my drawings!

I thought NFTs are only art and divided the phenomena into three categories: 1) fine art, nice pieces showcasing talent 2) technical stuff, 3Ds, computer art etc. and 3) Memes, GIFs, 8bit monkeys, and other random shit that has only speculative value with zero artistic attributes. This is partially true, but Gucci metaverse NFT sunglasses or tickets to a show don’t fit into any of the three above.

Crypto related Telegram and Discord channels are full of immature moonshot jargon, hype pep talk, dreams of buying Lamborghini when a longwaited catalyst blows the chart through the roof, selling is bad, taking profits makes you a Brutus, clichés, and sadness. Losing money is a taboo.

My idea was to put up a conceptual art project, make fun of that culture, by doing technologically as undeveloped ‘art’ as possible. I was convinced @guywithsign was lacking from the NFT space. I started writing sentences like ‘WEN LAMBO’, ‘China wakes up!’ and ‘SELLERS GET REKKKT’ with hobbly, bright colors, freehand, as imperfect as possible, made with old school Ms Paint.

Then I uploaded the screenshot into OpenSea – one NFT done. I ended up uploading tens of those to the blockchain.

Marketing is key to success. I know how to build up a phenomenon.

I’ve done that with wastefood, so why not with completely new approach to NFTs! That means social media.

Reddit, Telegram, Discord and Twitter are the most important channels when it comes to crypto and NFTs. Naturally Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok matter as well. So, I put social media accounts up, followed the maximum number of related accounts each day, commented everything, engaged, put up freebie competitions. I made the journey of building the thing from the scratch into an amazing art project of its own, harassing the gatekeepers till my accounts got frozen because of the spamming, and turned that into a joke, obviously. I contacted the NFT influencers to get to know the prices.

Numbers went up, but my NFTs still didn’t sell.

sold some, but it’s not the fast lane making me rich, either.

But why would you want to own an NFT? The pixels are the same, Beeple’s 69M$ NFT is exactly the same as the high-quality picture of it is, and a GIF is a GIF, regardless of who owns it. But on the other hand, owning a replica of Mona Lisa is far from owning the real deal. For many, owning something might make a big difference compared to just watching the thing. Ownership of an NFT is certified by a smart contract written in the blockchain. NFT can contain hidden information, like timestamped digital signature of the artist. Displaying NFTs in museums is not only a speculative future metaverse scenario: St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum opened its first ever completely virtual exhibition in November 2021. The NFT artworks of the exhibition are only to be seen in the virtual space created as a new digital wing of the physical exhibition space.

Supporting an artist has always been an important factor in art. As said, the name is important. Jani Leinonen, one of the most successful Finnish contemporary artists, known best for kidnapping Ronald McDonald back in 2011, sold his NFT animation ‘Things You Own’ with 6,9 ETH (which by the time of writing equals roughly 30 000 $). But how to break through? Crazy talent, ruthless self-promoting, getting lucky, getting endorsed by someone important in the scene or just simply knowing the right people? That doesn’t really sound much different from making it in any other field of art.

What I found out is that Twitter, particularly, is a highway for the shit. There’re thousands of NFT ‘collectors’ and ‘promoters’ telling they have huge amounts of money to spend on unknown NFT artists’ work. You only have to post your links or pictures of your NFT to the comments, making these threads quite impressive art shows by themselves.

And people post, because its free visibility, for sure – yet you can expect they all are hoax. No-one even flicks through your works. Everyone wants to sell; no-one is there to buy.

Only thing going up is the algorithm of the collectors’ tweet.

Incredible art by talented people turns into garbage.

Supply matters a lot, too. Are there 10 objects in the market, or a limitless amount of them? Digital stuff is easy to multiply and a pretty common maximum number for monkey NFT series is 10 000 pieces. Rarity, like a monkey having a beanie and an earring makes it more valuable.

But then, out of the blue, the collector contacts you. Legit AF, 100K+ followers, most of them bots, though. He wants to buy your art, only problem is he doesn’t have Ethereum for the gas because of a silly and weird accident. You figure out the rest.

Certain hashtags on Instagram, like #NFTart, generate a nice amount of contacts and proposals for promoting your work. It’s cheap. 19 $ gives you a good package of visibility in the feeds of newly launched art collectives of 100K+ bot followers!

Value can be much more than artistic stuff or speculative gains. NFTs also have a vast variety of utilities. Owning one can attach you to a certain group, and often there’s a closed community on Discord. Owning something might give benefits – for example in a form of prepurchase access to other new projects.

Finding out artists, who’s stuff I really liked, yet not selling one single piece made me confused. I was also thinking how value is formed in NFTs and art in general. Like, I have my paintings hanging on the wall of the local pizzeria, I’ve

Institutional position forms an insane value for some art works. Cryptopunks are an NFT collection of computergenerated pixel figures. They’ve also been sold at auction houses like Christie’s, the current record price being 7,57M

61

$ for a piece. Cryptopunks are the first of their kind, but that alone doesn’t explain the price. Owning one is a status symbol, but also a ticket to an inner circle, some kind of world elite, and the ones not owning the pixel figure don’t know what information is being passed on and what kind of deals are being made in that club. It’s a modern noble rank. Maybe the person owning the rarest punk is the cult master? And yes, VISA owns one.

Gary Vee, authority and gate keeper in crypto and NFTs, made an NFT collection of hand drawn animal figures. 5 original drawings, including the works ‘Gratitude gorilla’ and ‘Tremendous tiger’, were auctioned at prices ranging from 162K$ to 412K$ each. The NFTs themselves (yes, 10 thousand of them) are priced above 50K$. The VeeFriend NFTs are actually tickets to VeeConference, a real-life event collecting the crème de la crème of the game into the same house. Seems like there’s plenty of people who don’t want to miss that party.

Can you succeed in NFTs?

I got frustrated. My NFTs didn’t sell. Paint was a clumsy tool for doing anything. I went crazy, started doing splatter video clips and 3d animations but no-one visited my OpenSea collection. I gave up the consistency, supply didn’t matter.

I was not about to form a community around the stuff I did, who would join? Also, the chance of someone like Gary Vee spotting my works and making them skyrocket in value or getting sold for any price in the first place, was quite thin.

But from all the forms of art I’ve done during my life, I surprisingly found calmness and beauty in drawing on my laptop screen. So, I kept on going. I got better fast and learning a new skill feels special. Maybe – if I make 50 or 100 pieces I’m satisfied with, I’ll figure out a way of making money out of them, but for now, I’ll spend my free time drawing instead of flicking through social media. Creating itself has value of its own.

The self-portrait on the following page was drawn between editing this article and learning how to create Telegram stickers.

■

Does this all mean, succeeding in NFTs demands creating a layer of impossible value from the thin air on top of your drawing? Yes and no. I suppose good art finds its way of making magic. But definitely, understanding what makes your art worth something, helps you to understand who wants to invest in it and why.

NFTs for us dum-dums Crypto market

is currently worth 3 trillion dollars. Institutional investors and mass-adaptation is expected to multiply it’s value within the near future.

NFT

'non-fungible token’, is a digital asset, unique unit of data traded on blockchain. NFTs are commonly seen as digital art, but the concept’s use cases are already seen in gaming, entertainment, and virtual reality objects.

Blockchain

is the operational technology behind cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Every transaction is written as a smart contract to the block chain and the movement of assets can be tracked in real time. Ethereum and BSC are the biggest blockchains, but new operating systems are constantly being developed.

Open SeA

is the most used NFT marketplace running mainly on Ethereum blockchain. The 2021 NFT boom has given birth to multiple new NFT marketplaces and trading platforms.

63

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

Jani Toivola

MAN OF LO E

Actor, author, and former politician Jani Toivola arrives to BUD buzzing with happiness and excitement. He’s getting ready for his one-man show’s premier in Koko Teatteri called “Rakkaudesta”, based on his samecalled book published in 2021. We got a chance to ask a few questions – let’s hear what’s on the actor’s mind.

TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY NICK TULINEN

the moment. It becomes something different when the audience is present. As an actor, you need to let go of controlling what happens to the act once it’s out – what the audience actually reacts to and what touches them. You need to be brave enough to leave space for that.

Jani, your Rakkaudesta -book was published last year, and now you’re just about to step on stage with a solo act based on the book. How are you?

—I’m happy, excited, and nervous, too. This show has been a dream of mine for several years, and it’s now coming true. It feels really good, but also wild to be soon on the stage alone.

What do you feel you want to give and share to people through this piece of art?

What does this act mean to you?

—Umm, that’s a hard one. I feel this act has elements designed to challenge and wake up people, to bring out new points of views to this time we’re in. But the biggest thing for me is to invite people to the theater to share a moment together. For myself, I’ve been missing shows that would sort of create a church without a church – a space, where your soul gets nourished. Those places don’t have to be religious.

—I’m curious by nature and often end up to different places and situations just by a chance. But I feel that in life, there are also some doors that carry a deeper meaning, and this is one of those. I’m about to step through a door I’ve been traveling towards for years.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to make my own solo performance. I’ve now stepped out from politics, and truly enjoy being back on stage and in theater. The show is based on my own book and I’ve brought in people outside of theater scene to create something visually new. For example, the director Emilia Hernesniemi is actually a documentary director, and the costume designer Claudia Cifu usually works with fashion and advertising.

Has your political career affected your new life direction?

—Yes, absolutely. I’m a different person after those 8 years in politics. And this act starts from the moment I close the doors of the parliament house for the one last time. In that moment, I realized I have maybe lost some quite essential parts of myself. I started making a journey back to myself, looking at my life, getting a feel of my own outlines again.

The result is something I’ve been dreaming about, but it’s important to also remember that theater is an art of

"I realized in a new way how important art actually is: at its best, art can verbalize society and its different phenomena in a way no other thing can."

65

Also, when I was watching the art scene from outside, from the bubble of politics, I realized in a new way how important art actually is: at its best, art can verbalize society and its different phenomena in a way no other thing can. In politics, for example, even the vocabulary can be quite normative. You can’t use certain words, but in theater, you can use all of them. There are no rules.

nicely, but I can also feel it’s starting to be quite run out by now. So, I’m wishing for the world to open; in a way, my creativity “savings” are now used, and I the need to refill. I feel excited to get out, to new places with new people, random meetings, people-watching in cafes or restaurants, overhearing parts of those everyday conversations and so on.

Love. Do you experience it in a new way now when you’ve worked on it through art?

On the other hand, these years have also been inspiring in their own way. There’s been new ways of creating connection and ways of being. In the beginning of lockdown, for example, a lot of people – from big stars to normal people – were doing these Instagram lives, sharing their rather private moments. It was inspiring to get to be part of that phenomena.

—Well, when you write about your own life, you could easily think that when you’re done writing, you’ve sort of handled the topic. But now when I’m bringing the book on stage, I’ve noticed there are still things I haven’t handled thoroughly yet, or that are frightening, or moving. Generally, I’m not one to tell people how things are. I think I have a need to ask questions and say things aloud, to be able to understand them myself, too.

But yea, love. Working with the topic of love has strengthened my idea of love having no rules. So that’s maybe the main message of my work. But what do you think about it, differs: who do you think you can love, how do you love yourself, what kind of being are you? Love having no rules is a very simple and liberating thought – you can come into the moment and situation exactly how you want to.

Has there been any bigger realization in your life that has brought you to this exact moment?

—I guess I’ve realized that the most meaningful moments in my life have happened in situations, where I have first thought that I can’t, or am not allowed, or don’t dare to do something. And as I’ve kept on going, walking through the initial fear and uncertainty, true turning points have appeared.

Jani ten years ago, in 2012 – any life tips for him?

—He should remember that there are no rules. Jani in 2012 was still trying so hard to do everything in his life in the right way – being scared that if someone doesn’t like him, he’s out of the game. I’d tell him that everyone doesn’t have to like what you’re doing; it doesn’t matter. You don’t lose your place, worth, or dignity if someone doesn’t like you.

What are your expectations for this year?

—Well, it’s easy to go towards the springtime. I’m waiting for more light, the feeling of having summer on my skin, and people. And I’m longing to travel again.

Any last words for our readers?

—I guess it’s related to these topics: now when the world opens and we can connect with each other again, let’s try to be open and vulnerable – to truly embrace connection.

Thanks so much Jani!

What has kept your creativity flowing these past years?

—In a weird way, I feel my creativity has been flowing quite

JANI TOIVOLA'S "RAKKAUDESTA" IN KOKO TEATTERI 1.3.–6.5.2022. BUDZINE RECOMMENDS!

Suomen vetovoimaisinta kiinteistönvälitystä: roof.fi

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

FLORAL STYLING & WORDS REBEKKA LILY PHOTOGRAPHY BENJAMIN SUOMELA

69

Pisces Season (Feb 18th - Mar 20th)

water sign

P

isces season has us swimming in feelings, luring us into the depths of adorable imagination and fantasy. Look beyond the surface. The veil is thin and creativity is enhanced. Pisces season’s dreamy vibes direct us to what lies beneath.

Hydrate and stay juicy!

THE OBJECTS OF RITUAL FLOWERS orchid, peony, daisy. HERBS basil, mint, sage. FOODS liquorice, figs, pomegranate. MINERALS emerald, sapphire, shells, sand. Adorn alters with cloths of blue & lilac.

Aries Season (Mar 21st - Apr 19th)

fire sign

T

ime to harness our collective fiery energy! Headstrong Aries season is upon us. Soak up the light we have all been craving after the winter depression hit like a ton of bricks! Maintain zest and a spicy sense of humor. Good vibes and pure joy in store if you’re open to receiving it, baby!

THE OBJECTS OF RITUAL FLOWERS red flowers, protea, cacti. HERBS cayenne, paprika, nettle. FOODS chili, ginger, citrus. MINERALS amethyst, bloodstone. Adorn alters with cloths of red or orange.

71

Taurus Season (Apr 19th - May 20th) earth sign

E

arthly Taurus energy is grounding. Now’s the time to luxuriate yourself in all them sensual and seductive Venus feels and experience pleasure with all the 5 senses. Peak receptivity has us asking are we fulfilled ? Are we loved? Quick fix: Post chuegy thirst traps like it’s nufffinnnn!

THE OBJECTS OF RITUAL FLOWERS anthurium, rose, moss, soft textured petals. HERBS coriander, thyme, mugwort. FOODS strawberries, peaches, honey, candy, cake. MINERALS rose quarts, copper. Adorn alters with pale coloured cloths.

Gemini Season (May 20th - Jun 21st)

air sign

M

ake it a double! Gemini season encourages dynamic duos of all kinds. Be a superconnector and seek soul twins. Under this solar influence, everyone’s got an opinion to share in the comments. Gemini rules the local scene so check for hometown happenings… Where my guys & gurlies at??!

THE OBJECTS OF RITUAL FLOWERS multicoloured flowers, pinks, yellows & greens. HERBS aniseed, vervain, marjoram. FOODS diverse flavours, balance of salty, sweet, sour & spicy. MINERALS amber and topaz. Adorn alters with multicoloured and textured fabrics.

73

Cancer Season ( Jun 21st - Jul 22nd) water sign

W

hat’s the cosmic tea this Cancer season? Get ready to feel all kinds of cool, calm, and collected. Although a little on the emotional side (think ugly crying to the worst playlists), Cancer season is full of homey, radical tenderness. Act from the heart space and go deep sea skinny dipping.

THE OBJECTS OF RITUAL FLOWERS lilies, orchid, lotus, iris. HERBS dandelion, nettle. FOODS mushroom, melon, foods with high water content.

MINERALS pearl, silver. Adorn alters with white, blue or luminescent fabrics.

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

Flower Champion of Bud

Rebekka Lily

Flower power embodied! Rebekka Lily, Floral Designer of BUD has been on a Path of Plants throughout her life. Let’s find out what this floral genius is all about.

TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY NICK TULINEN

You’re our floral designer in BUD. What’s your background with flowers?

—I dive deep. It’s in my nature. When I find something I love, I fall hard. I’ve been obsessed with plants ever since I can remember, and I was lucky enough to grow up in a family of keen gardeners. I used to spend a lot of time in my mother’s and my grandmother’s beautiful English gardens, planting things and collecting flowers to make art and perfume. All my earliest memories revolve around these things.

Once I left school, I studied floristry and horticulture in London. After my studies I bounced around London working for different florists. It was really interesting to see how everyone approaches flowers and arranging differently.

I enjoyed picking up on nuances and adapting to each person’s style. This process really helped me find my own style as well. I’ve been in the flower game for 16 years now and I still find it wildly fulfilling.

Anything special that truly inspires you with flowers?

Hello Rebekka, good to see you! Tell us who you are?

—Hi! My name is Rebekka, I’m from the UK. I grew up in the suburbs of Essex near east London and moved to Bangkok when I was 24. In Bangkok, I worked with set design and taught Art for over 7 years before moving to Finland around 4 years ago.“Love migration” is the reason I now call Helsinki my home.

—I like to champion the vision that flowers are as exciting as fashion and interior design, but entirely more accessible.

They can do a lot liven up a space… Just check out all the colors we have in BUD!!!

Flowers are indispensable in our lives - aside from their reproductive roles in our natural environment, their aesthetic and medicinal appeal is what I value the most.

The fragrance and color of a bloom can invigorate us and that’s what I find most inspirational in my work.

“Maximalism is back in a big way, baby!” world and celebrate plant life with a sense of fantasy.

The portals are designed using materials embodying the elements of each zodiac sign.

How about in life in general?

—I am not the kind of person who has one passion in life. Rather, I wonder if I have the time to discover and sufficiently explore a million things that interest me. One of my greatest inspirations though is to exchange facts and stories. I love to be the gatherer and giver of information, and I think I could strike a conversation with just about anyone anywhere. Social connections really motivate me.

Something else you’d like to tell us about yourself?

—I am a self-taught ‘no dig’ gardener, and as I’ve gotten older it’s an absolute joy for me to grow a garden - I could give up on a lot of things to simply be in my garden. I have a large allotment space in Helsinki. I study herbalism and grow a lot of medicine plants and veggies. Look out for some homegrown blooms and edible flowers this summer at BUD!

It’s 2022 – what kind of floral trends would you say there are this year? The world seems to be opening yet again for events, weddings and more.

And lastly, a fun fact about you? We don’t tell.

—I believe floral trends have shifted more towards the unconventional, with an emphasis on asymmetry, depth creation, playing with lines, and using strange juxtapositions – rather than making classic, compact style arrangements.

Our customers are also now requesting bolder, more colorfocused looks. It feels like a welcome rebellion against the minimalist style, which has dominated the last decade.

Maximalism is back in a big way, baby!

—I love cooking, like love love love it! I started cooking and learning the ropes in professional kitchens when I first moved to Finland. I have a long-standing love for entertaining and sharing my love of nourishing foods.

I focus on wild foraged herbs and mushrooms and I’m absolute nerd when it comes to fermentation. You’ll find lots of weird science experiments in my kitchen. (Check out my side hustle biz @pink___pickle for more on that).

You made an article to this BUDZINE, combining zodiac signs and floral art. Tell us a bit about that project?

Most aspects of my day-to-day life evolve around plants. I guess it’s my love language and I’m proud to walk this plant path.

—I’ve been journeying into a more of esoteric and comprehensive approach to wellness. I use astrology and tarot as tools for mindfulness. It’s just so fun, and I love the woo-woo of if it all. To BUDZINE, I wanted to create floral portals for the readers to find a visual resting place.

The floral formations show an appreciation for the natural

Thanks so much, Rebekka! You can catch this flower wizard from BUD – remember to ask her to get creative with your bouquet.

■

77

79

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

B UD UP, A S A? Rap legend ASA was the first artist to perform in BUD – and he sure did get us on fire! We wanted to hear how ASA has stayed inspired and on track during these quite exceptional times, so here’s 9 quickies. Enjoy!

TEXT MIA OJAPALO PHOTOGRAPHY NICK TULINEN

You were the first artist to ever perform in BUD. Thoughts on this?

—I’ve always wanted to perform in the middle of flowers.

Everything was so beautiful.

Corona has impacted everyone's life. How have you coped with it?

—For a long time, I’ve been wondering if there’s going to be any considerable alternatives for the over-the-board capitalism in my lifetime. During this crisis, I've felt strongly that the winds are changing in the society. I’m feeling hopeful right now.

Where is your inspiration coming from at the moment, regarding life, art and music?

—My children, friends and flowers.

Give a few legit tips for young Asa who’s just about to start his artist career?

—Keep your own head.

BUD´s values include bold playfulness, WTF vibe-ing and generally just doing good things with good people.

How important are these in your own career?

Politics or entertainment – which one is more important in your music and why?

—Society-level bucket fits me the best.

—Very. Spontaneous and creative vibes come through having fun and playing around. You don’t have to laugh about everything, but keeping it laid-back is important.

Which current Finnish musician do you value and why?

You have several artist personalities, why?

—Joose Keskitalo has great flow, originality and integrity.

—One person doesn’t fit into a one single box. The world changes every day, and I’m changing with it.

Our family guy Timo wants to know how the hell do you combine family life and life of a rap star?

—My kids are better at freestyle, so I’m not a rap star anymore.

Thanks Asa!

■

MORE LIVE EVENTS AND HAPPENINGS ARE FOLLOWING SOON - STAY TUNED!

81

Art / Hustle / People / Pleasure / Travel

BACKPAGER

Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary.

Janne Räisänen Painter "William S. Burroughsin omena" Watercolor on paper, 2021

LLA!

ELÄMÄ ON PAR

UK I

E

A A P K M

hot hot

KIMPUT KOTIIN & KONTTORILLE JATKUVANA TILAUKSENA

budscription.fi