We are delighted to host for the first time in Helsinki, acclaimed Black feminist writer, researcher, and organizer Lola Olufemi. 

Olufemi’s lecture and workshop explored the uses of the political imagination as it relates to crisis, cultural work and the archival material of radical social movements. Her work prompted us to learn from the material and visual cultures of feminist, Black, and leftist organising. Olufemi has urged us to "take feeling seriously intellectually," to nurture a materialist approach to political imagination, and search a rupture in our political aesthetics against pessimism.  

From Olufemi's thinking, we gathered poetics and intellectual strategies to imagine and believe that another world is possible: connecting objects, actions and feelings across and against time; living against predictability; reanimating images and texts; rehearsing and repeating; repairing our connections to others; trying over and again. Bridging research, writing and activism, Olufemi narrates the aesthetics of a liberation stemming from the coalition of many routes and struggles.

This event marks the inaugural gathering of SLOW — Seasonal Laboratories for Other Worlds — a series of exhibitionary workspaces for collective laboring, anti-capitalist dreaming, and building connections between bodies, places, and economies through art. Curated by Micol Curatolo in collaboration with the Museum of Impossible Forms, SLOW offers a framework for resisting capitalist temporality and exploring alternative ways of being and organizing.

In 2025, SLOW was funded by Koneen Säätiö. 


Read Lola Olufemi's interview with AK Wane on NO NIIN Magazine, Issue 31, August 2025.

Dr. Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall foundation researcher from London who recently completed her doctorate at the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. Olufemi is the author of Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021). Her work bridges activism and theory, advocating for abolitionist politics, reproductive justice, and community-led organizing. She is a member of 'bare minimum', an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. Olufemi’s forthcoming publication Against Literature will be available in 2026.

DJ Wekesa is a Helsinki based dj and a dancer. In their sets they play amapiano, afrobeats, dancehall, hip hop, r&b and queer anthems. Wekesa is a socially skillful dj, who can read the dancefloor while serving surprises and their own strong artistic view. Throughout their DJ career they have given their input for safer space practices to the Helsinki club scene.