This October, arebyte Digital Art Centre is hosting multidisciplinary artist Gabriella Presnal for a month-long residency in London. Presnal has been observing the city’s everyday life, using photogrammetry to document its architecture and material culture. In this talk, they will share the practice and research developed during the residency.
The residency is part of an international exchange programme jointly developed by arebyte Digital Art Centre in London and M-Cult in Helsinki, in collaboration with the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland. The programme brings together two artists working at the intersection of art, media and technology: alongside Presnal, Zimbabwean artist and creative technologist Chipo Mapondera will undertake a residency at M-Cult in Helsinki in November.
Drawing on arebyte’s 2026–2028 programme theme, REBOOT: Recoding Reality, and the partner organisations’ shared interest in social, technological and ecological regeneration, the residency explores how artists can reimagine more equitable worlds where people have agency over technology and connect with and care for their environments.
The evening will begin with short introductions from representatives of the three partner organisations, followed by Presnal's presentation and an audience Q&A.
Founded in 2000, M-Cult develops and presents art and media culture in Helsinki, with a focus on the social and political dimensions of media and technology. It connects artists and local communities to global concerns through art commissions, residencies and learning programmes.
For more than 30 years, the Finnish Institute has been weaving cultural ties between Finland, the UK and Ireland. A leading expert on Finnish arts and culture in the UK, the Institute fosters cross-sectoral exchange, builds long-term cooperation and sparks new thinking and dialogue. It is an independent, private non-profit foundation funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and one of 17 Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes. The Institute is based at Somerset House in London.
Gabriella Presnal
Gabriella Presnal (b. 2001) is a Finnish-American multidisciplinary artist based in Southern Finland, interested in the malleability of spaces and their interdependence with the agencies of humans and nonhumans alike. Often starting from textiles as spatial representations, their work emerges as sculpture, photogrammetry, animation, performance and moving image. Their practice also involves working with communities, including queer international youth, on projects around sustainability, precarity in the arts and imagining utopias.