kesken-zine

I come across a picnic blanket spread out on the street, abandoned. Everything remains in place: cups, plates, and snacks, the lingering traces of time spent together. When I step closer to examine the remains, I notice movement on the fabric. A long line of busy ants is carrying crumbs away, perhaps toward a celebration of their own. I sit down carefully beside the arrangement, and for a moment, I feel like I’d be part of that shared moment. When I get up and continue on my way, the picnic goes on behind my back, forever, forever.

The fabric seen in the Luonnos-ikkuna began its journey in the heart of winter in Helsinki, passing from one maker to the next. Week by week, this evolving textile publication, a zine, revealed a slightly different side of itself to each contributor. Zines are often paper publications, but this collaboratively made fabric publication proposes to belong to that group, reaching toward all the possibilities of what a zine can be.

The process of creating the piece-by-piece evolving zine can also be seen as a kind of correspondence, in which the makers have drawn inspiration from one another’s works. The traces of this dialogue will be displayed in the urban space for passersby to see throughout the summer.

Each publication produced by kesken-zine carries its own material qualities. In the fourth, picnic-themed issue, we wanted to explore what kinds of experiments working with fabric could make possible. The participants of each issue largely shape the zine: it is a collective project that is different every time. For each publication, we announce an open call on our Instagram account, and contributors are selected in the order of registration. We do not practice any form of curation, as we want to create alternative ways of working and publishing in the art field that are not based on gatekeeping.

In this issue, as is custom, the makers have been free to interpret the theme from their own starting points, where the idea of gathering together is already realised through the form of the publication itself. The fabric, reminiscent of a picnic blanket, makes the communal nature of the zine tangible, as all works are visible side by side. The fabric zine is an open invitation to gather by the window for a summer-long picnic.

This zine was created by:
Sigrid Hult, Verna Häyrynen, Sara Jalonen, Otso Jämsä & Maija-Tilda Kovalainen, Lore Kuuskala, Vilma Minerva Laakio, Varjo Sarsila, Heta Uhtio, Kirsikka Vaahtera, Maija Vahteristo, Emmi Kähkönen, Alisa Simonen

kesken-zine is a Helsinki-based multidisciplinary publication founded in 2024 that embraces incompleteness and collective making. We are also drawn to the idea of building an archive: each issue of kesken-zine takes the form of a temporal pocket, composed of a collection of porous and breathing works. The works do not need to be finished or polished, and witnessing this sketch-like quality is valuable to us.

@keskenzin3

7.5.–3.8.2026
kesken-zine
Luonnos-ikkuna, display window in Ympyrätalo, Hakaniemi
Siltasaarenkatu 18-20, Helsinki