Kuva: Open Secret
For Valentine’s Day (or Friendship Day, as it’s called in Finland) AV-arkki invites you to experience an evening of moving images at the former Harju Morgue in Dallapé Park. AV-arkki is excited to host the first Helsinki edition of Open Secret, a traveling internet cinema and online screening series, followed by Red Rose Cinema Helsinki, an open screening event for DIY films. Join us for a cozy time among friends and (cinema) lovers, little snacks and drinks will be served!
The event is a collaboration with our partner Forum Box, who is taking over the former Harju Morgue for the month of February with the group exhibition STATUTUM EST HOMINIBUS MORI (7–28 February, 2026).
The evening will kick off with Open Secret. Launched in April 2024, the project brings everyday online images into shared, physical viewing spaces operating as a flexible, evolving platform. It’s an ongoing inquiry into how moving images move through us, online and off.
Rooted in a network of artists engaged in online practices, Open Secret emphasizes the ephemeral and memetic nature of internet-based films, exploring how digital images circulate and transform. It treats internet-based moving images as culturally and emotionally meaningful, investigating how cinema, community, and online life intersect.
At Harju we’ll screen works by Dana Dawud, Redacted Cut and Poorspigga, read more below.
Dana Dawud – Monad
Dawud’s Monad (2024–ongoing) is a film series in perpetual flux, unfolding through mutation and accumulation. Neither fixed nor final, each iteration of Monad reconfigures itself with every screening, layering past, present, and future into a shifting cinematic form.
Monad, situates webcam footage, projection mapping and texting both within the time space of the film and in the real time space outside, reformulating itself with each screening until Monad becomes fully saturated or until submarine internet cables stop working, whichever comes first.
Redacted Cut – Rng
Rng is an experimental playground, a laboratory of unrestricted abstractions within a fine-tuning model to generate constructive and repeatable iterations of expressive and material inferences.
Poorspigga
Poorspigga operates through an ambiguous, self-mythologizing online persona. Writers often frame her practice around the tension between real person vs. constructed digital identity, with some audiences unsure whether she is human-run, Al-assisted, or intentionally fictionalized.
After the Open Secret screening the evening continues with Red Rose Cinema Helsinki. Similarly established in 2024, Red Rose Cinema invites people to share their shoestring-budget shorts, followed by an open projector: an open mic, but for moving image. Red Rose stems from a need for communal spaces where folks who make films can meet each other, and for low-threshold platforms where they can share what they’ve been doing outside the status-quo of distribution, festivals, and exhibitions.
As the lifespan of audiovisual works is often very short, Red Rose wants to provide a space where new life can be found, either in the form of resurrection or birth. Red Rose wants to build a common roof for narrative and non-narrative film, video art and other sorts of moving image, and to expand our imagination of what ’film’ and ’filmmaking’ can be.
To participate you can be a beginner or a hard-boiled professional – Red Rose Cinema is not interested in CVs. Submit your works: by February 13th!
Schedule
18:00 Open Secret
19:30 Red Rose Cinema Helsinki
Address
Former Harju Morgue, Dallapé Park
Aleksis Kiven katu 3, Helsinki
Accessibility
The main entrance to the venue is located on Aleksis Kiven katu The space can be accessed through Dallapé Park or via Kustaankatu, where there is a 10 cm high threshold from the parking area.
There is a ramp leading to the main entrance, approximately 100 cm wide with a slope of about 1:5, and it includes a 4 cm high threshold. The main entrance consists of double doors; when both doors are open, the entrance width is 190 cm. There is a 6 cm high threshold at the front door.
The mortuary entrance, event spaces, and restroom facilities are all on the same floor. The venue is divided into a lobby area and two rooms, with no thresholds between the interior spaces.
There are two gender-neutral restrooms in the venue, located in the room on the right as you enter. The restroom on the right is more suitable for visitors using mobility aids. There is a 2 cm high threshold at the restroom doorway, and access requires passing through two doors, each with a doorway width of 90 cm.
The language of the event will mainly be English.