Andrew Gryf Paterson

Andrew Gryf Paterson (b. 1974) is a Scottish artist-organiser, educator, cultural producer, and independent researcher, based in Helsinki, Finland. His practice over a 25 year period has involved variable roles of initiator, participant, author and curator, according to different collaborative and cross-disciplinary processes. Andrew has worked across the fields of media/ network/ environmental arts and activism, specialising in workshop design, participatory platforms for engagement, and facilitation.

His research interests are: socially-engaged art; auto -ethnographic and -archaeological methodologies and theory; sustainability issues from the social, ecological and economic perspective.

Main involvements in the recent decade with members of Pixelache Helsinki node of Pixelache Network. From early 2011 until January 2015, he was coordinator & facilitator of the 'Pixelversity' around-the-year informal educational programme for Pixelache [1]; and lead-facilitator & Co-director of Pixelache 2021 Festival: #Burn____ at Oodi Central Library, Helsinki [2]. Within this associational context, co-lead in collaborative work-group projects 'Ferment Lab' (2015-2018), ‘BioSignals’ (2018-2020), and anniversary reflections for Pixelache: ‘How We Keep Going?’ (2022), ‘Wikimedians-in-residence’ (2022-2023), as well as co-curating the ‘Contacts: 20 years of Pixelache’ Symposium at Kiasma Theatre.

Paterson is currently completing their long-term Doctor of Arts candidacy at Aalto University School of Art and Design, Art+Media Dept., with working thesis titled “Autoarchaeologies: Of an artist-organiser in Finland and Latvia’ (supervisor Prof. Lily Diaz; advisors Dr. Paul Reilly, Prof. Vytautas Michelkevičius). Paterson has a multi-disciplinary education, with BA(Hons) Fine Arts degree from Glasgow School of Art (1997), and MSc degree in Computer-Aided Graphical Technology Applications from University of Teesside (2001).

Paterson was involved in early mobile, contextual and locative media discourse and cultural organising in Northern Europe. He was coordinator of ‘Locative Media Workshop: Rautatieasema’ workship with the context of EU Culture 2000 -funded 'Trans-Cultural Mapping' project initiated by RIXC Centre for New Media Culture Rīga, for Pixelache Helsinki Festival in April 2004 and 2006, as well as collaborative projects ‘Aware: spatio-temporal moblog' with John Evans, Aki-Ville Pöykiö & Markus Ort (2003-2005), and ‘Mapmyths’ with Signe Pucena (2003-2005).

Over this period, experience, reflections and findings have been written as articles in various cultural publications, and his methodology was recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Visual Art Studies (Intellect 2011).

From the beginning of 2011 until January 2015 he was the coordinator of the Pixelversity educational programme for Piknik Frequency ry. (producers of Pixelache Festival, Helsinki). Andrew has taught courses at Aalto University’s School of Art and Design; Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Science, and given numerous presentations in higher institutions and festivals internationally.

He has also specialised in coordinating and facilitating workshops for multi-disciplinary professionals, students and young people.

See full artist-research CV here: https://archive.org/details/agryfp-cv-resume