Vaivaisukko – Our entry to the Guggenheim Helsinki competition

Here is our entry to the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition. We propose a Vaivaisukko, a money collecting statue, to be built on the competition site. The idea is to collect the funds needed for a new museum entirely from individual supporters and to make the process enjoyable.

The name Vaivaisukko comes from a historical tradition where a wooden poor man statue, vaivaisukko in Finnish, was placed outside a church to collect money for the poor. Our Vaivaisukko combines the historical money collector and the modern day crowd funding into an artwork of its own.

In our scheme, a new Vaivaisukko will be built periodically. There will be an international competition every year to select the new project to be built. Artists and designers around the world can submit their designs for the Vaivaisukko. In the first year, the budget for the competition will come from a Vaivaisukko Kickstarter project. Later Vaivaisukko projects will be funded by the collected Vaivaisukko Funds. The scale and the theme of each Vaivaisukko project can be totally different. Each Vaivaisukko will have it’s unique approach to the theme.

Vaivaisukko will collect money in cash and e-money for the future museum. The museum will be built when a set amount of donations is reached. Since every Vaivaisukko will be a marvelous artistic creation, there’s no hurry to reach the set amount. Vaivaisukko itself will become a major tourist destination, as everyone will want to see the latest installation.

Vaivaisukko is an ecologically sound project, since no energy heavy construction will be needed. The project can be built without changing the current site. The project is simply installed wherever the space and current uses allow: in a parking space, on the water or above the sidewalk for example. Each project can be more ecological than the one before. During the years we will see an interesting evolution of how to create a Vaivaisukko.

Vaivaisukko will allow active crowd participation as generous patrons of great Vaivaisukko installations and of the future museum. There will be also workshops to build new smaller scale Vaivaisukkos from people’s ideas and schemes to create a Vaivaisukko movement. Vaivaisukko will also be educational: it will teach us how to create something unique and innovative together. It will also show us how to collect money for something we consider important.

We are certain that Vaivaisukko will create a new wave of innovation in Finland. Vaivaisukko will make our economy blossom, create interesting art and show people how to get involved in changing the world for the better.

Here are few Vaivaisukko projects from some of the most interesting contemporary artists and groups:

• Moon Gate by Aneshka Poor
• Alf the Tax Collector by Antti Ca$hitonni
• Shark Food Line by Damien Hursti
• Here, Have My Piggy Bank by Banky
• Help Me Buy a New Unicorn by Catch A Tukiainen
• From Nokia to Super Cell by I Pay Pay
• The Joy of the Black Concrete Cube by The Finnish Association of Architects