heya, world.

(🚧 This work is still in progress. Please come back in late October for additional documentation. The second part of this work will be completed and exhibited at Oodi Library in December 2025 and January 2026.)

Wrong Cafe (2025) - Documentation

Wrong Café (Väärä Kahvila) is a participatory art project that explores collective storytelling and dreams as an alternative currency. In the summer of 2025, for five days, an odd pop-up café was operated by the artist (dressed as a waiter) in the rooftop of an abandoned mall building named Väärätalo in Imatra, Finland. The café served coffee, pastries, and questions. In return, visitors were invited to "pay" by adding to an evolving myth rooted in Väärätalo inspired by their own dreams, which they drew on a piece of pink paper. Each tale was recorded as an audio file and passed to the next guest, transforming along the way like a game of telephone. Together, these fragments -- drawings and audio recordings -- wove into a strange urban folklore that blurs fact and fiction.

Wrong Cafe was part of the Aalto University Department of Media's collaboration with the City of Imatra. The Cafe was funded by 'I love Kipsari' Grant 2025. The performance part of the piece is completed after taking in 30 visitors, and the artist is currently working on transcribing the audio recordings and weaving them into a loosely connected narrative. The resulting recordings include stories in the following languages: Finnish, English, Spanish, and Korean, as the visitors were invited to speak in whichever language they feel comfortable in.


How did it work?

Each vistor were asked to pay for their coffee, tea, and/or cake by drawing a scene from a dream they had in the past. Afterwards, they were asked to listen to the previous person's recording (story) and continue the story by using their own dream as an inspiration point.

Here are some examples of the visitors' drawings:


And here are some examples of the stories each person recorded, inspired by their dreams/drawings:

Person 6: I, the monkey girl, started to get tired of this life among the giants and also not ever seeing the whole world in miniature. So I started to go on a journey to find a way that I could experience the world in a size – on another scale. The first place I went to is to the wise snake that lives under the rocks. But the wise snake was sleeping, and so I had to find a way to wake the wise snake up without making her angry and ask her my question.

Person 7: Eager to ask the question from the wise snake, I decided that I would go into the snake. Slowly, I opened its mouth. Luckily, it wasn’t awake. First I put my feet inside, then the other feet. And it turns out, down the throat of the snake, there is a huge hotel within the body of the snake. In the hotel, I was feeling exhausted, and I was looking for my bed. The interior of the hotel was an old house with multiple beds placed indoors, and I was climbing on the first bed. It was a single bed. I tried it, didn’t like it, got down, and then I climbed up for the second bed. There are in total six beds in the room, and I think I finally found my place. I will take a rest here.

Person 8: After sleeping for a few hours, I woke up. I had to use the bathroom. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was actually a bathroom in the room I was in. I opened the door, I went in, and put the lights on. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked tired. Suddenly, a giant fist – almost the size of my body – came through the door.

Person 9: The fist slowly opened and reached towards me, and the giant grabbed me, and pulled me out of the room. Pulled me through the hallway, through the window, and I was suddenly outside, enclosed in this giant fist. The first thing I noticed was that the city around me had transformed into something dystopian. There was this thick layer of fog encloaking the skyline and you could see lights flickering in the distance, and there was chill in the air, and you couldn’t tell what time of the day it was.

Person 10: It was daylight, but everything seemed dark around. Lights were on. She was sitting at the edge of this hall. She was sitting quietly but then knew something bad would happen. And eventually, she just fell down into the hole.

Person 11: And she landed in a corridor, where she walked upstairs all the way to the top of the tower. The tower was made out of concrete. And it was the 10th floor where she could overlook the city. On the roof of the tower there was a huge storm. There was an ocean on the roof, and there were orcas that were jumping out of the water. There was lightning and thunder. The orcas were just jumping, diving, and swimming on the top of the roof of the tower.

What's Next?

I'm currently in the process of transcribing the 30 visitors' story. Some of them are in a different language (such as Finnish and Spanish), so I am awaiting help to translate those as well. Afterwards, I hope to create an animation for the woven story.

The team that I was part of at Väärätalo was also invited to exhibit at Oodi Library in December. The resulting visuals from the story will be displayed there.

Sponsorship

This project was sponsored by the City of Imatra and Aalto Department of Art and Media. It was additionally funded by "I <3 Kipsari" Grant.