Muusat goes Afterwork: Valve2026 Culture Fridays

Valve2026 Culture Fridays events offer a relaxed and culture-filled start to the weekend. In this after-work-style event, you can unwind at the end of a long day, perhaps over a glass of wine. The restaurant also offers high-quality café services and light snacks. The restaurant is fully licensed (A-rights).

Poetry Performance: Jere Vartiainen

Jere Vartiainen (b. 1983) is an Oulu-based poet, author, and performing artist. His fourth collection of poetry, Etäisyys, leikki ("Distance, Play", Aviador), was published in autumn 2024 and received critical acclaim from both critics and readers alike. Vartiainen is a nominee for the 2025 Botnia Prize, a 2019 nominee for the Dancing Bear (Tanssiva karhu) poetry prize, and the 2014 Finnish Poetry Slam Champion. At this event, Vartiainen will perform pieces from his fifth literary work, which is currently in progress.

Persian Mysticism in Finnish and the Original Language

Nina Juustila-Cevirel, Jussi Moilanen, Hamid Jalili, and Hanieh Ghaziani perform poems by Omar Khayyam and Rumi in Finnish and their original language, accompanied by the baglama and meditative instruments. The performance also features traditional Persian instruments such as the tar and santur.

Omar Khayyam, an 11th-century Persian thinker and mathematician, has been called the greatest scholar of his century and the "Voltaire of the East." Khayyam was also a versatile poet whose texts alternate between playful and serious tones — ranging from a romantic longing in the wine tavern to a deep love for God.

Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi, better known simply as Rumi (d. 1273), was the most prominent representative of Sufism and one of the most famous mystics of the Middle Ages. The foundation of his poetry is a profound love for God, humanity, and especially the wandering mystic Shams-i Tabrizi. This gives his poems an immediacy that continues to resonate with modern audiences.

Räty x Vallila

The collective formed by Mikko Räty and Petra Vallila seeks new ways of performing poetry in their spoken word piece, combining recited poetry with video and sound art. Poetry is a way to think and feel differently. Actuality is political. Everything can be interesting. Active since 2022, the poetry collective's performance is based on Räty and Vallila’s poetry books published in spring 2026.

Mikko Räty’s Kaikki Putoava ("All That Falls", Tammi) features poems about loss and grace. Räty’s mastery of language shines through a calm rhythm and precise observations. Linen sheets air out in a birch grove; fungal mycelia permeate everything. A finger lingers, stroking the stillness of a sheet. One must plant flower bulbs and sit by a deathbed.

Petra Vallila’s collection kaiken ("everything", Poesia) moves through California’s latest golden age, tracing the misunderstandings of economic discourse, and converses about work with the invisible hand that has settled into a cardboard box. One could have thought everything might turn out differently.

Karkia Walo: Space debris

Karkia Walo is a duo combining word art and music, formed by two sci-fi researchers and artists: poet Ansa Walo (Aino-Kaisa Koistinen) and musician Johannes Karkia (Jari Käkelä). In their performance, Kiertoradalla (Space debris), poetry inspired by science news about sci-fi and space travel, intertwines with a spacious soundscape produced by modular synthesisers. The piece explores humanity’s endeavours to travel into space, as well as the cost of these ambitions.