Andrea Coyotzi Borja and Anna Jensen, the duo behind How to Life, have graduated with a doctorate in art from Aalto University. These artist-researchers share an interest in the extraordinariness of everyday life, challenging traditional research methods and conventions of exhibiting and presenting art. Coyotzi Borja’s dissertation ‘In the Middle of Things: On Researching the Infraordinary’ explored the infraordinary; the subtle, often overlooked aspects of daily life. Coyotzi Borja’s recent project, ‘As I Change My Memory Changes’, reflects on memory, belonging, recognition, and identity through collected objects and audio narration. These personal archives become a way to trace lived experience across places and time. Jensen’s practice is site-specific and embodied and it is based on collectivity, friendship, and joy. The aim is to create ecologically and ethically sustainable practices, and reconsider notions of local and global, curating, canon, and politics. Jensen’s dissertation ‘Encyclopedia of In-Betweenness. An Exploration of a Collective Artistic Research Practice’ (2023) presented art as a socially prominent phenomenon that is always in a state of becoming.
Coyotzi Borja and Jensen have worked together in multiple projects from Space Invaders to Aalto University’s research project ‘Pori Live’. How to Life project started 2017 and since that it has been presented in Mustekala, in Manifesti club in Turku, in ‘Space Invaders VII – The Gift’ in Cholula, Mexico, in a rural residency in Corris, Wales, 2018, lectures, conferences and in ‘Polygala Biennial’ in The Natural History Museum, Helsinki, Finland, in 2024.
How To Life 