Alkovi gallery (Miina Hujala & Arttu Merimaa) is organizing a research-art-process which will take place partially in Vyborg and deal with ruins, tourism & knowledge. It’s called In Various Stages of Ruins. I’ll meet with the group of artist invited to join the process next week (our first meeting was in Vyborg last spring). Hujala send us a text to contemplate, in which she poses various questions on what art can enable and how it differs from other modes of thought. This got me thinking about moods.
Edit: Strikethroughs and ?-marks made after the second Vyborg trip.
Art can establish a mood
- Mood is knowledge that lasts for a moment (?)
- A mood is the best aid for exploring the potential of a site, idea or event
- Moods swing and maintaining a mood is a challenge, as a mood is not action (?)
- Mood might be the essence (or performativity) of solidarity
- Processes which try to deliver a mood are scary
- Art is more like a mood then mood is art
What is the minimal effort for setting a mood?
- A mood requires a comfortable setting (no hunger)
Moods require that they are identified (possibly known in advance)Too much talking spoils the mood- Setting a mood requires preparation and self-confidence (trust)
- Only stopping an action makes changes in moods noticeable
- Moods catch on trough subtle hints
What can moods do?
- Change the appearance of things and events
- Provide access to new horizons
- Things make more sense in a good mood
- A set of different moods is required to establish a baseline for good judgement
- Shared moods require mutual consent (no tricks)
- Mood can be picked up and possibly stored in art
Is there archeology for moods?
I’ve been trying to frame moods as public art recently… Trans-Horse (as an example) is as an artwork, best understood as a mood because that’s how it effected it’s audiences and what it is leaving behind (there is no monument). I started to think about this after reading a review by Maaria Ylikangas Hevosen avulla tutkitaan tilaa ja aikaa (2014). In the text she accounts her experience of the artwork and explains that even if she didn’t see the work, she got to know what it is like to move in the landscape with a horse. This happened by learning about what we were doing (trough twitter, radio broadcasts, articles) and combining this with with her personal experiences with horses (and other critical texts). I’ll use her case as an example were an artwork set a mood (and that was all the artwork did).