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20160805

Is love an emotion or our interpretation of our behaviour?

Visited “WASD” exhibition by Reija Meriläinen, Santeri Räisänen & Eetu Sihvonen at Oksasenkatu 11. They presented a chair-shaped controller which guest could use to play a dialogue driven adventure game. The chair-controller referenced fleshy interfaces recognized in Cronenberg movies. To start the adventure players had to navigate through a 3d model of the the exhibition space. The simple trick of presenting a playable virtual copy of the gallery was enough to immerse me into the the gameplay. The rest of the game took place inside a sphere shaped world. Players were invited to engage in “Dr. Sbaitso like” therapeutic discussions with NPCs. If the dialogue was fruitful they begun to follow the player but characters also tried to trick the player into resetting the game. I didn’t learn what the objective of the game was but I enjoyed it’s melancholic mood. One segment the world presented a free roaming horse’s ass, which was previously seen as a part of Meriläises work for the Such gallery (Reija’s piece for Such referenced a riding trip we made 2015).

Visited Antti Majavas exhibition opening at the Helsinki Art Museum. He had build a hull of an airplane and presented various landscapes through the plane windows. Some landscapes where actually sketches of clothing Malevich had designed for the “Victory over the Sun” opera, others where aerial images from Google Earth, views through a car window and diary like footage showing advertisement imagery. Some parts (if not all) of the installation were running from electricity provided by Mustarinda residencies powerplan. The exhibition was accompanied with texts in which Majava shared his frustration with avantgarde art. Gathering from the texts he was making an anti-(avantgarde)art statement. He had identified a cultural icon through which our perception of the globe is build: The Aeroplane Window.

Also saw “Harmaja +10 länsiluode 35m/s” by Paula Lehtonen at the Hippolyte gallery. Lehtonen had designed a wall mounted dome which was used as a projection surface. A video showed partly computer generated dystopian scenery from Helsinki. She had divided the room the work was in with a fake wall, so that she could project the video on the dome from behind. A very nifty device. The work had an audio track made by Rasmus Hedlund but the exhibition opening made hearing it impossible. I’ll have to revisit the exhibition.

I’m very frustrated with Margo Demello’s “Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies”. The book provides a decent overview of the areas of interest for human animal studies but it doesn’t approach the field critically. It reads more as a long and detailed pamphlet advocating animal rights. I’ll have to reread Jason Hribal’s “Animals are Part of the Working Class Reviewed” to purge my thoughts. We are preparing the “Horse and Performance” course for the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki which starts in a week.

Currently excited about the Novation Circuit 1.3 firmware update. Got some funky samples loaded.

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20160802

Are cultural projects made in teams better then artworks made by individuals? I think so.. But what would happen if we’d renounce individual authors completely? The current understanding of creativity underlines that all cultural products are built upon each others and their interpretation emphasise intertextuality. Despite this consensus, middle class art audiences still have an appetite for singular cultural products made by skilled individuals.

  • Symphonies are written by individual composers. Pop-songs are made by teams.
  • Art objects are made by individual artists. Happenings are made together with artists and the audience.
  • Books are written by individual authors. Movies are written by teams of and filmed by crews.
  • Crafts are made by individual craftspeople. Industrial objects are made by people working in factories.

Should we renounce your individuality in an effort to advance collaborative decision making or does the renunciation of individuality result into fascism? Is this why so many artist strive to develop our sense of individualism.

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20160727

It’s impossible to justify zoo’s as a sites of animal conservation when the animals “natural” habitats are being destroyed. “In situ” conservation is the only option. Also, the zoo clings on to a claim that contemporary people have broken their relation with nature and that zoo’s are needed to build environmental awareness and empathy towards nature. This is a noble idea but based on cliches and it does even justify the captivity of exotic animals.

Zoo animals should be curated using regionally specific animals. The Helsinki Zoo should only keep horses! This would make for a world class attraction and benefit human-animal interactions.

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20160726

Jussi Parikka and Martin Howse talking on a video about skyscrapers being “inverted mines” and failing an alchemy demonstration. 1h video (which works as audio only version too) offers a decent update on what Parikka and Howse are up to.

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20160725

Visited Alex Straschnoy’s “Le rappel à l’ordre” (2016) at the Forum Box gallery. The video is presented as a clinical autopsy of art exhibition packaging technologies, logistics and infrastructure. Straschnoy has visited various art museums to document how museum staff transports and packages art objects. The video is very clean and shows only equipment, containers and the feet and hands of the busy workers. “Le rappel à l’ordre” would be a fitting addition for a museum collection. It celebrates the unseen labor of the museum staff and traces networks art objects touch.

The video is accompanied with texts which claim that “each institution has a different tradition in terms of packing and therefore a packed work will reveal more about the institution doing the packing than about the packed work itself”. Having worked closely with museum and gallery logistics, I have to argue that packaging is a very standardised practice and there is very little room for improvisation. The dimensions of boxes are fixed on the sizes of trucks or sea containers and packaging materials are standardised. EUR-pallets rule logistics. But this detail a non-issue concerning Straschnoy’s artwork.

Straschnoy draws attention to the insane amount of vain labor and excessive resources which are bind to the presentation of art objects. It’s important to focus on the infrastructure art objects require. Current ecological concerns call out for a new kind of artistic realism. Artistic representations must be made in relation of the art object’s material impact and technical resources it’s presentation requires. Art objects must succumb to the same critique other forms of consumer culture are subjected to.

One of the accompanying texts celebrates single-channel video works that “have become an important part of the art world offerings among other reasons due to their extreme portability”. To be fair Straschnoy should have presented how the monitor that enables his single channel video was packaged and transported to the exhibition site. I think it would have been fitting skip the exhibition contexts all to together and publish the work online. The videos trailer on vimeo offers adequate cues to enjoy the piece.

The idea of evaluating art through its relation to infrastructure networks (which make its presentation and form possible) is related to Mierle Laderman Ukeles concept of “Maintenance Art” which was a critique of the minimalist mindset (Minimalist were dependent on the existence of white cubes but failed to see the wo/manpower required in the upkeep of such venues). Ukeles argues that artworks should not illustrate what is wrong in the world, they should act to make it better. This is very interesting subject concerning our Trans-Horse project. We have claimed that artists should consider the infrastructure artworks require as a statement (More in Finnish).