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20210908

Fluxus scores are performance as aphorism. #ॐ Artist-researchers like them because: Its text (a quote can fill a paper), they are short, its techniques are canonized by popular artists (no need for introductions), it requires specialization to interpret (but is revealed simple, even un-intelligent in close reading), scores are forgiving (gaps in the text get filled with performance know-how and gaps in the know-how get filled with text). They work on all fronts of artist-researcher life: On paper, seminars and as art. Scores are optimized products of presents knowledge industries.

Anything longer then a paragraph is gray-literature.

Social revisions without communism are like care in the context of art. #☭ Send a a resignation letter to Left Alliance and a message to SKP to announce my eagerness to join the party. I don’t want to feel better – I want to do good.

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20210907

Preparing a workshop for Pori Art Museum. I’ll host a seminar for kids about p3rm46r4ff171 and serve them dirty waters. Later this week I’m running a workshop for Frame at the Experiments on Togetherness: Herding in Helsinki Central Par event. Exited to present my work in junction with Mari Keski-Korsu’s herbal-horse audio-meditation session. I’m preparing light gymnastics bundled with horse-behavioural theories and anecdotes about the Helsinki Mounted Police. The mounted polices night shift are planning to pass by to offer their greetings. The upcoming RH3 Frame publication, where I contributed a text titled “On the Other Side of the Paddock”, marks the closes I’ve gotten to Eyal Weizman. We are listed as contributors on a list which is organized alphabetically. Being the two last entries, we are only separated by the conjunction “and”, which is more then a comma but feels more intimate.* I’m referring to Weizman in two upcoming texts (the other will be out on the 17th and the later published in a book on performance pedagogy).

DIY electronics are way more expensive then buying instruments used. I will have to put this hobby on hold. I decided to build Paths RYO a cycling sequential switch for developing my system towards a cybernetic device, possibly using the electronic qualities of different waters as inputs. I sourced the pcb from an online shop in the US, electronics from Digikey, some rare components from Banzai Music (Germany) and odd bits and bobs locally from Uraltone. Just the mail, vat & service fee expenses of the packages would covered the costs of a used unit. Making by hand is more expensive then getting the same factory built. It might also be more ecological. I think I’m diy-ing stuff only to make myself feel better about being a consumer. Also sourcing parts for an Aperture unit (and I want it just for fun).

DIY-ing new modules
to hide all traces of my
consumerism

Today is an anniversary of EWS 1# and someone called “Petsamo” has added it as a tourist attraction to openstreetmap! I’m proud to say they have classified it as an artwork (a mural to be specific).

*edit. Got to ask Weizman a question on a Frame/RH3 related discussion & chat! Bassam El Baroni conveyed my question: Does intuition have a role in investigation? Weizman explains that they don’t know what intuition is but that investigations are involved with imagination. They explained that truths are simple and lies require imagination. Does this make counter-investigations processes where imaginative effects are removed? They continue depicting imaginations as having a fogging characteristic, which is obstructing the truth. I’m disappointed by the response. I don’t think truths are rational (simple) #ॐ. I don’t think counter-investigations necessarily reveal  rationalities (indoctrinated racism and biases etc.), they reveal something horrible: War machines are not liable because they don’t make any sense.

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20210905

“The White Exhibition” at Emma museum caused a scandal during the summer but I haven’t read anything about it since. Artists Sofie Hesselholdt and Vibeke Mejlvang aimed to explore whiteness trough a vast museum exhibition. Their text We can’t believe we still have to protest this shit (2021) is provocative and offers thorough insight to their artistic aims. I like what they are after and the look of the ragged flags in the exhibition.

The exhibition is another step in our ongoing quest to question and reject old hierarchical patterns so as to create spaces of inclusiveness. In a world of dichotomies, of Us and Them, we find it urgent to unify, to define a common We, a global solidarity. To start all over again.

Soon after the exhibition opened an article Emma-museossa puhkesi kiista tanssijoiden palkoista ja työajoista [A disagreement in Emma-museum over dancers wages and work terms] (2021) Pekka Torvinen revealed, that four performers who had been commissioned for a durational performance had been in contact with the Trade Union for Theatre and Media Finland (Teme) because the contract the museum had offered was unfair.

The exhibition artists had developed a performance, which was centred on choreographies related to maintenance. The performances were structured with tight schedules, similar as factory work and required daily presence by the performers. Hesselholdt & Mejlvang described the performance as the “heart of the exhibition”. To cut cost the museum sought to have the performance executed by students, who were attached to the show as trainees. As the working conditions and the function of the performance was revealed, the students organised and sought to make their contract just. I think they were really brave to do so (send them a compliment over email). They wanted a reasonable fee and I think they also wanted to be acknowledged as artists.

The article by Torvinen portrays the actions of Emma director Pilvi Kalhaman in a very negative light. According to this source Kalhama insists that their plan to use trainees was motivated by a desire to offer young artists a foothold in the field of art. They also argued that as the choreographies were not planned by the performers, an artist fee for the performers would have been unreasonable. Feels weird… Particularly in an emerging post-covid reality. The artists need the performers, who need the audience. The entire art affair insists that all parties participate equally. It makes absolutely no sense to pay a performer less then choreographer (or the audience).

As I understand it, most of the performers walked out from the production but I’m unsure what happened to the performance. I would like to know how Hesselholdt & Mejlvang felt about these debates and if the series of events had an impact in their praxis. Did this scandal motivate them to explore the conditions of class, capital and wage-labour further? Did the event effect their understanding of whiteness, does it have even more shades now? Interestingly the fee the artists were offered is close to the hourly wage of museum attendants. How did they feel about the entire debate?

The exhibition artists are using a picture from the performance as the front page of their website and comments on the exhibition performance documentation are turned off.

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20210802

Visited Ambient Arkipelag 2021 in Tenhola over the weekend and heard Lau Nau & Minea perform in an old church.

Made a well planned build of the Trigger-to-Switch Project by Thomas Henry. This time the circuit is used to power a 12v water pump when the unit receives clock pulses. Works well (and way cleaner then my previous attempt)! Now I have an artificial artesian spring which follows my bpm in my disposal.

Spend a night at the Kurängen spring. Slept in a hammock. Or didn’t sleep rather, woke up at 5 to cycle home due to thunderstorm. Performed restoration work on site by removing a worn canvas from the spring base. The canvas had been set (in the 90ties I suspect) to keep the water clear but over the years naturally eroding top soil, decaying plants and other debris had rendered it useless. It was essentially blocking moss & other plants from establishing roots and preventing sunlight from accessing the bottom of the spring. The mud below the canvas smelled rotten (and was possibly a reason for the faint rotten smell of the water). I’m hoping that by planting peat and moss, which I’ll harvest from a swampy patch higher up the forest, I can establish a natural filter for the to the spring base. The filter is needed to keep the clay and mud settled. There is a lot of grey clay in the spring and I took some with me for experiments. I removed mud and all the debris I could catch during the night.

The spring was revealed over a meter deep. I suspect it has been the “eye of the swamp” which the long ditches in the little forest valley have been dug to dry out. Also found the car mentioned in Metsäauto ja lähde: miete maastoisesta suunnassa-olemisesta [Forestcar and spring: though on being on track in the ] (2015) Marko Leppänen. Dreaming of cutting a piece of the car panel for a spring water related electronics build. It feels prestigious somehow and disturbing it might be a bad idea.

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20210730

Learning scripting with Norns. Motivated to find a method for using CVpal as a poor-crow (canary maybe?), for clocking modular and possibly providing synced lfo’s or s&h’s. The topic has its own thread but so far the utility is a desire. I succeeded in making a proof of concept utility using tmi. It uses the tmi as sequencer which produces notes ramping up from lowest to the highest (which CVpal permits c2-c6) and each note has note velocity data which ramps up and down (127-1-127) to produce a saw like lfo. Each changing note produces a gate which can be used for sync. Not perfect for syncing but works for modules which expect a rising edge. Got it running parallel with goldeneye and felt like a guru for a while. I’ll test other scripts too for fun.

Collecting resources for a stand-alone mod (or tmi additions).