Ore.e Refineries – Doc & Art

08/06/201419/04/2018

[En] News: “Skills of Economy – Post Models: Ore.e Refineries (Exhibition and events)”.

7.6. – 20.7.2014 (closed 19.6.-22.6.2014)

Skills of Economy – Post Models: Ore.e Refineries is the first in a series of exhibitions and events that will seek to understand the meaning of artistic practice at a time when the welfare state is in the process of being dismantled. This exhibition explores the work of the Ore e. Refineries organisation spanning the past eight years. The exhibition is part of curator Jussi Koitela’s Skills of Economy project.

Over the past two decades, neo-liberalism has sought to turn the state into a corporation, devoid of values other than those of financial success. This has changed, and will continue to change, the state’s relationship with art, artists and cultural institutions alike and forces the art field to justify its activities and access to funding in a completely new way.

In Finland, the post-welfare state has adopted a neo-liberal model that places prime responsibility for the individual’s welfare on the individuals themselves, alongside outsourced global and local providers. The objective of this model is to establish a service provider corps consisting of commercial enterprises tasked to operate as efficiently as possible and, ultimately, provide all public services in lieu of the state. It is, the argument goes, the only effective option currently available and, as such, the only possible means of delivering public services in the current and future demographic context.

“Post-model” is a term used to describe a time when the economy and public administrations along with politics itself will have become fully de-politicised entities, as if we were living in a time devoid of ideologies and the societal models and ideas they engender. The management of our shared public affairs through parliamentary democracy is reduced to a managerial, care taker-like activity governed by rationality, in which values must not be allowed to interfere with the business of actual decision-making.

Seen from a different perspective, the “post-model” in the title of this exhibition could also be taken to mean a time post the model described above. What forms might artistic activity take in the future and what sort of societal models might that activity open up? How can art make a critical contribution to ensuring the equal delivery of services such as transport, manufacturing, planning and archiving in the society of the future?

Ore.e Refineries was founded by artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri and blacksmith and designer Jesse Sipola and focuses on promoting craftsmanship in the digital era. It operates somewhere in the middle ground between art, design and service provision to create both artworks and services that seek at once to resolve and understand the challenges arising from the current neo-liberal, global and digital reality in the areas of precarious labour, commodities, production, consumption, environmentalism and transport.

The organisation’s activities are characterised by their highly speculative nature. Rather than creating art, design and services in keeping with the implicit demands of the current climate, their work generates meaning through an imagined set of new social, environmental and economic circumstances.

Artists presented in the Ore.e Refineries Meta- Collection – Artifacts from the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Jussi Koitela, Paula Lehtonen, Kalle Mustonen, Eero Nelimarkka, Pekka Ruuska, Record Singers (Heiskanen, Nevalainen, Väisänen & Airas), Iidu Tikkanen, Lauri Wuolio and Topi Äikäs

Exhibition and the practice of Ore.e Refineries is supported by Koneen säätiö and Uudenmaan taidetoimikunta.

29/05/201408/12/2018

Hevoslinja: Dosenttuuri

Suomenhevosruunalle Toivottu Poika on myönnetty dosentuuri Bellinin akatemiaan ja arvon mukainen opetusoikeus vastaaviin oppilaitoksiin. Arvon myönsi 27.5 taiteen akateemikko Outi Heiskanen. Pienimuotoinen tilaisuus järjestettiin Etelä-Espoon ratsastuskouluilla ja sitä todistivat Jesse Sipola ja Pietari Kylmälä. Nimitystä juhlistettiin porkkanoilla.

Muodollista vastaanottoa ei järjestetä; onnittelijat voivat tulla tervehtimään tuoretta virka-aikojen puitteissa Espoossa. Toivottu Poika ei ole ensimmäinen akateemisen arvon omaava eläin – Mutta tiettävästi ensimmäinen hevonen. Lisätietoja aiheesta englanniksi (wikipedia).

The finnhorse The Awaited Son has been appointed as an adjunct professor to Bellini’s Academy and granted a teaching license to corresponding institutions. The title was appointed 27. May by Academician of Fine-Art Outi Heiskanen. A small ceremony in the Eerk-stables and was witnessed by Jesse Sipola and Pietari Kylmälä. The appointment was commemorated with carrots.

Instead of a formal celebration, guest are welcome to greet the new Adjunct Professor in Espoo during office hours by appointment. The Awaited Son is not the first animal to receive an academic diploma – But most likely the first horse! More on the subject in wikipedia.

Kuva isompana.

26/08/201320/05/2019

[En] Ore.e Ref: Metal Scavenging is Alchemy – Waste Expedition for Pixelversity 30.8.

[UPDATED: Added photos by Rasa Kavaliauskaitė. 3.9.2013] Post originally published at: http://www.pixelache.ac/

Photos on flickr.com

RETROSPECTIVE NOTE

The copper scavenging workshop by Ore.e Refineries for Pixelversity went well. We changed the original plans and didn’t go to “Niemen Romukauppa” in Tattarisuo… Instead went to “Romuliike Meriokanto Raimo” in Kumpula. The price of copper was 4,20 per kilo and we made 16,80 profit. Profits where shared with the group. Some video streams to the Pixelversity Bambuser channel where made during the day (but mostly photos where taken). Above is the receipt of the copper transaction.

During the “Metal Scavenging is Alchemy” waste expedition, blacksmith Jesse Sipola and artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri from Ore.e Refineries will escort participants into the world of Copper Scavenging 30. August. This waste expedition is the 3rd organised within the context of the Pixelversity 2013 Waste/d theme. The expedition will take participants for a bike trip from Helsinki downtown (meet in Hakaniementori) to Tattarisuo.

Sipola is well tuned to the junkyard scene of Helsinki and has disassembled engines for copper at his smithy in Espoo. Ore.e Refineries is a company advocating sustainable design and has worked on copper related projects since 2007, and invite you into a one day workshop process for scavenging copper and making profit! There is detailed information about programme & expectations below. Copper can be found practically anywhere in the city.

Register your interest & contacts to participate: http://pixelache.muistio.tieke.fi/pv13-waste-expeditions-oree and don’t forget to read more about Copper also.

[En] Ore.e Ref: “D2T (Digital-to-Tangible )– Services”

An UN-DI (Un-Digitization) of a receipt documenting a performance at a restaurant.

Ever wondered what will happen to your digital documents in the future or how long can you store a thermally printed receipt? Our most common data storing technologies are unsuitable for storing data for more then a couple of years. It’s evident that the majority of digital data we produce today will not be accesible in the future (and it seems that most people are quite unaware of this). This is why we at Ore.e Refineries have kicked off a service targeted for people who want to encapsulate their digital (and otherwise fragile) data into formats which last trough the ages. We call this process Un-Digitization (UN-DI) and the service is called “ D2T (Digital-to-Tangible)– Services“.

An UN-DI (Un-Digitization) of “Helsingin Sanomat” webpages (2008).

When we begun developing the D2T–Service in 2008 we focused exclusively on digital contents. As the first experiment we un-digitized the front page of the most read online newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat. I was so satisfied with the result I contacted the newspaper staff in hopes making a project with them. The idea was that we’d un-digitize the entire online newspaper during a summer. The act of artists (Me, Jesse Sipola and friends) working to re-mediate a webpage in to a manuscript would have been an interesting event to witness. I exchanged emails with their staff for a year and was helped by Matti Koistinen (from art360) to develop the concept. But I was unable to convince the editorial staff of importance of the project (Details of the proposal are found in Finnish on Ore.e Ref main site in Finnish). I’m still optimistic that the service will eventually find (or create) it’s market niche. Meanwhile we have begun to un-digitize non digital documents too.

An UN-DI (Un-Digitization) of a receipt documenting the sale of 10 invisible chairs by Jesse to Manama.

The UN-DI versus the original receipt as a looping .gif animation.

Academics hang university diplomas on their office walls but Jesse has a un-digitized receipt documenting a very important sale on his (more on the sale in Finnish). Thermally printed receipts are extremely vulnerable. If they are left in the sun or stuffed in tight trouser pockets they will fade within hours. Receipts are very interesting documents to study and if I remember right archeologist have used data harvested from old receipts (concerning livestock sales) when attempting to estimate sizes of some ancient cultures. Today we are all involved in a historical receipt faraud of a sort as data printed thermally is not even intended to last for long.

People treat receipts as neutral documents but looking at them closely one can find symbols and signs which tell of a bigger story. They are compressed with information on economical legislation, they can be directly linked to global payment card systems and they tell a lot about the digital technologies involved in trade and global logistics. It’s not surprising that people tend to store some important receipts for other then taxation purposes too. They are proof of rites of passages.. I could imagine someone framing a receipt they got when buying their first car for example.

The original is stored behind the UN-DI version.

Working with D2T we’ve discovered that the more beautifully data is stored the more likely it is to last. In the example above a mondane un-digitized Ikea receipt has reached new aesthetic heights. I plan to continue with the Ikea theme but even in it’s current form “Ikea 4#” receipt is likely to be considered more valuable then a tagless usb-stick. We haven’t bumped into other studies or research on the subject of “Beauty and Digital preservation“. But it seems like a no-brainer that beautifully encapsulated data is better protected then ugly data. So far the only popularly known experiment which somewhat touches the subject has been WD’s efforts of embedding Morse code in their hard-drive casings. Memory-stick designers and hard-drive designers will surely catch up with this subject soon.

The UN-DI process is typically done by hand on acid free paper with the same type of inks used in pre-industrial books. We believe that artifacts which have been reproduced mechanically last poorly but things which have been reproduced in processes which are dependent on manual labor (and devotion of skilled individuals) are persistent. Manual labor adds intrinsic value to the data storage medium. Ultimately “time spend in the reproduction of a copy” proofs that something is important enough to be cherished and preserved. Manual labor (in reproduction) is time consuming and results into unique details on the document.

This idea is rooted in the tale of the “Transmission of the Classics“. During the fall of the Roman empire a lot of scientific writings where losts. This was due to “the fragile nature of papyrus, as a writing medium”. Old texts which where not copied onto expensive parchments crumbled and so manuscripts covering ancient Greek science and philosophy where thought to have been destroyed (Ref. Wikipedia). Luckily original manuscripts where protected by the Byzantine empire and these documents where translated into arabic by early islamic cultures. These writing came accesible for europeans only after a few hundred years, in the late-middle ages trough encounters with Islamic cultures. It’s speculated that the philosophical and scientific texts Islamic cultures reintroduced to europeans resulted into a mental shift, which prepared them for the era of enlightenment. There is even a myth that some original parchments where stored even though contemporaries could not interpret what was written on them!

Here’s what we’ve dug up on the subject of digital data storing on delicious and please contact Ore.e Ref. if you need the D2T services. To learn more on the receipts documenting a performance at a restaurant look up Framer Magazine Issue 2# “Paying the Bill without Money” (page. 102).