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20190829

I’m preparing for a month lon trip to Russia. The Alkovi “In Various Stages of Ruins” -group includes (2018-19): Elina Vainio, Matti Kunttu, Iona Rosin and Katja Kalinainen. The project is organized by Arttu Merimaa & Miina Hujala. Other artists from Finland will also join in on different segments of the trip and their works will be presented in screenings / exhibitions on the way. The train from Helsinki leaves 2.9. I’ll give a presentation on mineral waters at Fabrika (Moscow) on 4.9 and later in Vladivostok. During the trip we’ll visit Ekaterinburg for the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art and Novosibirsk. I won’t have access to the internet on the train but I plan to write posts, which I’ll publish en masse once I get to a wifi.

The performances I’ll present illustrate how mineral waters are formed as rain passes through the soil and how different waters affect our bodies. The characteristics of different waters will be explored using electronic gadgets, anecdotes and by preparing a batch of mineral water for consumption. I’ve build a eurorack module for the occasion. It is a Simple EQ / Baxandall EQ module, which I’ve made as a trough hole unit and modified by adding switches and female pin headers, so that I can swap capacitors used in the original circuit.

I’ve build capacitors which use mineral water as the conductive material and plastic balloons as the non-conducting substance (dielectric). The capacitors have different architectures and shapes: A component which is made from a balloon (filled with 10ml water) inside a balloon (filled with 10ml water), shows as a ~3000pf capacitor. A component which is constructed from a balloon (filled with 10ml water and 10g copper) and a jar (with 20ml water), shows as a 12nf capacitor if its charged with a 9v battery for 10 sek. A component which has two spiraling compartments, shows as a 40pf cap. etc. Measurements vary and I guess the capacitance changes over time as the electrolytes in the salty water run out.

The EQ’s treble setting shows a notable difference when a capacitor is swapped. Unfortunately the change in the nature of audio passed trough the circuit is non-spectacular (my water capacitors behave as normal capacitors). But it is intriguing to use water as an electronic component! I’ve also build a nifty eurorack case for the trip (I’ll share the design later). The 84hp skiff has laser-engraved Byzantine ornaments and maps form our groups previous trips to Russia. The inside of the case lid shows module schematics (for debugging) and a manual for the Expert Sleepers Disting MK4 unit. The case also has pictures from different water based parasites a illustrations. I’ll laser cut the panels for the module tomorrow. The panels also have inserts for the 4,45mm jars I use for the water caps.

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20190827

(The Earth Demands) The Necropolitics of Art (2019) Rick Dolphijn for Sonic Acts. He starts of with a solid summary on what Michel Serres understands as “quasi objects”. Objects are made to prevent the passage of time, to keep things from changing and to prevent revolutions. Dolphijn argues that art is something different, is not limited by any finitude (a quality it shares with philosophy). It proposes an other history and tells us that political realities can be (must be) deterritorialized. I think he’s idealistic but it’s cool.

Art refuses to be embedded in the present. […] Art is a Necropolitics. […] Trough it we can explore what other realities are possible.

Bought boots from Töysän kenkätehdas (for Russia). Due to the trip I’ll miss the Rehearsing Hospitalities events (There is a talk on the 10th of Sept. called Rehearsing Dialogues where Dolphijn will be in dialogue with Marjolijn Dijkman and Mari Keski-Korsu). I’ll also miss the Publics Today is Our Tomorrow club.

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20190826

Rosi Braidottis talk Necropolitics and Ways of Dying (2019) for Sonic Acts is brilliant. It’s complicated, sharp and puts concepts such as the anthropocene and post-human into context. She identifies that in popular discourse these refer to a process of “white urban masculinity becoming to terms with their personal vulnerability”. She wants to reconfigure the anthropocene. In the start Braidotti identifies a “forensic turn” trough which the dead have entered common consciousness: Images of the dead are frequently used as evidence of events. She reminds that biopower is only partly about the living (who are being controlled), more importantly it’s about the ones who are left to die: “Some humans are much more mortal then others” (infra-humans). She claims that apocalyptic fantasies and speculations, have led to a fatigue of political activism. As a solution she urges her audiences to speak from “somewhere specific” and to ground their opinions, as only by grounding opinions we become accountable. Citing Deleuze she urges us to focus on temporal scales.

We can be a large community if we agree to ground our opinions: If we do not generalize. I would ground the we, into politics of location and different understandings of time and timing [Multiple temporaries: Reproduction cycles and social cycles of labor etc.].

The death of man is the opening of multiple possibilities which call upon serious engagement on our part. Thinking of the present as virtual future, what we are at the process of becoming, is a praxis and hard work. There is no time to here to indulge in apocalyptic lames or luxuriate in the spectacle of our own demise. Roll up your sleeves and lets work on an alternative and what we need to do. [Opposing is not the way forwards because we, the capitalists etc. are the problem] The question is not about extinctions, its about what we are in the process of becoming. Lets deal with it.

Braidotti is also referenced in Left Behind: Futurist Fetishists, Prepping and the Abandonment of Earth (2019) by Sarah T. Roberts and Mél Hogan (I’ve been following Hogan since she organized the “Salon des Refusés” online screening program).

Whether Earth’s collapse will come due resource extraction, environmental destruction, or war (or a combination thereof), the technocratic élite are not only both predisposed and poised to start anew somehow and somewhere else well beyond the backyard bunker but may even welcome or initiate it by way of inaction in the face of destruction on Earth.

Maria Teriaeva, an interesting electronica artist from Moscow. Also looking forwards to visit All For DJ shop.

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20190824

Environmentally conscious art should not be advanced trough gatekeeping which judges individual artists for the technical solution they choose. Discussions about technical solutions are indirect routes for judging taste and not everyone has the opportunity to develop technically ethical taste. Guild about the energy which creative expression wastes should not hinder it. Everyone should be granted the opportunity to shed the burdens of the class they have been born to. This is why degrowth should effect the rich more then the poor. A request for Media Artist I wrote 2012 (I think this company offers a solution which is based on RasPi).

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20190822

Why Art Criticism Sucks Right Now (Spoiler Alert: It’s Racist): Some Context and Suggestions (2019) Torey Akers. An insightful meta-critique of art criticism. It’s focused on North America and its commercially driven art markets but many aspects of critique apply across different western art scenes. The text starts off by referencing recent blunders art medias have made (which I’d need to know a lot more about to understand), then it offers a miniature history of art criticism (at its best it was an attempt to expose cultural power structures for the public, motivated by the French revolution) and ends by providing a list of people to follow (spotted Jessica Lynne, whom I heard at Pioneer Works last fall). The text also drafts guidelines on how to make art criticism more diverse and ethical (better).

Akers urges artists to learn how to read criticism: “Artists I’ve covered often can’t tell the difference between a standard write-up (this person made something!) and a review (the thing this person made was fine, weird, spectacular, useless, etc.).”. My experience has been that in Finland artists are very sensitive to how they are written about and how their work is mediated. Perhaps due to a fear of being misunderstood they seldom provide texts or engage in dialogue which could be used as material for creative writing. As a writer I’m often left guessing what the art is, which leads to non-opinionated or even anti-opinionated texts that describe the artwork or the creative scene the work emerges from, instead of engaging with it. Artists feel scorned if I use a wrong tone. I’ve found that the safest way to write is to first draft texts into my blog, then to ask for feedback from the artists and if I get a positive response, only then continue with the text (this cumbersome procedure makes me almost an un-payed employee of the artist).

I think in many Finland artists view art writing and mediation only as marketing, not joined creative thinking.

The art world, corrupt and opaque as it is, needs diversity of voice to mount any believable attempt at contrition; improvement, if we’re being optimistic. Old-school gatekeeping has long proven the enemy of progress. […] The landscape privileges clumsy, Caucasian cowardice above all else, and whatever content manages to escape the tonal clutches of a press release is usually engineered specifically for viral ire, to say nothing of International Art English’s recklessly pestilential effect over the last decade.

Nearly a century ago, Walter Benjamin opined, “Criticism is a matter of correct distancing… It was at home in a world where perspectives and prospects counted, and where it was still possible to adopt a standpoint. Now things press too urgently on human society.”

There it is—collaboration with artists rather than short-sighted conspiracy against them, institutional critique in service of concerted efforts at transparency. That is the non-monologic model artists deserve. An absence of immediate relatability should not hamper any responsible writer from reflecting upon the merits of an art work, and it’s up to us to reverse the tides of obtuse equivocation to which we’ve grown accustomed. White writers (this one included!) can, should, and must take accountability for art criticism’s eye-watering suckage in 2019.

Place Language (2019) a collaborative sound-landscape project looking to catalogue depictive landscape terms across the globe.

The quiet hope of ‘Landmarks’ was to ‘re-wild’ even a little of our available language for landscape, to celebrate and disseminate the extraordinary ‘word-hoard’ of coinages that has flourished historically – but thinned recently – for seeing, naming, and knowing aspects of place and its more-than-human life – Robert Macfarlane

Ei läsnäoloa, kiitos! Ahdistuksesta, uupumuksesta ja kapitalismista [No presence, thanks! On anxiety, exhaustion and capitalism] (2019) Laura Hautsalo. A nice text which (among other things) exposes that mainstream media maintains a black-market for depression survival and burnout recovery stories. These black-markets feed the neoliberal narrative, that we can overcome structural injustices by freeing our minds. Hautsalo refers to Rosi Braidottis 2019 talk Necropolitics and ways of Dying (which I’m looking forward to listening). The text fits well with Kaino Wennerstrands lates Tarjoilija, festivaalissani on liikaa teoksia [Waiter, there are too many artworks in my festival]. Wennerstrand argues that some artists and festivals are producing artworks merely to appear busy and that this extensive programming makes enjoying art difficult. He also urges artists to join artists unions to combat precarisation.