Cultural appropriation is a tool against origin myths. I’ll take hip-hop kids blabbering about swag over finno-ugric faux-mystics any day. #☭
20171027
Gave a lecture on myself as a post-humanistic/sustainability artist by request of Riku Saastamoinen for 40 art-pedagogy from Sibelius Academy, Aalto Uni. and Theater Academy (Dance department). The talk took 1,5h. Run out of time towards the end due to personal therapeutic blabbering about my Marxistic heritage. Also framed contemporary dance as movement steered by fossil fuels. My reasoning was that indoor heating, insulation and plastic soft materials used for flooring have made it possible to move “grounded” (on the floor). Horse videos (Jesse riding nude 2014 & Otto Karvonen collaboration from this spring) got a really good response.
20171023
Performed with the Neighborizome group at the Koneen säätiö Lauttasaari mansion renovation topping out party last Thursday. We prepared a timecapsule/ritual kit for the future and buried into the yard. Builders and guests could vote on its content. Builders voted on an Anonymous Mask and a Koskenkorva vodka flask (Fitting symbols for struggle). They threw coins into the kit for good luck.
Learning Ableton Live in preparation of a gig at the Viestejä Vuosaaresta (KOM-theater / Helsinki Model) event. The gig is on 2.11 and I’m scared. Vili will recite a marine weather report using his flamenco/gypsy-style singing skills. The tone of the singing is similar to an Adhan. Lauri Wuolio is also performing at the event.
Preparing a teaching gig for Janakkala (for kids, 12-18 years) next weekend. There will be 21 students. I’ll be teaching them how to “walk”.
Preparing a 1,5h lecture next Friday on my artistic practice (in the framework of posthumanism/ecology) for dance and pedagogy students of Uniarts Helsinki and Aalto Uni. I’ll start of by explaining that my mother was a Marxist, recap how my shared interests with the Helsinki communist youth association evolved into (very) slim involvement with anti-globalization and anti-war movements and how celebration over the 9/11 (2001) attacks resulted into a restlessness which lead me into crafts (In short before 9/11 dirty clothes were cool – Post 9/11 dirty clothes were scary).
Wax-treated my jeans coat. 1 part boiled linseed oil, 1 part beeswax mixture. It will take 6 months for the linseed oil to dry.
- Nude Photo (1987) Derrick May
- Model 500 – Night Drive (1985) Juan Atkins
- Crack Down (1990) Carl Craig
- The Final Frontier (1991) Underground Resistance
- Alleys Of Your Mind (1981) Cybotron (Juan Atkins & Richard Davis)
20170731
A long and interesting article about artist Mari Keski-Korsu Finding ‘skinship’ with trees (2017) from we-make-money-not-art.com. Some of her recent animal related works are mentioned.
Should America’s Tech Giants Be Broken Up? asks Bloomberg mag (Long story short: Yes. Economy stagnates when tech companies develop into monopolies which fail to circulate their profits).
Found an interview in Elavä arkisto about my grandfather’s Göstä Lindholm’s PhD dissertation (He also has a Wikipedia page which I didn’t know about). Apparently he studied how personal preferences and the formal layouts of questionnaires affect surveys results. He used telepathy experiments as his material and proved that some symbols in Zener cards are more liked then others.
He also suggest that there are some biological rules in play when we make decisions. Judging from the interview he comes of as a semi-postmodern thinker who is confused about the result of his study and turns to biology to patch his world views. My mother disliked his thinking and believed him to be a nazi.
I always thought my belief that technological structures define the limits of our imagination (and responses) echoed my mother’s Marxist worldviews. But it seems that some of her favorite arguments on “how capitalist have rigged the game” are rooted on her father’s research.
I chopped the interview into samples I can play with my mG2. It would be poetic to get the Bastl GRANDPA (the pimped up eurorack version of mG2, available as a DIY kit) and have it play the samples through some sort of self generating modular patch (Krell?). A simple fake artificial intelligence of sorts.. An artificial idiot (vähä-äly kone) as specified by Otto Karvonen. Perhaps I can test the idea using Automatonism/pd. Found a promising article on Granular synthesis on audio file with Pure data.
Es-ow Diato’s Kandiadiou on My Mind is online. I assisted in the production (cam. / edit).
20170429
What if humans are not meant to feel good in static settlements? Mold is a memory of movement.
On class and race: From white trash to the whitelash: What do white people want? (2017) by Helen Lewis. Moving in lines of Marx, Race, and Neoliberalism (2013) by Adolph Reed’s.