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20170106

Visited Simo Saarikoskis’ exhibition at Oksasenkatu 11. The event was fun, and I got to talk to swell people but it was difficult to follow the exhibition.

I’ve been fiddling with WordPress.. Thinking about switching themes. The new twentyseventeen theme offer neat features out of the box and I want to learn the ropes in hopes of eventually updating my artist portfolio. If I learn how to to keep comments and tags on the “frontpage” view, I’ll make the switch. Integrated my Flickr account on a page of this blog.

Also updated my OnePlus 3t to Android 7.0. I decided to make the device un-encrypted as I’ve read that androis device encryption is not strong anyway.

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20161016

Visited the Yayoi Kusamas “In Infinity” exhibition at the HAM museum yesterday. I was invited on site by Anna-Sofia Tuominen from TeaK whom I got to know during the “Horse and Performance” course this Autumn. A student group from TeaK presented short stories based on Kusamas life and mimicked some of her famous performances and fashion looks from the 60ties. They worked in every corner of the exhibition space, used spoken word, worked physically and engaged with the audience. The acts entertained kids which was usefull as I got to examine some works in detail. 

I liked her gouache paintings and there was an oil painting “Pacific Ocean” from 1960 which I fell in love with. It felt like a perfect example of an artwork which mixes Japanese illustration techniques and conceptual approaches. The exhibition didn’t analyse her career, artistic motivations or thinking that’s gone into making the artworks. As a retrospective it glorified Kusamas career and brilliance. A lot of focus was drawn to her mental healt issues and the artist “fragile mind” was underlined to certify her artistic qualities. Mental health issues seem to be popular branding tools. Some works felt very gimmicky and her later works were highly commercialised. 

The installations were joyful and fun to engage with together with a seven year old kid. There were mirrors, bright colours and unearthly shapes. I took particular pride in making the phallic and vulvic symbols understandable. Elderly exhibition guests blushed while I was educating my kid how to read the imagery.

Bought a OnePlus 3 phone. 

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20160824

Met with Andrew Gryf Paterson and Alexander Fleischmann at the HIAP residency in Suomenlinna and participated in an informal stroll around the island, which was organized to discuss “Undisciplinarity”. The theme is related to Paterson upcoming PhD thesis. The event was a part of the HIAP public program. I got to know Paterson when he was working for Pixelache and witnessed his impact on New Media Arts scene in Finland. Pixelache events and festivals brought together craftspeople, farmers, junkyard scavengers, programmers, circuit benders and artist working with video/sound. Rather than identifying and boxing in different genres of new media arts, Paterson was interested on what kind of social and ecological implications different technologies have.

He invited cultural heritage specialists, craftspeople and new media artist to the same front. The technologies they used were not judged based on how old they were – Digital dongles and stone axes fitted on the same desk. For him it was more important to find commonalities and joined motivations across different fields of creative life. It is important to organize behind joined dreams concerning the future and not to allow contemporary technology to segregate us (This premise has practical use in organizational tasks: Hosting a meeting with good food is way more efficient than sending emails).

Paterson has been influential to the development of Ore.e Refineries. The Pixelversity “Unconfrence on Art and Sustainability” in 2011 was a particularly fun event and we launched the NO-CHAIR-DESIGN campaign there. He’s currently working on a text “Reflections on Soil Future(s), Present(s) and Past(s)”. I’ll try to cover it in detail after it’s been published the RIXC “Open Fields journal”.

Got a PO-14 for a -60% discount! and now I could make gig using only Teenage Engineering gear. Also got the Cyanogenmod 13 (Based on Android Marshmallow 6.01) working on my Galaxy S3 (I9300). The device is slow but usable (I might have to return to Cyanogenmod 11 or other rom variant to make it snappier). Currently editing the Grey Cube Gallery video documentations.