Posted on

20180618

Met Antti Tolvi and Laura Naukkarinen at the Kone foundation Lauttasaari manor spring party and they invited me to visit Kiilan äänipäivät in Kemiönsaari (last weekend). We came a late but saw the end of Juhani Nuorvala’s gig (featuring  Jussi Liimatainen aka. Mr. Duo Kaosspad on an oscillator). Nuorvala’s gig was a good warmup for Yan Jun‘s brilliant performance in a garden. Jun used a garden water sprinkler as an instrument. The sprinkler served simultaneously as a sequencer, a phaser effect and a radar/scanner (trough which we could hear how his body was positioned). The idea that a sequencer is a radar is inspirational (particularly grid based sequencers should be approached as such).

He positioned metal pans and aluminium foil on the grass and adjusted the sprinkler movement settings for different beats, then he stood in front of the water rays in different poses (wearing a raincoat which amplified the sound of water drops). After the sprinkler jam he added Pop Rocks candy in water ponds that were formed earlier, he also ate it and changed how it sounded by adjusting how his mouth was shaped (he was signing pop rock). Then he sang atonally and started to dance slowly. The dance turned into a duetto with a mobile phone camera. The camera was set to scan for smiles and every time he smiled the device took a photo (which produced a familiar camera shutter sound). The then turned the camera to the audience and everyone who smiled got their picture taken.

He put the camera away, continued dancing and opened his fists rapidly. His nails dragged against his palms which produced a camera shutter like sounds (rapid high frequency noise with a fast attack envelope). He looked at the audience calmly and opened both his fists creating a panning noise effect that reminded us of the sprinkler sound heard earlier. This last gesture made me think that we as the audience were radar/scanner and his body positions were echoed from our gazes. Or something… A really warm and inspirational performance. I’ll definitely explore the sequencer / phaser / radar approach in the future.

I found a lot of interesting interview on Jun online. In No More “The Other Shore”: In conversation with Thomas Bey William Bailey (February 2015) Jun talks about the history of noise music in China and offers glimpse on his views on noise. He refers to Zbigniew Karkowski and promotes an “experimental art organisation” called subjam.org which I’ll have to follow in the future.

Intuition and thinking are not separated in [Chinese] tradition. No such separation of body and soul etc…but there is, strangely, a trend that takes intuition / body / honesty as a weapon against professional / thinking / rationality [in China]. It’s rather nostalgic: to resist the rapidly unfolding modernity. When I talked about truth and reality, I was actually criticised as not honest, not real. This is similar to someone being criticised as ‘not professional’ in Western culture, maybe..

When I say ‘dry sound,’ I have a context of underground music rather than electroacoustic music. After the development of effect pedals and subwoofers, we are more powerful than before. Not to mention laptops. And the cultural politics. With the distortion pedal noise became easier. With the delay pedal, psychedelic music became easier. But the early psychedelic music was clearer than today’s. It was more about playing by hand, one stroke after the other.

Posted on

20180615

Visited Performance art event (called Performance art event) at the Exhibition Laboratory on Wednesday. The event was organized by Salla Valle and Timo Viialainen. Viialainen also performed in the event followed by Helinä Hukkataival, Michel Ruths, Yuan Moro, Linda and Aura and the night ended with a cute performance Viljami Nissi. The mood of the event was good and there were new faces in the audience. Ruths and Moro were new artist to me. Ruths had moonshine from his home town with him, which he offered to the audience before we sang swedish songs together. Moro performed a ceremony which seemed to mix Eastern Orthodox Church and Buddhists rituals. He also recited some sort of folk tales, he had a strong stage presence. Nissi presented a simple love-story using a horse themed song, condoms inflated with helium and scissors. I send him the On the Road with Trans-Horse mixtape after the event.

Posted on

20180611

An artist in Helsinki who’s active on twitter has been writing a critical commentary of art-life, culture institutions and exhibitions for a half a year now. The blog is called Hampaat (teeth) and it’s an interesting albeit a tad cynical source for local art-news and art-thought. The most recent post is called YOUR COLLEAGUES ARE THE PROBLEM. The text feels like it’s very critical towards someone but that person is not identified… Which makes me paranoid (am I part of the problem? *laughs nervously*). The author identifies the figure of the “reputation avatar” (derived from the work of Gloria Origgi, a podcast about her book online) and tries to pinpoint moments were artists work primarily to maintain their reputation. I often engage with work to merely to maintain my reputation (but I don’t think it’s a bad thing).

The criticism of art mirroring our times (as a justification for the lack of critical thought and practice in art) is something I agree with. Elaborate media-artworks which I’ve seen recently (most of which are related to AIs) should be read as blatant celebration of media technology, innovation and capitalism (and not it’s critique). A hammer cannot be critical of a hammer #ॐ. The artist status should not be used as an excuse from ethical concerns: When artist use AIs they have the opportunity to be just as unethical as the übers and googles of the world.

The author is also critical of the recent trend of “melding art with science” and claims that “the situation of art as a site of knowledge is rotten at the core”. I agree to an extent. Artist are sometimes portrayed more pure hearted then they are. There seems to be consensus that artist would use science for the good of people if only given the chance. Which is not true – Artist are not healers. The text also makes me ask that why would anyone want to learn about Barad from an artist who reads Barad (if they can learn from Barad herself)? And to ask that in what circumstances is learning from an artist about Barad (instead of Barad herself) more efficient/better/smarter?

I’ve liked the THREE QUESTIONS TO PEOPLE DOING EXHIBITIONS UNDER CAPITALISM best so far.

Pietari shared a gruesome story from Amsterdam Dutch rewilding experiment sparks backlash as thousands of animals starve. A case-study for understanding the intersections of cross species solidarity and post-humanistic theory.

Posted on

20180429

Epic warning and communication arrangements are being planned around nuclear waste repositories in hopes of educating people of the future. Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan (1993) by Sandia National Laboratories for US Department of Energy is the most notorious example of how deep-time-communication efforts have been organised. They are trying to send a simple message to the people of the future:

Danger. Poisonous radioactive waste buried here. Do not dig or drill here before a.d. 12, 000.

Symbols and texts used to convey this information are difficult to design because we don’t know how people will communicate during the next 10 000 years. Questions in the Sandia report focus on whether the warning illustrations will be read from left-to-right or how people of the future will understand scale. These are problems inherent to all language translation efforts and because of these issues we should look for communication methods which use non-lingual tools. I’m reminded about the classic catchphrase told to kids learning how to edit videos and write short stories: Don’t try to explain what’s happening, try to show what’s happening and allow the audience to build their story (Show, Don’t Tell).

This is why we should make people who discover nuclear waste repositories sick from radiation as quickly as possible! This is the best way to show them that the sites are unsafe. Killing someone is a very unethical way to communicate – But it’s a more honest than trying to frame toxic waste caused by our lifestyle with educational mantras. All of the educational texts and warning symbols are just trying to hide the dirty truth: We lived at your expense. The radioactive waste is the message!

Onkalo should have a swimming pool of plutonium, made as inviting as possible. After the swim people would get sick very fast and learn that we were assholes do dump the our pollution on them. Only people who cannot read should be allowed to develop these kind of warning systems. Death is a message.

Posted on

20180322

Visited an event organized by Jaana Laakkonen at Asematila space during the weekend. She read texts inside a tent structure which was constructed out of paintings. Works were also exhibited on the floor and some were stored in plastic bags (“for ease of transport”, I was told). She offered them for display on demand and flipped through canvases like a persian rug-dealer in a bazaar. Some pieces had been painted outdoors and were affected by mold. It felt like the mold was a sort of commentary on post-representationalism: The paintings study post-humanistic models of art making, while providing a habitat for non-human critters. The canvas serves as an image, a map, a diary and a Petrie Dish.

I was offered a brightly colored publication. It features close-up photos of painting materials (textures), glimpse of sites she’s worked at and partial outdoor scenes. The publication does not have any text in it and it feels like a sneak peak into an artists practice – Like peeping into a painters studio through a partially open door (intentionally opened by the artist). I also received three printed texts (folded inside the booklet). I’ve only read one: “Does Art Escape When Posthuman Performativity Enters (On [Not] Delivering it)” which is an intimate story about the artists relationship with a dog, bundled with a work journal of sorts.

The event and the texts emphasize entanglement (Referring to Karen Barad & Donna Haraway). This emphasis was present in the way that the artists mixed together intimate stories, technical depictions of the painting equipment and posthuman theory. I had difficulties in engaging with the event because of the artists the personal presence. It was as if she had constructed a zoo around herself. The intensity and intimate nature of the texts, the mold and the artists body predetermined my relation to the site. If the texts would have been read by an actor I could have roamed the stage more freely.

It was an inspirational event – It is as if she was painting with texts. Post-truth-realms have made the representational value of art weak, which is why contemporary art emphasizes on text and performance. Text, performance and bodybuilding exercises (working bodies against material weights) are essential tools to keep us grounded, to keep us in the same world or even to develop new common ground. Working with texts, weights and witnessing events require effort which is why knowledge they produce can be trusted.