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20180208

At first I thought that museums in Finland were interested in graffiti because it provides a simplified approach to postructuralism and the performativity of the public space: Everything is text. Top-down design of public spaces enforce normative behaviour. Artists are no longer geniuses, everybody must be granted the right to author public space etc.

But unfortunately it seems that museums are interested in graffiti-artist for very different reasons. They fit the role museums have reserved for artists of the past. Museums present them as avantgarde underdogs fighting for our right to express ourselves. Justice warriors without economical interests, emitting pure creativity. The first approach was oversimplified but the latter is offensive.

How Facebook Is Killing Comedy (2018) Sarah Aswell.

The other solution, which seems crazy, is for there to be a meta organizing campaign, where media companies band together and refuse to post on Facebook, essentially going on strike and withholding their labor until they are compensated. These media companies need leverage against this massive entity that is eating their lunch. That’s the labor problem.

There’s a reason that Mad magazine looks different from Vanity Fair. They need to convey a different aesthetic and a different tone for their content to really pop. Facebook is the great de-contextualizer.

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Aikamme estetiikka: kapitalistinen realismi (2017) Anna Tuori & Aleksis Salusjärvi. The criticism of boring artist is appealing but the rest of the text is silly and echoes a besserwisser mindset. It fails to provoke because many of the claims are inaccurate. The text is fueled with a hatred towards computers and tactical artist who succeed in renewing and maintaining their practice despite current cultural schemes. I don’t think we need culture journalism which attempts to convince audiences about the intrinsic value of art – We need cultural journalism to make sense of the world (with art as a collaborator when possible and sensible). Salusjärvi has made a career as a protector of the autonomy of the arts, but I’d much rather read texts in which he would analyse the world in an equal partnership together with artworks. Art it not a weekling. The text makes me think that culture journalists frame themselves as champions for the autonomy of arts primarily because it helps them to protects their jobs.

Culture journalist need art more then artist need culture journalists. #ॐ

Listening to noise or ambient is scary. I’m sometimes afraid that the musician is faking it and tricking me, playing games with my lack of taste and testing me. Watching a noise/ambient gig live doesn’t help.. The PA of the venue alone has such a powerful impact that I can’t recognize which part of the acoustic experience is rooted on the musicians expression and what is a result of the volume/acoustics/resonances. The best way to experience music is by participating to it by dancing or playing along. Unfortunately opportunities to do this are rare. I guess this is why I’ve grown fond of instrument demo videos. They feel honest.. I like videos in which musicians experiment with the technical properties of effects pedals etc. My position as an audience is clear and the sonic experience is not presented as “art”. This makes it easy to enjoy new sounds. Listening to effect pedal demo videos is the best route in developing acoustic awareness which is not dependent on interpretation of the artists motives. Effect pedal demo videos form the basis of a natural ecology of un-natural machine made sounds.

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Visited Theater Academy Dance department solo-demo evening by invitation of Matilda. The night included eight pieces in an almost 5 hour long potpourri.

Aino Purhoses “Never place a body in another body of water” was a solid start. She invited the audience to plant their feet in buckets of water while she played with water using various containers. The most striking moment was when she power-stirred plain water using a blender and then touched the moving water in the blender with her hand and face. I felt connected to her through my wet feet. She sang an improvised tune and curled inside an inflatable children’s water pool.

Riikka Laurilehto performed a piece which was framed with the text “Most of the materials used in this performance are not mine. It’s just another hybrid”. She worked with plastic toys, wore a jaguar bodysuit and sang. A Kaoss Pad 2 was used as an effect (Delay 29 spotted!). A humorous piece which felt inspired by The Queer Futurity of Plastic (2014) by Heather Davis.

Both of the pieces mentioned here were very similar to standard performance art pieces (single concept gestures, 20min and light hearted self-exposure to emphasize with). But as the artists were brilliant and fit dancer bodies everything looked a tad too perfect. The rest of the pieces were more standard contemporary dance (floorwork, tremors, intensive gazes and everyday choreography performed in an acrobatic manner).

Matilda’s piece was one of the best ones. She positioned the audience inside black squares which had been drawn on the floor using tape. Then she started with a warm up in semi-darkness (which looked elegant, lamps reflected reddish hues). After this she performed small breathing movements for the audience from inside a smaller black square. She was in an intimate relationship with her movements and we were invited to participate in her relationship to the movements – This relationship was the dance. I guess that the statement of the piece was: There is movement. Which is important.

Watching young dancers perform was a great way to tap into how young artists position themselves in regards to theory. Laurilehtos and Purhoses pieces felt like physical illustrations of new materialism and anthropogenic thinking. Because they have grown up with these theories (as artists), they know them well enough to play with their personal relationship to them. Their pieces were not about the-end-of-the-world but their relationship to allegations about the-end-of-the-world. This kind of relationship is often analysed as an ironic stance.. But I think they were just trying to be humans despite of theory.