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20210916

We wrote an investigative article Our efforts to show solidarity for Palestine are tested at Kiasma, with Pietari Kylmälä for No Niin. The text was edited by Elham Rahmati & Vidha Saumya, who did a great job. With help from the kind people of the Boycott Zabludowicz campaign we were able to gain an update to the affairs of Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, a business person who funds an influential pro-Israeli lobbying organisation (BICOM), and who has a long record of investments in companies which work for the security and military forces of the State of Israel.

As a senior member of the Kiasma Support Foundation, Zabludowicz is deeply involved with the museum. In our view, their track record as an investor makes their affiliation with the public institution problematic. Kiasma should ensure that museum beneficiaries are not involved in businesses which benefit from military conflicts such as the current apartheid policies implemented by the State of Israel. We asked museum director Leevi Haapala for a response to the troubling details our investigation touched. Their response is available online.

Haapala’s response depicts a disconnection between politics and rhetorics. It’s disheartening to read how they deploy the museum’s newly announced safer space policy as a rhetorical device to slither away from responding to the concerns we’ve brought forth. They even spent a paragraph celebrating an artist whose artwork Zabludowicz’s involvement has secured into their collection.

In Haapala’s portrayal, as the director of the museum they’re also leading the operations of the support foundation. Paradoxically, while asserting that they are in control, Haapala also insists that since the museum is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, the organisation cannot take a public stand in humanitarian concerns. This means that in their leadership the programming of the museums is meant to represent political struggles but not to engage with political reality.

The response depicts Kiasma open and willing to receive funds from anyone. It seems there are no standards, no qualifications – as long as you bring in money and love art, the museum’s happy to serve you. This stance is common for private museums. But Kiasma is not a private museum. It is funded by the state; we need it to do better.

The museum expects its visitors to follow their safer space policy but does not expect the same from their financial beneficiaries.

Kiasma is not a “safe space” if it continues to harbour businesspeople who are investing in companies which Amnesty International is investigating for human right violations. I will not participate in events in the museum until they set forth guidelines which ensure that their beneficiaries are not involved in business actions which violate international law and human rights.

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20210905

“The White Exhibition” at Emma museum caused a scandal during the summer but I haven’t read anything about it since. Artists Sofie Hesselholdt and Vibeke Mejlvang aimed to explore whiteness trough a vast museum exhibition. Their text We can’t believe we still have to protest this shit (2021) is provocative and offers thorough insight to their artistic aims. I like what they are after and the look of the ragged flags in the exhibition.

The exhibition is another step in our ongoing quest to question and reject old hierarchical patterns so as to create spaces of inclusiveness. In a world of dichotomies, of Us and Them, we find it urgent to unify, to define a common We, a global solidarity. To start all over again.

Soon after the exhibition opened an article Emma-museossa puhkesi kiista tanssijoiden palkoista ja työajoista [A disagreement in Emma-museum over dancers wages and work terms] (2021) Pekka Torvinen revealed, that four performers who had been commissioned for a durational performance had been in contact with the Trade Union for Theatre and Media Finland (Teme) because the contract the museum had offered was unfair.

The exhibition artists had developed a performance, which was centred on choreographies related to maintenance. The performances were structured with tight schedules, similar as factory work and required daily presence by the performers. Hesselholdt & Mejlvang described the performance as the “heart of the exhibition”. To cut cost the museum sought to have the performance executed by students, who were attached to the show as trainees. As the working conditions and the function of the performance was revealed, the students organised and sought to make their contract just. I think they were really brave to do so (send them a compliment over email). They wanted a reasonable fee and I think they also wanted to be acknowledged as artists.

The article by Torvinen portrays the actions of Emma director Pilvi Kalhaman in a very negative light. According to this source Kalhama insists that their plan to use trainees was motivated by a desire to offer young artists a foothold in the field of art. They also argued that as the choreographies were not planned by the performers, an artist fee for the performers would have been unreasonable. Feels weird… Particularly in an emerging post-covid reality. The artists need the performers, who need the audience. The entire art affair insists that all parties participate equally. It makes absolutely no sense to pay a performer less then choreographer (or the audience).

As I understand it, most of the performers walked out from the production but I’m unsure what happened to the performance. I would like to know how Hesselholdt & Mejlvang felt about these debates and if the series of events had an impact in their praxis. Did this scandal motivate them to explore the conditions of class, capital and wage-labour further? Did the event effect their understanding of whiteness, does it have even more shades now? Interestingly the fee the artists were offered is close to the hourly wage of museum attendants. How did they feel about the entire debate?

The exhibition artists are using a picture from the performance as the front page of their website and comments on the exhibition performance documentation are turned off.

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20210630

I was helping a collegue with their performance. We lined a gallery floor with a carpet, it was a hot day and we worked long hours. Good honest work. They where a postdoc researcher, their partner had a PhD and I’m a junior researcher. The measurements of the carpet had to be exact and I felt stressed, ending up making the same measurements over and over.

“Every repetition is an iteration”. I said kneeling on the floor and we exchanged smiles.

We are reaching an academic saturation point. Most artist I know have a university degree and practically everyone has the theoretical competence to set the framework for their praxis. Theory is a source of inside jokes and good for aligning alliances.

Theory is a joke and our work remains the same.

It’s no wonder grants feel like a lottery system. Literally all of my peers are as competent as I am. As public art institutions don’t have programs which we could use to map trajectories by, art in Finland is in a state of entropy.

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20210611

What’s the point in getting organised behind a cause?

Certain medias have appeal. The medium of the film has an aura and calls for a particular type of participation. There is a special moment when stuff happens, when shit gets real. Some people are in it for that, just that. There are professionals whose sole trade is to get real on cue. The medium gives a sublime direction for the event. Same with visual art. It dependents on an opening, on the exhibition. Books need reviews (which serve as proof that a thing has been read, processed as intended). Arts echo causality – Their future is authored by their form. They call for the the audience to perform a ritual of participation to become.

Covid-time has pulled a focus to the bare-bones of this agreement. Art which depends on an audience has been revealed to be a cohabitated worksite: Observing art is a demanding and dangerous labour effort (rewarding too!). Participating in an artwork is honest work. If you are not getting paid – You are the product.

People have been busy surviving.

Art institutions don’t understand what it means to survive. They are stuck on preserving and content in preserving the dead. Art is revealed to be a luxury. This time around, this old revelation showed how much this luxury burdens the living. Imagine: Some museums kept their doors open to show art made by the dead. This is great, don’t you think? Museums are macabre and remain blind to their morbid performance. There is nothing more gruesome than a peppy museum or theatre Instagram post from the Autumn of 2020. They sincerely asked a dying population to appreciate art. There is beauty in this, like there is beauty watching the world burn. In Finland theatres were subsidized by the government for loosing their audiences… And because they didn’t have any production costs, they made profits from the pandemic!

The weight of this luxury has been felt. But there is hope still: There are cultures for culture, which refuse to be defined by a performance. There exists art which does not call for an audience.

We have all become performance artists, because we are bombarded by performances: The pose of the zoom-meeting, mask-or-no masks in public-space show, handwashing on entry and the plethora of other choreographies, which have been authored by the middle-class managerial clergy.

Read more on covid-managerialism: The Middle-Class Leviathan: Corona, the “Fascism” Blackmail, and the Defeat of the Working Class (2020) Elena Lange & Joshua Pickett-Depaolis. And have a listen at Top 5 Fetishes ft. Elena Louisa Lange (2021) Aufhebunga Bunga -podcast.

I think this bombardment of daily performances has shifted the art in performance. It is now focused on something else than an exact moment of execution (or even unfocused).

Performance art was well equipped for this change: Previously durational performance was a method for evading pinned moments. Durational performances represented a way to steer away from the object-like quality of a show – It was about a presence, not the act. Availability of documentation media and affordable media copying tools changed this. A week-long performance became a photo, a year-long show became a video and a career became a book.

But I believe that the non-object hood of the performance is making a comeback. Everyone has had to perform, institutions have been desperate to reach their audiences and now everybody is exhausted. Trying to survive and exhausted! The last thing people need is to get pinned into a moment, to be tasked to make sense of an artwork. The best thing art has to offer is not giving a fuck about the audience. At least, this is the best care I have to offer for you right now.

This is also why radio is so appealing! It exists, there is a broadcast and you can tune in but you are not locked or commissioned to work for it – I won’t even notice that you are here. Performance art is great: I sincerely don’t give a fuck about the audience, yet I’m here.. Doing my shit and you are free to do what the fuck you want. Have a great day!

burn.pixelache.ac/

I will wear fancy headphones to listen to recent ambient releases, which have been shared on a popular music forum. I will serve as a conduit and transmit ambient soundscapes by humming them out loud. Maybe I’ll dance a little, wiggle my hands in the sun. If everything goes well you won’t even notice there is a performance going on. Just noises of someone singing along to what they are listening to.

10.-11.6.2021, 10:00-18:00. Töölönlahti/Oodi, Helsinki

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20210225

They, a recovering survivalist with limited means, were halted at the border control and tasked to polish their gems for an inspection. Being smart about it they had already disposed, or digested rather the stolen ones before entry and yielded only proper fossils on their wrists. There might have been some crumbs left from the stolen ones but not enough to reveal whose they were. Fake skin bubbles in metal crusts flew past at astonishing speeds and the border officer would have had to shout into the noise to be heard. Not that it mattered, they knew the questions and how to answer, or deliver rather and begun the recitation.

– “All stones are of the same age”. They started.
– “All stones are of the same age, to you” the officer replied in a shallow exhale.
– “Back way back when, when folk still dusted cow brain peels with silver and children sat in silence watching light pass them. A promise was made that a figure would appear which would lead us to a glorious death. I’m a bearer of the peels and the glues.” They handed in their documents and took a step back.
– “I’m a bearer of the peels and the glues, to you” the inspector murmured and performed the stamps.

Both were pleased that the ceremony went easy and so they continued to the queue, waited for their tools and then headed to the antibiotic hills. The work was hard, as expected and drilling took its toll. They proceeded mining through rubble and junk, passing layers of old newspapers but were wise enough not to waste time reading any. Remembering what Outi Heiskanen had told them, that text is not supposed to be read. It is meant to line the edges of the pit, so that it does not cave in.

A gem, which at night returned to them by means of interior circulation, reminded them of a happy summer night. After a glass of wine Heiskanen had asked out loud “Tell me, how do you build a house?”. They remembered replying something, knowing it was irrelevant as Heiskanen knew the only answer: “You start digging… In a day or two a man comes by and they will tell you that you are not doing it right. Then quickly, challenge them and hand them your tools. Go to lunch and wait for the house to be completed. Like this, have a look“.

They had studied the material but doubted that they were building a house now. If they were, the shape of the construction was such that nothing imaginable could survive in it. Unfortunately for them, they were working too close to the shape to see that it was inverted. If they had taken a step back, they would have observed that their efforts were producing a quarry which would eventually serve as a casting mold of the Pori bridge. But they were too concentrated on finding tiny antibiotic particles. The medicine was contained in the droppings of privileged pets of the past. Beasts which had been medicated by high tier professionals of glory days. If the blue rim, surrounding a pile were to be scraped off successfully and digested, it could heal them.

They spend their days working and nights waiting to work. Genuine starlight blessed them trough the ceiling wrinkles of the bubble dome shelter. Having spend two cold days in the pit they spotted the hardend remains of a past miner and a shameless exploration of their dried out dun led to an astonishing discovery. To everyone’s surprise they had breached into a sediment where antibiotics could also be found in the droppings of pet owners! And so they began to scrape around the remains, expecting a glimmering blue rim to appear. They were not discouraged by the sulphuric fumes. Amongst their kin, outlining corpses with furious labor efforts was the highest sign of respect. This kept them working diligently and to top it all, if they had understood Heiskanen correctly, their life would get better soon.

They is Ore.e Refineries (est. 2007) and they offer mineral water made from quarry graffiti (2021). This text is available as a vector-graphic.