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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.

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20160706

Editing the Grey Cube Gallery documentations. The zoo’s director Sanna Hellströms talks very convincingly about her work. The way she defines the institutions function and value is very similar to what I hear art museum staff talk about their organizations. Zoos build environmental awareness, art museums build cultural awareness. Both are talked of using obscure yet convincing terms. During her talk the institutions vague role and relation to other public institutions appears like a majestic lighthouses that offer citizens the opportunity to navigate their relation to nature. I should get Maija Tanninen-Mattila (Director of the Helsinki Art Museum) and Hellströms into a panel and have them talk about their institutions for so long that the audiences perception on which is which gets mixed. Institutions are forged with obscurities.

Made a song about how institutions fold upon themselves.

Was invited by Pilvi Porkola to feature in her upcoming New Performance Turku party-performance.

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20160701

What if we have learned to perceive animals as “individuals” only through zoos? All other relations with animals are collaborations, where we have personalised knowledge about a particular animals history and see it as a member of its group or resource oriented relations, where we approach animals as tools or food. The primary motive of the zoo is to present animals as individuals, lonely and out of context creatures (as we are). The isolation of animals is a performance we come to witness at the zoos. Through their loneliness and isolation we can find ease in our struggles.

The zoo is a vitally important public institution for building human-animal relations… Particularly for people who moved into cities in the beginning of the 20th century. When we were living in the forest, every animal we didn’t see posed a threat. The woods we filled with traces and smells of invisible enemies. The zoo presents the most threatening animals we can imagine in a human controlled habitat. The zoo makes animals visible. Only after we see the wolf in a controlled environment, we can begin to see it as something else then a hostile adversary fighting for the same resources we are. The individuals that suffer in the zoos protect their species.

Zoos provide us an opportunity to approach animals rationally. They are remnants of the enlightenment era, public sites which offer access to animal-relation-contemplation for all citizens. The zoo is not showing animals, this would be impossible because animals become something else when they are moved out of their habitat (context). The zoo is a non-site, which refers to actual habitats and portrays individual animals as representatives of their species. The zoo produces non-animals and it presents a collections of possible human-animal relations (This idea was addressed by Katrin Caspar during our Grey Cube Gallery interviews)! The generations of animals which have been born to the zoos consider it to be their natural habitat. They are more accustomed to representations of “habitats associated to their species” than wild nature.

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20160613

Got some Grey Cube Gallery documentation videos published. Eeva-Liisa Puhakka & Katrin Caspar is in English and Päivi Allonen in Finnish. If my computer would be faster I’d like to learn how to color grade.

Also got a nice message from the Te Uru gallery in Auckland. As a surprise their crew had edited a video of the labor bee-workcamp-performance at the Huia Road Horse Club. I’m still waiting for confirmation that I can upload it for sharing. The message got me motivated to write about the New Zealand Trans-Horse venture and I’m hoping to publish the video and a text about the trip this week. Already sorted through photos and got them on flickr.com.

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20160525

Editing the first interview of Honkasalo-Niemi-Virtanen for Grey Cube Gallery / Helsinki Zoo residency project. Hard work. Majority of artists I’ve interviewed over the years have refused to provide clear answers. I remember working on “The Second Forest Team” interviews back in 2010. The 5 min video required nearly 2 hours of footage and a week’s worth of editing. Artists seem to fear that they’ll lose something when they provide simplified answers about their work. Perhaps they see interviews as magical rituals which set a course for their processes.

Ironically the more obscure answers artists give the more power is passed to the editor, who is left to craft senseful statements from partially answered questions. When artists work obscurely they empower art institutions. The more complex an artist presents him/herself is the more staff is needed to build sense (Similarly, the less organized and offbeat an artist is the more legitimate professional art institutions appear). When an artist and a group become self organized, the economic balance shifts and they possibly begin to compete for the same funding.

Getting funds for making both art and sense about the art should be set as a goal for counter culture projects. Often organizations work with either art or sense but both remain victims.