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32 years at Kisis

I’ve been going to Kisahalli for 32 years. That is a huge stretch of physical culture tied to a place. The longest gap was six years, when I lived in Tampere and Tallinn.

In 1993 Saku took up boxing and Ari and I went with him to spar. Saku took it as an opportunity to display their growing strength. We complimented each other between rounds. One time I wore socks because I didn’t own sports shoes. An older boxer who regularly coached random young visitors, taunted me that I came from a rich family, because I could afford broken socks.

Around 1997 we went there both with school sports classes and friends. I remember loading a leg press far beyond what I should. (The same press-machine is in the same corner still) Four days after Anu asked why I didn’t get out of the car… I had to wait for them to go before crawling out.

After conscript service around 2000, I returned to Kisis with physical activity forced to daily routine. I remember being afraid that, even out of uniform, I might somehow still be recognized as a conscript.

In 2007 we went regularly with Kalle, who was working internationally as a model. We developed a solid routine. Pekka noted during an A4 photoshoot that we had real gains.

In 2014 I focused on becoming a better rider, I observed squats and dead lifts supported posture and performance. It felt like targeted preparation. Movement in one context translated into another. I lost a golden family heirloom wedding wring between sets.

Around 2017 the social atmosphere developed. There were young asylum seekers, more languages, and visible diversity. I was involved with two, and sometimes three, kettlebell groups as an instructor. Kisis had become culture with Kristian, Paula, Mia and Annina.

I fear my dead lift peaked in 2019 when preparing for trans-siberian rail travel. We trained with Arttu using 130kg sets… I think three reps.

In 2021 Jesse and I were working on an outdoor project. To maintain grip and hold tool pressure for long periods, I developed a kettlebell routine with windmills to build strength in unusual positions.

Returning after COVID around 2022 felt like arriving to a moon station.

Now in 2026 I move in Kisahalli with ease. I know the equipment, the layout, and the rhythm. I’m passing culture forward: clearing my bench between sets, so others can lift, sharing equipment and keeping the flow on. Presence there is like a form of collective bodybuilding. It’s choreographed around practical cooperation between strangers, who are actively not bothering each other, in the extremes of motion.

I noticed my limits. A hundred-kilogram set asks something different. There is a future dawning: I’m becoming one of the gray regulars praying to stay strong. Bodies change there and people come and go. I haven’t made any friends in Kisis but all are friendly.

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2020020

A selection of the Trans-Siberian Railway -Sound Archive is now available on Freesound. There are 35 clips (1.7gb) and I think the gps data mapping of the recordings alone tells a nice story. I’ve included Helsinki as a part of the Trans-Siberian railway network… As it was intended when the Tsar had our rails build. The archive would work great as background noise for a train-story/documentary or for train themed games. I think some clips might work as chopped samples too. The indexing of the files is a bit messy but there are real gems in the mix. My favorite clips are:

I’m listening to them while writing and I can feel the sounds vibrating my phone, which makes the clips feel material, like thin peals of the trip. Miinas note that the archive is linked with geology (or the process of harvesting geological samples for profit) feels acute. I like that the samples have interference sounds and occasionally my hands can be heard touching the mic. The interference makes the surrounding medias physical, it shows the limits of the recording technology and adds to the appeal. There is a clip were the microphone passes an x-ray machine for example. The material disturbances make me think of Viktor Toikkanen when he pushed his laptop to memory overload glitch territory when live-coding.

Our In Various Stages of Ruins exhibition series continues at Alkovi. The current exhibition titled Toxicity will be build gradually through the end of the summer towards the fall. Currently there are photos from the Town of Asbest on display, my humble C-Cassette recording we made with Jesse titled Two Men Coughing in the Woods (2020) and a set of DIY orthopedic supports I made for my feet (mentioned earlier).

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20200514

Alkovi published an interview were we discuss the work I’ve been doing related to the In Various Stages of Ruins -project. The questions were send beforehand and the interview is conducted by Miina Hujala and video edited by Arttu Merimaa. Mineral waters are mentioned and views to the wild springs we found shared. The format is interesting, Miina is scrolling the screen vertically, the timeline is progressing horizontally and to read the longer parts one needs to pause the movement.

Konsthall C made an announcement for next weeks Mineral Water Sommelier Hotline performance. Build three piezo-amplifiers and seriously sourcing a sound card for the live stream.

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20200217

Participated in a field recording workshop by Alan Courtis at Solu. The event was a little bit too short but it still rewarding to participate in. Courtis offered a fast introduction to the topic and shared an interesting observation: Before the invention of studios, every recording was a field recording. We listened to some of the earliest captured sounds and worked ourselves up to recent bioacoustic releases, discussing the relationship of human made and natural sounds. Francisco López and Jana Windferen were mentioned as examples of artist whose work is hyper-real, meaning that they use technologies which allow them to capture events in the unhuman spectrum. It was noted that field recordings have become accepted as an artform in their own right following a similar trejectory as photography. It was particularly fun that Courtis mentioned a few railway related releases. Both work as great references for making something out of the Trans-Siberian sound collection.

The mazizone will prepped and I made a sign to guide bypassangers to join the network. Used my own handwriting for the texts and cut the text out of vinyl. While working it I was reminded by my mother who opposed learning page layout programs arguing that her handwriting is perfectly fine. She mustered trough the 90ties making print layouts by hand.

Notes on Craft (2020) Jem Calder. A motivating story on how to keep developing as an artists, while grinding a day job. The text ends with a warning: As we loose leisure time, art making will be (yet again) made a leisure activity of the rich.

Unable to angle my monitor away from prying administrative eyes […] I wrote in the address bar of my web browser, in spreadsheet cells, in emails I addressed to myself.

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20200214

The Mazizone local network archive I’ve been setting up for my Raspi3+ is stable and working well. I have occasional problems connecting to it and I need to “forget” the network to reset certificates. But this only happens when I’m login in and out intensively for tweaks & edits. The device reboots daily to prevent these kinds of clogs. I haven’t gotten Gammu (to produce daily status updates via sms) working but with the reboot cycle enabled I’m confident that the device will run well enough.

I build the sound archive using wordpress and it looks fresh. Using wordpress in Mazi causes issues with the network url but this is manageable (it redirects visitors to portal.mazizone.eu which is ok for me). I’m now planning to build a funky case for the device and to make an inviting sign which will guide visitors to the network and archive. While making the website I got the idea of using ornamental patterns as illustrations. I also used ornaments in the eurorack case I build for the trip. When I was designing the case I tough the Byzantine style decorations as a reference to early natural sciences (which my work on mineral waters touches). This spawned the idea to add ornamental figures to the thumbnails of the sound files in the archive.

Each sound file (53) has a unique photo assigned to it. The photos set a mood for the content and give a hint of the sound. Photos were shot during our train trip by Iona Roisin, Elina Vainio and Miina Hujala. On top of each photo is a layer of different ornamental shapes. They twirl around the thumbnail corners and interact with things and people in the images. I’ve used Kid3 to add the images to the .wav files. If I’ve understood correctly .wav’s don’t have thumbnails but Kid3 manages to embed the data anyway. The default wordpress media playlist widget can source the images from the files and display them next to the track info.

Now there are ornaments everywhere!

I like over the top ornaments which have an abundance of detail. In Russia I can spot them everywhere. They are used in architecture (Corinthian pedestals and window frames), street lamps, fonts, advertisements, jewelry and clothes. Sometimes the patterns look familiar. Shapes I’ve seen in Russia appear to fuse Byzantine style decorations with folk ornaments I worked with during my carpentry studies. I can recognize a patterns being identical to a traditional woodcarving I’ve seen in Finland. Pirtanauhat and kauluslaudat are good examples.

I guess ornaments appeal to me because they link traditional Finnish crafts with Byzantine history and even contemporary Islamic and Arabic cultures. We visited a folk culture museum in Kazan and many of the Islamic artifacts in the collection looked similar stuff I’ve seen in Finnish folk culture museums (particularly the wooden objects). Some of the clothes looked like something my mother would want to wear. Styles I link to Bedouin folk gowns that are decorated with coins, felt really similar to Russian military uniforms which are decorated with medallions.

The ornaments I’m using for the archive and the thumbnails remind me of weeds. I think they link the archive to “ruins” which Miina is interested in. I think ornaments should be read as celebration of decay. They simulate nonhuman futures by imagening how plant life will take over architecture. They feel like archaic glitch art! Sometimes ornaments in clothes look like roots or blood vessels. I think Scandinavian design aesthetic read ornaments as a vanity but if we approach them as a celebration of decay there is nothing vane in embracing them. I hate Scandinavian design because it makes me feel ashamed of my appetite for details.

Using ornaments to decorate a sound archive, which is difficult to access – Feels right and embedding weed-like ornaments inside metadata makes sense. Here is a low-resolution sample of what the archive looks like when browsed using a mobile phone.