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Autochthonic Fantasy (2016) Arttu Merimaa.

Kirjastoessee (2016) Pilvi Porkola.

Preparing for “Performance and Media” course which I’ll host next month in Kankaanpää Art School. Feeling stressed.. It’s taking a lot of time to sort out practicalities and the time would be better spend making fun art stuff (like preparing the SOW: Blacksmith ed.1).

I’ve planned that we’ll… Make six intensive workouts at the Kankaanpää gym (working with kettlebells), make 3d renderings of meditation stools (later construct them) and work with sketchup to design imaginary objects (later meditating on them). It’s a fun program to conjure but stressful to organize. At the same time I’m mentoring a group of five graduating students with their thesis related artworks. So far I’ve written 12 pages of emails and spend 63 hours on mentoring tasks and travels to Kpää (I’m using a nifty work scheduling application to measure the exact working time). I don’t think they are reading my emails and on my visit there last week I learned that half of the group hasn’t started working yet.

It takes six hours to travel to Kankaanpää by bus. It would be more practical to organize my course for an academy in Berlin etc. The travel time would be more reasonable. Still.. I enjoy the idea that somewhere there is a polytechnic university which offers free art education for people who live in the middle of nowhere. Globally it doesn’t make any sense to have an art university in Helsinki either. I should make a travel video about Kpää and show it friends visiting Helsinki. The site puts contemporary art into perspective. On a map the city is at the same level as Greenland.. It’s among the most northern universities of applied sciences offering education on performance art. I guess Tromsø is the most northern – But Norway doesn’t count because they have oil money, which makes space and time are manageable.

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Visited palvelus – ritual event last night at TeaK by invitation of Matilda Aaltonen. The event was three hours long and required intensive physical engagement. The group had designed a contemporary faux-ritual which was rooted in existing ceremonies exercised by various religious and other spiritual orders. The group had attended some ceremonies during the rehearsal phase and their show was framed as an open-source/mishmash ritual, built from elements copied from exiting ceremonies. This approach, the costumes we were invited to wear and pompostrous choreographies we were thrown into, felt kitschy. The kitchiness helped me to immerse in the experience! During the event we danced to techno in a space hut and exercised meditation/yoga breathing techniques. The event ended with a communally prepared supper.

The artwork was a protest against recent political efforts which seek to turn art into a social service or a tool for social wellbeing. In such plans the primary intent of art is to ease work related stress and build motivation. “Palvelus-ritual” worked very well as a protest! It claimed that if art is politically forced to serve the wellness in the public, a natural result of this process is that it becomes a faux-spiritual holistic ritual. In this future KELA (the social insurance institution offices) would have shamans as consultants and guests would have to perform spiritual dances to receive welfare benefits.

I’m preparing a 20 min speech for Hollo-institutes spring seminar on utopian-art-education by invitation of Maaretta Riionheimo (Whom I met through KOM-theater Vuosaari project). I’m working on a manifest on speculative new-material pedagogy and pushing animals to the mix too: Adjunct Professor The Awaited Son is in the game! I’ll be on stage in Gloria before professor Eeva Anttila (TeaK) and emeritus professor Kari Uusikylä. A tough mix to crack with mere artistic merits. I’ll work the crowd with pictures of horses, it never fails.

Concerning teaching.. I’ve been working actively with a group of five graduating students from the Kankaanpää Art School. I’ve been in periodic contact with them from early autumn onwards. Meetings have been organised on skype and in Helsinki. The group is very hard to reach via email and I don’t know how their plans are working out. Art students don’t know how to use email (also offered them the opportunity to look me up on snapchat, whatsapp and skype etc. but they remain distant).

Currently preparing to meet Otto Karvonen concerning a Vuosaari related art effort.

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Visited Hybrid Matter symposium at TeaK last Thursday. Jennifer Gabrys gave a talk concerning animals as sensors. She referenced projects that had embedded animals with sensory technologies to collect data on weather conditions, migration routes etc. The approach is of interest for our Trans-Horse project. We’ve investigated the possibility to set the horse’s views and environmental requirements as a premise of urban planning in hopes of crafting more environmentally engaged and versatile environments. Gabrys approach was critical and she argued the majority of animal aided data is used to confirm human perceptions. She is currently working in a project called citizensense.net. Her talk gave me the idea to use the horse care-journals of the Mounted police of Helsinki as data to study city development!

Steen Rasmussen gave an interesting talk about BINC economics (bio-, info-, nano- and cogno.). His talk was a useful reminder of the historical importance of the middle class: The empowered, wealthy and democratic middle class of the last century was a unique historical glitch and automation of labor is it’s biggest threat. He was optimistic about 3d printing and other “new” manufacturing technologies and urged the audience to engage with new technologies open mindedly. Unfortunately many new technologies categorically renunciate agency of the makers. This renunciation is embedded in modern worldviews – Factories and 3d printers are equally bad! There are no new technologies.. New tools fuel the same old colonization. After the symposiums I came across the concept of Critical Making which I’ll have to study more. Critical Making seems to fit many Ore.e Refineries projects neatly.

On Friday I joined a dinner organized by the Union for Rural Culture and Education. The dinner completed my involvement with the Grey Cube Gallery project. I was seated next to Päivi and sound artist Petri Kuljuntausta. Kuljuntausta was kind enough to share field recording techniques and motivated me to continue with sonic experimentations. We talked about the Ihme audio-guide project I completed last spring and he had some ideas on whom to contact concerning the future of the project. I had to leave the dinner early as I rushed to Turku. On the buss I read some of Kuljuntaustas texts on sound art. He has used a KaossPad in his live setup.

In Turku I met with Jesse and we made 232 separate machine/tool sounds and two binaural recording at his smithy (The binaural equipment is on loan from Circus Maximus). The recording went as planned and we worked on site for eight hours. The majority of the sounds are high pitched and we’ll possibly make additional recordings next year. Jesse had the idea of fitting the smithys floor with piezo microphones, so that we could hear the bottom end sounds. We’ll likely call this sample-pack “Sound of Work: Blacksmith vol.1”. I’ll demo the sounds for Jesse next weekend.

I’m meeting students from the Kankaanpää Art School online this week to discuss their upcoming graduate exhibition and art projects. Also met with Antoine Pickels concerning possible Trans-Horse engagements next year.

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Visited Kankaanpää Art School were I’ll work as a mentor for a group of five graduating fine art students. Some are drawn to live-arts and others are interested in the performativity of objects and spaces (artworks). They’ll exhibit their graduation pieces at the Seinäjoki Art Hall. This is the first time I’ll be working as a graduate menton and I’m exited about the opportunity. 

The downside is that I’ve been sitting in busses and cars for 15 hours to mentor students for four hours! This is what it takes to build culture and develop performing arts in Finland. The buss ride from Helsinki to Kpää took seven hours. After the student sessions I got a ride to Tampere from Jarno Vesala, who is working as a mentor for an other student group (the mentor team also includes Petri Alamaunus and Hanna Oinonen). On the ride we exchanged notes on how to build media awareness in our children and the sincerity of vblogging. From there I continued by buss towards Helsinki. On route I met Outi Yli-Viikari and Jaakko Pimperi. We chatted all the way. The trip was fun.

Catching up on OG Maco