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20210205

We are preparing a public artwork to Ruosniemen Kukkulakallio, Pori. It’s an Ore.e Ref. effort, an extension of an initiative we call p3rm46r4ff171 which was set in motion early 2020. This phase will be executed in the framework of the second iteration of the Performing the Fringe -exhibitions and hosted by the Porin Art Museum. The museum will also be responsible for commissioning the work. This is the second permanent public artwork we’ve made. What we are planning merges p3rm46r4ff171 with my previous efforts on mineral waters. The site is an abandoned granite quarry which was established in the 20ties. Rocks from the site have been used to build the Pori bridge. A newspaper article details that WWII Germany troops, who prepared an expansion to the Pori airport forced Soviet war prisoners to work at the mine. The area has an interesting history. There is Bronze Age site called Ruosniemi metsäsarat right next to the quarry and well preserved hiidenkiuas tomb constructions called Ruosniemi 1 located close by. A pond, named Ankkalampi  (Duck Pond) has formed to the quarry pit and serves as a popular swimming site. A pair of local entrepreneurs have established an accommodation service next to the pond which they call FinnDome. Guests of the service are hosted in plastic geodesic domes and there is a sauna too. Bronze Age and Buckminster Fuller (here is a nice interview on his philosophy) merged with mineral waters and a initiative tiled p3rm46r4ff171.

The Ruosniemi quarry is featured on the photo archive of the Geological Survey of Finland. The images are by Ilkka Laitakari who passed on in 1996, which dates the graffiti on the walls of the quarry to the 90ties! Some text read -93 and I’m imagining that as many of the texts are painted using the same color and same width of strokes, they could be traces of a youth event organized in 1993. Jussi Matilainen told me that just behind hill is (or was, he hadn’t visited the site in a while) a skiing resort (one lift) which earned the area the title Ruosnimen Alpit (the Alpines of Ruosniemi). Found  downhill mountain biking videos titled with this site name (mentioned this to Polukord!). I spotted a swastika symbol on site which led me to investigate its role in Finnish folklore. Suomalaisista taikamerkeistä: kansatieteellinen tutkielma [Finnish magical signs: A folklorist study] (1937) Sulo Haltsonen provides detailed investigation of different magical symbols used in the region and concludes that the symbol is not common in Finnish magical practices. The article underlines that organizations in the 30ties have attempted to framed as a locally significant sign, which is how it became the emblem of the Finnish air force but judging from evidence it is not very common or frequently used.

I will be looking for minerals and waters from the quarry area. A recent discussion in relation to the Protection Spells -curatorial project  by Native Art Department International (for MOCA Toronto/Shift Key) led me to explore water as a relation to a locality. Processes were we explore spring waters nurtures appreciation of locality and the nature of specific sites. By drinking the spring water we become aware of the taste of a locale and become with a site. This is problematic, as in Finland we don’t really know who we will become when drinking spring water here. Everyone in Europe is afraid that if we root identities on locality we risk becoming violently territorial. Weirdly this portrays bottled waters like evian or sanpellegrino as deterritorialization potions. We must drink the spring waters from a far to keep our nationalistic tendencies at bay. On the other hand I will be manufacturing artificial mineral waters. If we can become with a site trough the taste of a spring water, then we should also be able to imagine a completely new site from the taste of an artificial water. By tasting, we can imagine assemblies yet to come. The water I’ll produce form the Kukkulakallio will be an attempt to document the obscure p3rm46r4ff171 project as a taste. Making a mineral water is getting pretty complicated.

Posted on

20190110

Interesting texts about art-formerly-known-as-land-art are popping up. Here is an interview of Alan Michelson (2018) by Christopher Green from last December! I wrote earlier about his video-work “Wolf Nation” (2018) which is discussed in the interview.

MICHELSON: […] I am interested in Robert Smithson’s idea of site and nonsite. But applied to an Indigenous framework, you could say that the Indigenous site is almost always a nonsite, an abstraction or documentary representation of a site that may no longer exist, like the pond in Earth’s Eye or our villages in what is now Upstate New York. So the dialectic between the absence and the presence of whatever is there now has a critical edge to it. […]

How Michelson speaks of the nonsite reminds me a lot about the performance “All Visible Directions Between Sky and Water” by artist Maria Hupfield and poet Natalie Diaz at The Vera List Center for Art and Politics. Diaz made a strong argument that as the Indigenous peoples of America were forced out of their land, their bodies became a site trough which their culture was manifested. Their bodies became equivalent to land! The performance felt like a group consultation session which aimed to problematize categories trough which we experience land. First they drew an endless spatial horizon by reciting questions that referred to the differences between water and air: “Is this water?” “Is this air” they asked and performed a pair-dance, in which they experimented with the distances and arrangements of their hands. The audience was also invited to join. Then Diaz gave a shot lecture that experimented with written language structures as visual, faux-logical patterns. After this Hupfield asked people for stories about water. Many of the speakers were Indigenous and their stories referred to mythologies and believes. Hupfield asked me for a story too.. At the spot I only had a silly personal story to share, which showed how superficial my relation to land is. I felt unconformable. The event did not offer any answers (for me). Which is very good… If we would knew all the answers what would be the point in gathering?

After the event I remember a good story about water (which I send to Hupfield over email):

My friends Topi and Nestori bought a sailboat on a whim. It was very cheep and they spend two summers fixing it up. Neither of them were experienced sailors, so at first they took courses and made small trips in the archipelago. Eventually they developed courage and went on a long trip from Helsinki to Stockholm. There are a lot of boats on the lane and it’s a well documented route – It goes from a small island to the next. They reached Stockholm safely, felt very confident about themselves, had a night out at the town and started their trip home the next morning.

Midway their return trip a pea-soup fog appeared. They only had the visibility of the length of the boat, which meant that they had to rely on sparse boat lane beacons blinking lights, a nautical chart and sounds for navigation. They took turns at the bow of their small boat and tried to listen for other boats and the movements of the water. When there is no wind one can quite very far, but you can hear echoes reflected from the islands shores too. You even might hear your own boat reflected from the distance. They were not moving fast but a collision with a bigger boat or a ship would have been bad. To keep focus they kept completely silent for the day and took turns at the bow, while the other steered the boat.

Topi told me that during that trip, they developed an appetite for the truth. If they would have altered their course on a false assumptions, they would have gotten lost, possibly wondered to the wrong lane and got into a collision with an other boat or an islet. He also told me the most paranoid part of the experience was that, it’s possible all of the other people sailing on their boats were trying to navigate based on sounds too. Which meant that everyone kept silent and collisions were even more possible! When he told me about it we started laughing: If everybody is silently looking for the truth, nobody is safe!

Maintaining Good Relations: Starting From Zero (2017) is a live radio show by Native Art Department International (Maria Hupfield & Jason Lujan). In this episode they discuss the recent trend of cultural organizations starting their public events by acknowledging, that the land the organization stands has been forcefully claimed from the indigenous people. Land acknowledgements are often followed with a moment of silence. Lujan asks what would happen if audiences would respond to the acknowledgements with cheers and applauds (I think I heard applauds after an acknowledgement at an event at the New School). I think cheers are very good response, they indicate that the issue is still vibrant and that every acknowledgement is a step forwards (not backwards).

Without Us There Is No You: A Conversation at Artists Space (2017). Brian Droitcour interview Hupfield, Lujan & Jessica L. Horton about a screening they put together as a response to the protests against the Dakota Access Pipelines near the Standing Rock Reservation.

How Whiteness Works: The Racial Imaginary Institute at the Kitchen (2018) Lou Cornum. A review of an exhibition.

On a huge screen in the main gallery plays “There Is No Then and Now; Only Is and Is Not” (2018) by Native Art Department International, a video that enigmatically evokes the slips between colonial time and being. Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, an artist and member of the Yamassee Yat’siminoli tribe, dances in his powwow regalia and, in large blocks of text that interrupt the footage, comments on his frustrations with being obscured as a black Indigenous man under the current racial and visual regime. The video’s central position in the exhibition was fitting: here in the entanglements of black and Indigenous identities lies the narrative of modernity in the Americas, the creation of categories by a supposedly transparent and self-determining group of European subjects.

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20180723

Sonic Arts Union: David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley (in memoriam) concert series at the Issue project room was a positive experience. It was exiting to see Mumma perform live. The event served as proof of the grandeur of the New York electro-acoustic scene and movement. The sounds came from a niche and approaches to music were theoretical but the event still attracted active audiences, who engaged with the pieces. Robert Ashley’s 1993 work Love Is A Good Example was the most easiest piece to approach (I should start making spoken word pieces). David Behrman’s Long Throw was a nice ending for the evening but it felt too picturesque. The blues guitar riffs were too much for me.

Joined the On Whiteness: The Reading Group on Saturday at Helena Anrather. The event was hosted by Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan of the Native Art Department International. We read a mixture of texts, the longest was Andrea Smiths’ Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy in which she defines three axises trough which white supremacy engages with non-whites:

  1. Slavery/Capitalism. After slavery ended, the Prison Industrial Complex started.
  2. Genocide/Colonialism. Indigenous people must disappear so that their land can be claimed with out opposition.
  3. Orientalism/War. US need to be in war with “exotic countries” so that they can proof that “exotic” are not US. US is defined by war, it needs conflict with to exist.

The text also defined heteropatriarchy as a building block of  White-America: When nuclear families are set as a norm, it becomes easier to implement hierarchical organisational models upon indigenous communities. She identifies “family” as a technology and argues that in Christian-Americas emphasis on family (and the families right for privacy) results into a lack of interest in public, shared infrastructure: Suburban mindset is a disinvestment. The discussions centred on the topics of forced whiteness and passing. Learning about passing from the indigenous perspective was particularly interesting: Indians are often treated as white because white supremacy want to see indigenous people disappear, to claim their lands.

During the reading group the problematic case Andrea Smith claiming to be a Cherokee were not discussed. More on these issues: Open Letter From Indigenous Women Scholars Regarding Discussions of Andrea Smith (2015). Discovered the Native Land map, a mapping system made to further acknowledgement of indigenous presence in America. Trough this source I learned about the Lenape  and the Canarsie who’s land I now live on. The Lenape article is an interesting read.