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A Day of Artificial Spring Water Tasting in a Museum preparations for Lappeenranta Art Museum The Surface Holds Depths -exhibition progressing steadily.

Sinne gallery Regel 62 exhibition with Moa Cederberg, Mikko Kuorinki and Nomadic Kiln Group (Monika Czyżyk, Elina Vainio & Eero Yli-Vakkuri) is building up high expectations for next week. The title of our piece is epic 💨 Planetary Consciousness Massage Behind the Ears of the Thousand Winds and Statues of Fire 🌋. We’ll start preparing the work at the gallery on Monday.

As You May Sen­se -exhibition at the Uniarts Helsinki’s Research Pavilion is set to open 12th of June. We are preparing an monumentally vain bore-well with the Institute for Coping With Destruction. Drilling is set start next week. Enjoying In­gest­ing Bod­ies of Wa­ter (2022) Saara Hannula, which is written for the same Research Pavilion framework (a quote below). Reminds me of a fashion district window exhibition by Jesse and Emmi, where they made a dress out of plastic trash to illustrate a eco-mental cycle where antidepressants, pass trough bodies to the sea escalating environmental degradation, which causes more depression.

Through [waters] involvement in intimate encounters and bodily events such as drinking, washing, and peeing, the water incorporates new ingredients: hormones, chemicals, microplastics, microbes, and bacteria. Some of the active pharmaceutical ingredients and other contaminants are filtered out in Viikinmäki, which is the main wastewater treatment plant in the Helsinki region, but many of them remain in the water even after it is “purified” […] Especially hormones, endocrine disruptors, and antidepressants are known to have major effects on the development and behavior of organisms, even in low doses: as such, they play a key role in the evolution and extinction of aquatic life.

Later during the summer a gig at Mitäsmitäsmitä and a reseach-like piece in two phases for Institute of Urban Culture‘s new spaces at the Gdańsk Wasserkunst building with Tea. Fun stuff but a lot of it.

Returning to blogging feels good. Updated an old text on Finnish statue removals (should make it into an article too) and hoping to complete some prolonged writing commissions later in the month.

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Sonic Etiquette: Domestication of Acoustic Neighbourhood Relations in Istanbul (2018) Meri Kytö. A sonic ethnography of a middle-class housing cooperative. I get a strong sense of site from this text. It has a nice introduction to concepts such as “acoustic orderliness” (the “endless task on empirical research” trough which people try to fit their habitat acoustically), “spatial segregation” (Kytö argues that “acoustic orderliness” is key in maintaining the segregation of particular groups) and “strategic intimacy” (“a tool with which we can cover, process and utilize status and class distinctions in everyday encounters”).

My interest in the interface between private and communal sonic space is connected to the idea that the domestic sonic spaces of homes in densely built areas of big cities such as Istanbul are intertwined and overlapping. The acoustic space in apartments is porous and flowing: both the city as a public sonic space and neighbours’ private lives penetrate the home, regardless of the walls. “Private” is not a separate part of culture but an area of life that is strongly dependent on values and the concept of the individual. As a historical concept, privacy has been strongly linked to the formation of the Western bourgeois nuclear family civic society. Privacy can also mean information management and hence an individual’s right to self-determination, the formation of an autonomous and considerate citizen as a precondition for a democratic social order.

“Taiteen metsittymisestä – Harjoitteita jälkifossiilisiin oloihin” [On the becoming-a-forest of Art – Exercises for postfossil conditions] (2018) ed. Henna Laininen. A book with texts from Saara Hannula, Markus Tuormaa, Isla Peura, Timo P. Vartiainen and Henna Laininen. I’ve only read the “Esitys metsän rajalla” [Performance on the edge of the forest] by Hannula. It’s good, she’s investigating how the forest is performed (in an example she deep-reads the visitor guide of the Paljakka Strict Nature Reserve). Hannula points to Contingency and Complicity (2011?) an essay by Reza Negarestani, to argue that artistic processes which boast their openesess and promote un-authoritarianism, are often dependent on the artist ego, infrastructure and conventions, which sorts out unwanted audience behaviour and risks. Instead of fake-openness – Artists should turn to complicity and closure.

The Crisis of Intimacy in the Age of Digital Connectivity (2018) Stephen Marche. A well written essay on internet’s effect on intimacy. Apparently Bill Clinton introduced the phrase “I feel your pain” in the ’90s. The author believes that people are returning to a believe that words have magical effects – Which is why political correctness is over exemplified, while empathy is diminishing.

The incipient political catastrophe in the United States can be summed up in a phrase: nobody believes the other’s pain is real. Nobody believes the other’s pain is meaningful; nobody recognizes anybody else’s pain. It is the central problem of internet-provoked outrage and loathing, the hyper-partisanship that turns on so many hinges. Nobody is willing to accept the other’s description of their feelings.