Susan's Writings

Jenny. A mixed media painting

Juan Kasari is a Finnish artist who uses modern clichés in his work. There are usually certain aspects in his art expressed through various art mediums.

 

Gated communities, seen as a trend in many countries by conceptual artist Juan Kasari, is the topic of this exhibition. It is presented very well through a series of mixed media paintings and video works, and deals with a half-documentary micro cosmos. It is an art study of a closed community where people live their own private and sheltered lives outside of society, dreaming for security and prestige. “The community of upper-middle class people interests me as a subject of artistic study,” says Kasari.

The exhibition takes a stand on social inequality but its criticism does not point at anyone. “I am more interested in a documentary and establishing approach rather than direct criticism,” he says.

Modern tales of the Trojan Horse

Some sociological studies have compared the creation of these types of walls to historical fortifications. What comes to my mind is the story of the Trojan Horse, and how a clever and creative mind can fool the best fortified wall. There is also an indication that safety in gated communities may be more of an illusion than reality, as there is no less crime in gated communities than in non-gated ones.

Guides for successful living

Presented as video installations, The Red Carpet Party, The Charity Gala, A Guide for Successful People and Gifts are guides intending to teach you how to act, interact and communicate with people in different situations. They are a kind of brainwashing, selling the idea of happiness and success as a synonym of economic power.

“Many people preach about how to act, how to look successful and how to make money. In Finland we have people lecturing about how to pursue this kind of life to be successful, which is a copy from America,” Kasari says and explains that even though gated communities haven’t entered Finland yet they can be found in Sweden and Denmark as a way of showing off. “To be rich and safe is a bit of an illusion.”

The exhibition’s theme is not strictly connected to any place or any country in particular. It is a global phenomenon that invariably touches every society. Kasari wants to represent and document what happens, what he sees. “You can find the same people with the same style and the same brands anywhere in the world. It is part of globalisation,” he says.

The exhibition is not a criticism of rich people, it is a documentary, but it is seen as something quite hard for people who have this life-style, Kasari explains. “Some people I know were upset about the exhibition. This kind of theme is not visible in the Finnish art world. Political art is usually very straightforward,” he adds.

This thought-provoking and revealing exhibition brought me memories of gated communities, where kids are not free to play without having a guard close by. It is a kind of luxury prison for the insiders, and an unreachable world for the outsiders. A world I wouldn’t like to see in Finland.  

Gated communities. Video still

Susan Fourtane – HT
Susan Fourtane
Juan Kasari – Image

Marja Pyykkö´s film project won second prize in the Nordic Talents pitching

Marja Pyykkö believes that loving life and a positive attitude towards it is a healthy base for making a film.

competition for graduating Nordic film students. The event was held in Copenhagen on 4 to 6 September.

The prize winning film If I Stay It Will Be Double tells the story of 15-year-old Emilia who is always responsible and well behaved. When she meets Venni (also 15) she finally dares to break the shackles of her family. But soon the girls’ friendship becomes a similar shackle. Emilia has to dare to break free of Venni as well to find her own path.

“I myself experienced the life as a teenager very violently, the bond to my family was strong so the outbreak was also full of conflict and mixed feelings,” director and co-writer Marja Pyykkö says.

The film, based on true and lived feelings, has been developing for three years to finally come out like a big burst of energy, as Pyykkö says. “If I Stay It Will Be Double is a very personal project because the story is based on my own experiences as a teenager in Helsinki. We have been using my personal diaries as writing material.”

The script is written by Laura Suhonen and the film will be produced by Piia Nokelainen for Solar Films. “The second prize is not so much money but it gives important visibility to our project and helps us move along with the development of the story.”

On Nordic Talent

The aim of Nordic Talents, funded by Nordisk Film og TV Fond, is to introduce graduating students from the Nordic film schools to the Nordic producers and financiers and, equally important, to give the producers and financiers the opportunity to meet the future talent.

“It’s a great forum for new filmmakers to meet the important people from all the Nordic countries, from production companies to TV and Film Foundation people. The pitching competition and the workshop were very educative,” says Pyykkö.

Pyykkö wants to show the teenage girls not as victims of time and place but as strong characters who make important decisions, even if they are not ready to make them. She wants to show that even if we have made mistakes in our own teen years, it doesn’t mean that our life will be marred for good. “There is forgiveness and growth in this world. I don’t want to teach a lesson to anybody, just to tell this story as it is,” she remarks and adds:

“Nothing is too much or too hard for the girls when they are together. Our story is not about two girls forming a lesbian relationship. It is the friendship and the feeling of power of what they are in love with. ”

Pyykkö believes life is not scrapbooks and gymnastics for today’s girls; it is time to make a rough and realistic film about girls, sexuality and violence. “Strong women do not spring out of nowhere. It takes a lot of hard choices and mistakes but it’s still all worth it!”

Susan Fourtane  – Helsinki Times

Lisa Stålspets A detail of the handmade scenography in Tell Back Time.

Shifting View consists of video, drawings and photography. The works are based on documentary material, observations and stories which have contributed to the developement of ideas.

LISA STÅLSPETS (Sweden) is a visual artist at the HIAP-Helsinki International Artists-in-residence Programme. Her solo exhibition is the artistic representation and continuation of her creative thoughts. Her work is not autobiographical, though. She is more a collector of stories who wants to underline the subjectivity that exists in storytelling through her voice and hands.

Interested in the functions of storytelling, it comes naturally to Stålspets to transform text into art using various techniques. “Everyone makes drawings when they are children, and artists don’t stop, at least some don’t,” she says.

Stories we tell and stories we are told

“Stories explain and make sense of the world we live in. They are a way of relating to the world, deciding how much distance we want to put between the experience of real life and our inner lives. This is something that goes on continuously, not only when we tell stories to other people. We write the fiction that is the reality of our lives.”

For Stålspets, the title of the exhibition Shifting View refers to a constant change, the change that even seemingly inactive places and things go through over time. To shift one’s view also means changing one’s mind, changing one’s understanding and viewpoint. “For some artists, an idea doesn’t change from the beginning to the end, they have a kind of fixed idea. I don’t work that way,” she explains and adds:

“You become a little wiser when you’re working on an idea. It’s interesting to see what happens, how the idea evolves and changes during the working process.”

Time & memory

	Superman/monster pencil drawing.

In Tell Back Time, Stålspets tells the story of a house with a heavy historical heritage. She says the video, made of a handmade scenography, tries to peel down the layers of stories about this house to one objective truth but fails in doing so. Tell Back Time deals with how time and events leave traces in the present. It’s about the artist’s interpretation of the descriptions she was told. “In old houses you can feel the past and the present. It’s interesting to see how memory changes,” she says.

The viewer’s participation plays an important role at the time of exchanging communication with the work and the artist’s own view. “The most powerful image is the one that comes to you and makes you stop and think.”

Certain ambiguity is present in some of the works, which investigate the perception of reality, the creation of myths and the constant negotiation that goes on between the world of ideas and what we call the real world.

Can you convince someone about the existence of an island?

The extraordinary case of Frisland is presented through drawings and text: an imaginary island born out of confusion as being separate from Greenland and accepted by cartographers from the 14th to the 18th centuries. A swim into the waters of the real and unreal.

From inside a cave

A photo tells about inactivity as a necessary step for things to happen, giving room for creation. Emptiness is seen as a path of possibility. Can anything new happen in a constant tumult of activity?

Stålspets’ art is reflective, pointing at different possibilities. It encourages people to see things from a different perspective: making the strange into ordinary or seeing the ordinary as special. It makes the viewer wonder and wander in a sea of imagination and creative thinking. A fascinating experience for anybody willing to look around and think more about what really matters: what you see.

Susan Fourtane – HT

Oh lonely soul! Will you find a warm heart to make it your home?

A safe place to rest, caressing the heart you love?

Where tears disappear, a sweet calm is near.

Will you find your home, a kind heart full of love?

A tender and known soul.

Oh lonely soul! I wish I could give you love.

Oh lonely soul! Where is the heart to call your home?

In Finnish, ‘piilosta’ has multiple meanings: being hidden and staying hidden, to be found and finding.

Egle Oddo creates environmental art using recycled materials with the intention of giving a message through her work

Hide & Seek/Piilosta is the theme LARU ART presents this year in Lauttasaari. International environmental artists will exhibit their works in a protected nature area on the Särkiniemi shoreline and in the Lauttasaari shopping centre.

 Egle Oddo, one of LARU’s members of the board, explains that the artists have been working with the concept of showing and hiding their art work, toying with the idea of being for or against hiding the art work in the environment.

Same theme, different interpretation

For Patrick Timm, a guest artist from Berlin who works with performance and installation in public spaces, Hide & Seek came to his mind in a form of an orange elephant. He will bring an elephant to Lauttasaari and will perform as an Indian guide. “The idea comes from a day I was in Lauttasaari dreaming about a sub-tropical island and orange elephants, which was the starting point for this idea. In India, elephants are a symbol of good luck,” he says.

Timm’s works are known for the items he always gives to the public. This time you can get a small orange elephant as a souvenir!

Marko Timlin (Germany) used concrete and two bonsai trees to create a work called Progress. He questions contemporary modern society in relation to the environment. “I think we make things worse everyday,” he says. “This year my work Progress is critical, it’s a little bit ironic.”

Originally from St Petersburg and living in Berlin, Nastia Eliseeva will exhibit sculptures made of synthetic materials connected with the particular area of Lauttasaari and her own topic Invisible Objects.

As an artist, Oddo (Italy) has been working with installations since the 90s and will participate with the installation called Can you dig it? “It consists of 12 flags with the symbol of radioactivity that is normally found close to a nuclear centre. At the foot of the flag there will be something hidden a few centimeters underground and this will be for the public to discover if they want to dig for it,” Oddo explains.

Expanding the concept

The concept of LARU is artists spending time together, doing and sharing things as an art group. All the artists are interested in seeing what art can bring to the environment not only in rural areas but also in urban areas in Helsinki and in other cities in Europe. “Environmental art doesn’t mean that you just have art in nature, you could also do it in the city,” says Timlin.

Other artists participating in Hide & Seek are Shachindra Dass (India), Anna Myga Kasten (Germany), Päivi Takala (Finland), Anu Miettinen (Finland) and Sirkka Tapio (Finland).

Hide & Seek, supported by Helsinki Emmaus, K-Rauta Ruoholahti and the City of Helsinki, is in Lauttassari from 6 September to 6 October.

Susan Fourtane – Helsinki Times
Egle Oddo – Image