”Can be said” –With the exhibition I want to pose the question of the place and position of people in the urban space.Ethics is not on obligation towards the Other mediated through the formal and procedural universalization of maxims or some appeal to good conscience; rather – and this is what is truly provocative about Levinas – ethics is lived as a obligation to the Other, an obligation whose form is sensibility. It is because the self is sensible – that is vulnerable, passive, open to wondering, pain, and movement of the erotic – that is worthy of ethics. Ethics, for Levinas, is enacted at the level of skin. (The Ethics of Deconstruction, page 180)

I work mainly in urban spaces. In a communal activity, the artist is a facilitator who gives the framework, a concept and his/her own artistry to the community. For me, process art means acceptance of a continuous experience of incompleteness in my artistic work. It is a reference to our lives where we are infinitely imperfect.

About incompleteness as a form of presence – thoughts about my artistic work

According to Lévinas, the completion of work of art detaches it from communication. The work is not a beginning for a dialogue. The moment of becoming finalized will disengage the piece of work from all the commitment. It is a ‘gift,’ the place of which is ‘beyond the world’. (Siveius, Hannu, Nuori Voima, 1/98, p.14)

Art situates itself, according to Lévinas-interpretation, above the world, to the position of transcendence. If it is “separate from the world” then neither the “rules nor morals of the world” concern the art. Thus the art is wealth that enriches the world.

According to the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) encountering with the alterity of the Other is unsymmetrical dialogic, which assumes the responsibility of the responding. In Lévinas thinking I am interested in the concept of the other, the implication and ambiguity in defining the alterity of the other, and his ethics, the responsibility for-the-other and the defining of being in relation to time. In interpretation of Hannu Sivenius, on the other hand, I am interested in the connections he makes with art.
In the context of community-based art one cannot speak about piece of work as an art object, which is, in my understanding, what Sivenius is suggesting. Community-based art is based on dialogue and exists in this world. The policies and moral of this world applies to it. The finalization of the work would mean the end, withdrawal, engagement, thus community art work generally does not reach a definitive form but retains the state of openness, continuity, dialogical unity with this world.

On the other hand Lévinas, as interpreted by Sivenius, points out that:

Art, in state of representation, exists as the catch of fate. Art is not ennobling or sublimingbut a fall. It is not about entering the other side of time but this side. It is not against fate but fall of fate. (Sivenius, Hannu; Nuori Voima, 1/98, p.15)

Life is a series of failures and succeeding. One just has to accept this state of incompleteness, life cannot be ruled, it rules us.

The artistic work for me is a process, open space, situations, in which the work is taking its shape in stages on its own time. Every moment is important. Remaining open, being open, exposing oneself, is accepting the empty space. The allowance of the empty space is a kind of uncontrolled free space or situation, the control of which I regulate. It is the borderline of the world of mind, experiences, senses – the conscious and the unconscious. The encountering takes place in between, on a border of something, in state of susceptibleness, when one speaks to other, when speech, actions, shared experience is brought forth by being present.

But neither does the art belong to the area of unconsciousness, for despite their dimness the images are present. (Sivenius, Hannu, Nuori Voima, 1/98, p. 15)

According to Lévinas the image is in relation to actuality though it is a question of some kind of impression in us, in relation to the preceding, lived time. For me, in my artistic work, it is essential to maintain the relation to the actual reality, everyday affairs, which nevertheless always, in my opinion, are connected to the lived life and the experiences formed by it.

Priha, Sanni. Translations