In their latest exhibition at MUU gallery media artists Andy Best and Merja Puustinen once again bring humour and playfulness to bear on a difficult subject. After living through the euphoria brought about by the end of the Cold War, we now live during the dark times of the War on Terror. This seemingly collective threat is channeled into individual fears – fears which are answered by superstition and belief. Religion, the opiate of the masses, is today packaged and marketed like any other consumer experience. In the gallery toy-like god-idols swarm around, mocking and disturbing. Fractured video takes us deep into metaphorical darkness, all the time anchored in suburban banality, while the soundscape is constructed from monotonious noise interspursed with fragments of spoken word.

21st century psychosis fills the air.
We clutch at beliefs, the god idols chatter like chickens in a farmyard.
Contemporary western life is devoid of the struggle of life and death – the constant search for food and shelter. The gods of old are redundant, yet we clutch at them as lifestyle accessories, domesticising them and draining them of their powers. While our everyday lives lack meaning, we seek answers from religion, but instead we are fed bigotry and falsehoods, tv shopping and trivia. Underneath this shallow skin we still feel the need to understand that void within, yet we are helpless in its presence. The subconcious tracks us in our waking and sleeping hours, that darkness into which we fear to tread.

Andy & Merja have lived and worked together for fifteen years. Their work has always dealt with the interface between the public, social political realm and the private subconcious world of the individual. They were amongst the first Internet artists with works such as “DAD@: Destroy All Dreams” and the 3D multiuser worlds “Conversations with Angles” and “Iceborg”. In 1999 they were the first recipients of the Finnish State Prize for Media Art. Andy & Merja live and work in Espoo with their three children Lara, Storm and Rudy, and their boat Godzilla. The exhibition is supported by AVEK and Finnish Arts Council – thank you!