The Festival of Finnish Media Art View04 presents:
GUN HOLMSTRÖM, Focal Point
TEEMU MÄKI, Rakkaus liitää ihmismielen tavoittamattomissa
LENA SÉRAPHIN, Intruders Are Paid In Marble
FOCAL POINT
(2003, sound: Erkka Nissinen, actor: Anna Krzystek)
Gun Holmström's (b. 1964) installation consists of two looping video images projected on the wall.
In "Focal Point" a woman is walking around and talking to herself. It seems like she would be talking to an invisible counterpart, perhaps an enemy of some kind. The text is based on the censored parts from the "Unknown Soldier" (1954), a war novel by the Finnish author Väinö Linna. The complete version was published in "Sotaromaani" 2000. The novel tells about the Finnish-the Soviet Union war 1941-44, and is the most commonly read book in Finland after the Bible. Holmström has changed the text a bit, to make it fit in the woman's mouth, and to give the impression that she would be speaking of her own life, a divorce process or a similar life situation.
Focal Point is Gun Holmström's first dramatized video. She got interested in Väinö Linna's text because it could not be published as a whole for political reasons. This happened not so long ago but today it is difficult to understand why the text was cut by the publisher. In the video it's even harder to understand the censoring since the sentences are cut from their original context.
Excerpts from the text of the video:
-"And the past can't be changed; we must begin in the present. And that's what I'm doing. To be honest, I'm doing what any rational person would do. I just make up an excuse for my desires and fancies and pretend it's rational."
-"Rebellion arose from something completely different than he imagined. I didn't grumble for his sake, but for my own. It wasn't political."
-"Those with the strongest principles understand, probably more profoundly than anyone else, that there really are no principles anymore."
The other part of the installation - "Border" - is a loop made of photographs from the Finnish-the Soviet Union border during the war 1941-44. This part is more abstract and meditative, but as in Focal Point, the enemy is somewhere there, but cannot be seen.
RAKKAUS LIITÄÄ IHMISMIELEN TAVOITTAMATTOMISSA
(number two of the Leningrad essays and poems)
2003, 5 min. 33 sek.
In Teemu Mäki's (b. 1967) video a poem by Muhammad Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240 AD) is recited in Finnish and Russian (no subtitles in English). The poem portrays love as a power that both tortures and nourishes human beings, and doesn't really care about individuals but instead darts from one person to the next unexpectedly and changing both its location and its direction.
INTRUDERS ARE PAID IN MARBLE
2002, 4 min. loop, editing Lena Séraphin & Christin Ödlund, actors Heidi Sill & Pierre-Olivier Arnaud
Lena Séraphin's (b. 1962) installation reconstructs a fictional crime. The gallery space is transformed into a crime scene.
The janitor Michel Le Boeuf was mistaken for an intruder when he entered the castle Château Guereule during heavy rain and a cut in electricity. He died of inner hemorrhage and scull fractures due to multiple blows with a blunt object. What had happened?
The festival program for View04:
www.av-arkki.fi
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