The 80+1 Kilpisjärvi-program presents video screening program, which introduces documentary and artistic approaches to the issues dealing with climate change, nature, humans, and the future. The videos will be screened in the afternoons in Linz / Global Window (Hauptplaz) 15th-18th July, and in Kilpisjärvi on friday 17th July in the evening. The following works on video are presented:
Heini Aho / Heartbreaking views, Sentimental Harvest
Heini Aho’s series of short videos combine fragmentary elements from contemporary urban culture with nature, with landscape and with media saturated image of a human. Her collage-style of working is focusing on hidden layers in images, surprising combinations and destruction of the expected. A fragment is looking for a suitable place in the stormy battlefield, and mean while it gets thrown to different locations continuously forming new images. These works pose questions about our perception of nature and landscape, our rights to use the nature, and about our profound relation to it, in good and in bad. Underlying are the large questions about the humanity, good and bad, and meaning of life. The works are constructed almost in a style of still-life paintings; frozen fragments of culture in the middle of a natural landscape subtly shaken by a wind.
Heini Aho is a finnish artist, born 1979. Aho has graduated (2003) from the Academy of the Arts in Turku, Finland, majoring in sculpture. Her approach to art is multi-disciplinary and involves variety of techniques and materials, from video to furniture and to objects creating sculptural installations. She has received various grants and scholarships, and she has exhibited actively during the recent years. Later this year she will participate in an art & science expedition on a sailing boat to the Arctic. She works and lives in Turku, Finland and in Bremen, Germany. http://www.heiniaho.com
Ilkka Halso / Museum of Nature
Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso’s photographic series ‘The Museum of Nature’ intelligently challenges how we could imagine the natural environment of the future. The collection of images depicts a series of man-made structures that enclose nature, protecting it like a precious relic of the past. Using images of landscapes and 3D digital manipulation, this photographic collection presents a future vision of nature as a rare display. It challenges the contemporary audience’s perception of and interaction with the natural environment as endangered artifact. Halso’s work takes us into a future world where nature is a museum-like place and experience is controlled.
http://koti.phnet.fi/halsilk/pagenglish/museumofn.html
Ilkka Halso, was born in 1965 in Finland. Ilkka Halso has an education in photography from The University of Art and Design (1992), he has received various grants and in 1994 the Finnish State Art Prize. He has had various exhibitions in museums and various galleries both in Finland and world-wide, and has works in numerous public and private collections. The works from the recent years deal with the controversies of the relationship between humans, history, culture and nature. He works and lives in Orimattila, Finland. Longer cv found at http://ilkka.halso.net/
Agnes Denes / Tree Mountain
Tree Mountain, conceived in 1982, is a collaborative, environmental artwork that touches on global, ecological, social, and cultural issues. It is a massive earthwork and land reclamation project that tests our finitude and transcendence, individuality versus teamwork, and measures the value and evolution of a work of art after it has entered the environment. Tree Mountain is designed to unite the human intellect with the majesty of nature. Ten thousand trees are planted by the same number of people according to an intricate mathematical formula, a combination of the golden section and sunflower/pineapple patterns that meet not only aesthetic criteria, but remain intact after the forest is thinned a few decades from now. The mathematical expansion changes with one's view and movement around and above the mountain, revealing hidden curves and spirals in its symmetrical design. If Tree Mountain is seen from space, the human intellect at work over natural formation becomes evident, yet they blend harmoniously. The planting of trees holds the land from erosion, enhances oxygen production and provides home for wildlife. This takes time and it is one of the reasons why Tree Mountain will remain undisturbed for centuries.
Agnes Denes is an American artist/scholar of international renown. Denes was one of the first artists to be involved with the relationship of science to art, and was also a pioneer of ecological art. One of the first artists to initiate the environmental art movement, her work involves ecological, cultural and social issues, and are often monumental in scale. Agnes Denes has had over 375 solo and group exhibitions on four continents, including all the major exhibition-institutions and art museums. Denes has received numerous awards, and she is a Research Fellow at the Studio For Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University; the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T. and the Courant Institute at N.Y.U. An artist of enormous vision, Denes has written five books and holds an honorary doctorate in fine arts.
Tarja Trygg / Solargraphy
Tarja Trygg´s video of SOLARGRAPHY - SPACE ART describes the circle of the life and time. It begins from a torn solargraph and the camera drives into a black hole. The infinite spatial space is opening in the solargraph that looks like space outside the world in the image that has been damaged by the moisture and humidity but it looks extremely beautiful in blue tones and the title of the video appears. The sound world is without words and made by Taneli Tuovinen. The result is very meditative and gave a spatial feeling in the show. Solargraphy makes invisible Sun´s paths into visible in landscapes at various latitudes of the world. We cannot see the movements of the sunlight with our naked eyes but solargraphy can records them. The tracks and curves of sunlight look different depending on the positions where we are. What are the green and blue curves of the sunlight in the images? Could solargraphy discover air pollution?
The solargraphs in the video are from the Global Project of Solargraphy.
More solargraphs can be seen on the website of the Global Pinhole Art Photography Project of Solargraphy www.solargrphy.com. Tarja Trygg´s article on Solargraphy The art of catching the sun's path through a pinhole camera http://www.alternativephotography.com/articles/art108.html
Tarja Trygg, is a PhD. student, and the creator and designer of this global art project of solargraphy. Currently she works as a senior lecturer at the School of Art Education, and teaches photography, at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland. More information on her professional activities found at: https://reseda.taik.fi/Taik/jsp/taik/Researcher.jsp?id=24235
Marjukka Korhonen & Raimo Uunila / I Wanted to Go Swimming
This is a small video work with a raffle. The work is connected to an actual filed crime n:o 6070/R/164387/08, reported to Finnish police officials. Marjukka Korhonen has filed herself on a criminal act of polluting the Eastsea, e.g. by driving a private car, by using public transport, by flying with an aeroplane and washing dishes by the seashore. ”...Korhonen would wish that the police would take all the necessary means for preventing the pollution of the Eastsea.” The work invites audience participation in reporting personal criminal acts... http://www.uimaan.net/eng/
Marjukka Korhonen’s work evolves around everyday realities and a question about what it means to be human. Environment, its quality, and problematics around it have been one of her long-term interests, to the point where it determines her practice. Many of her works start with a social approach that demonstrates an interest in the idea of how an artwork could serve as a social tool creating a sense of community, or become part of people’s everyday environment. She uses fluently various materials and methods in her artistic works, always depending on the theme. ”I call majority of my works ‘figures’. This term simultaneously incorporates something universal and a concept of alienation. My aim is to find an essence that reflects things in the environment that have made an impression on my mind. These observations are partly unconscious information; pieces of everyday life. But I try again and again to grasp reality, which is an absurd goal since reality is beyond definition.” Marjukka Korhonen is exhibiting actively in Finland and abroad. She works and lives in Helsinki, Finland.
Raimo Uunila has played a central, artistic role in numerous teams whose works have succeeded internationally. The works and productions by Raimo Uunila has been screened worldwide by a large number of international filmfestivals and tv-companies. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, KIASMA, has in its collections many videoworks realized by Uunila. Raimo Uunila has operated widely as a director, cinematography and editor. He has participated in several video- and tv-productions and produced his own programs. Alongside the production work he lectures in collages and schools on video and film technique. Uunila is an executive producer and CEO of Grape Productions Ltd., an independent production company for audiovisual and multimedia arts. He works and lives in Porvoo, Finland.
Leena Valkeapää / There Are So Many Worlds
The video is an artistic documentary by Leena Valkeapää. The situations and settings are not designed and organised, but filmed during the actual events.
Valkeapää’s interest is specially focused on the way human is with the nature; beside fire, by water, all seen through pure and simple events and things. The documentary is not focused on samí-lifestyle per se, but it is depicting a lifestyle with the nature. Included in the documentary is a letter from her husband Oula A Valkeapää, who is reading the letter, which talks about his inheritage and life on the arctic fells, and how he can see the past and history on this landscape even if there are no concrete signs.
The work is filmed around Kilpisjärvi-area 2002-03.
Researcher and artist Leena Valkepää is based in Kilpisjärvi and in Helsinki University of Art and Design. Her interests during the last years have evolved around questions on understanding human being as a part of nature. In her research, she focuses on the traditional Samí-culture of northern Finland and their way of living in and with the nature. This long-term artistic research project is inspired by famous Samí-musician Nils-Aslak Valkepää who was incorporating the Samí-traditions and northern landscape as a inherent part of his artistic production. In a similar manner Leena Valkeapää approaches art that is incorporated into the culture and landscape where it emerges from. Many of her recent productions have been created in collaboration with her husband reindeer-herder Oula A. Valkeapää who is continuing the traditional Samí lifestyle with reindeers in the tundra.
Leena Valkepää is educated in sculpture and environmental art. She has MFA from the University of Art and Design Helsinki 2004. She works with variety of materials, which include nature elements; stones and wild plants, and video, photography and ethnographic materials. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Faculty of Art Education.
Merja Talvela / Water flea round up
A crew sets out to round up the water fleas for a water flea circus. The
presenter thinks the documentary be like a big game hunt. Two experts
are on hand and as they look at the water flea and its environment it
becomes clear that the small creature is fascinating in its own right.
Together with other crew members they perform small experiments and
present the uncertainties that arctic species now face. The lesson is
learnt that humans must look at ecology in a different way.
Merja Talvela is a multi-disciplinary agent in the field of culture, taking theatre and performing arts into unexpected places. Her work also crosses generations: it has ranged from ‘developing young talents into becoming professional artists’ to working with elderly people to bring forth their dormant artistic awareness. A characteristic aspect of her work as a writer and director is that she uses the personal experiences of the cast and the features of location as determining factors in the finished performance. She is currently working for Espoo City leading the award winning Cultural Chain service which brings art and activity to the elderly and promotes dialogue between generations. The service received the Innovation Award in the EUROCITIES 2008 Awards.
Anu Osva / How Snow Reflects Light
Videotext is coming....
Osva is a Finnish artist with scientific background in animal breeding (i.e. genomics, quantitative genetics and mathematics). She worked ten years as a researcher on this field, but chose the artistic career in 1990. In 1999 she started to combine scientific thinking and observations into her artistic work. In artworks – paintings or objects - genetic layers are mixed with random layers of oil colours, observations on nature, cultural or historical layers, or layers related to our belief systems. Genetic information, dna code, has diverged from its physical appearance and transformed into colour matrices and pearl –like structures. Among Osva’s recent works is the project Yakutian cattle – A Research Expedition to Siberia in 2000’s. She participated a field trip to North-East Siberia together with a socio-cultural research team from Helsinki University. Osva has had several exhibitions in Finland and she has also displayed her works in international venues in Iceland, Sweden, Croatia and Belgium. http://www.pp.htv.fi/aosva/