Jukka Korkeila

Helsinki in 5 words: Sauna of Silence in the Karaoke Vomitorium

To describe Jukka Korkeila’s art as painting is doing poetic injustice to it. His works are paintings but they are always also something different. To label them as acts within an extended field is not a solution either. For that they are much too aware of the productive process of knowing the past of the medium, its demands and chances. What his murals and larger scale room-filling or huge wall-sized painting installations are about our physicality of being. On one central level, the work is dealing with the materialisation of male gay sexuality. Not some secret kisses in the shadows of cathedrals – this is the physicality of the real thing: big, fat, hairy guys doing things together with big, fat hairy guys. And yes, they are enjoying it, and the enjoyment is something that is passed on to those taking part in the action of seeing and being seen with these paintings. But Korkeila’s work is not pornography. Instead of a lame and instrumentalised sexual product, he invites us into a visual game of clever hints, on purpose seemingly vulgar poses and moments of anticipation. A game which is partly provoking but also very funny.
*1968 in Hämeenlinna. Lives and works in Helsinki and Berlin.


Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen

Helsinki in 5 words: Granite rocks – Baltic Sea – Lonely people – Orange Metro – fairytale architecture

Does it sound familiar? You have set yourself into a situation in which you a) do not know the environment and the context, and b) you need to come up with an idea and produce a work, fast. This was the challenge that the Finnish-German duo Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen faced when taking up a two-week residency in Birmingham in the autumn of 2005. What they did was to address an issue they had been thinking about for a long time. An issue that unites us all, regardless of where we live, the colour of our passport or whom we vote for: we all complain. Tellervo and Oliver had the idea to collect complaints in Birmingham and set up a workshop that had a very precise aim: to set up the First Birmingham Complaint Choir. By sending out e-mails and distributing flyers, they managed to get together a group of about 20 people that set to work together. They collected complaints and wrote a song. At the end of the two weeks, they performed it in various sites in the city on one day. An act they have now successfully repeated in Helsinki, Hamburg and St. Petersburg.
 
The chorus lines from the Birmingham song:

“Why does my computer take so very long?
Why can’t the bus driver talk to anyone?
And why is the beer so expensive in town?

I want my money back
My job is like a cul-de-sac
And the bus is too infrequent at 6.30

Why don’t they pay me more?
Life was good before
And I am thirsty.”

*1975 in Lohja/1971 in Dresden. Live and work in Helsinki.


Liisa Lounila

Helsinki in 5 words: Greatest smalltown with hidden luxury

Liisa Lounila has a series of serious problems. Her dilemma is at least five-fold: 1) her videos look just like cool and trendy pop music videos, but they are not; 2) her videos look as if she had had a budget with more than 7 zeros, but they are self-made with less than a shoestring budget; 3) her videos sound as if she had been able to use the music of the latest indie-comet whereas in reality the music is played by her friends’ very unknown band from Helsinki; 4) everyone thinks she only makes videos whereas she also paints, and ultimately 5) she is typically cast in international group shows into the “light entertainment” corner, which makes her furious. How does she deal with this multiple and complex bunch of problems? As a true believer in the inherent power of coming from a relative periphery like Helsinki, she actively and successfully denies their importance. Instead, she does what she is determined to do – stubbornly and smartly. In her three piece series called Popcorn – Flirt – Play (2001-2003) she has developed the age-old cut & paste technique of making moving images with the camera obscura. The result is a dream-like cinematic effect in which time goes all weird and gains a completely different sense and sensibility. It is a sensation that we remember from films like Matrix – only this time done with practically no money but plenty of ideas and attitude to show that. *1976 in Helsinki. Lives and works in Helsinki. www.scenemissing.net


Adel Abidin

Helsinki in 5 words: small – peaceful – boring – funding – freedom

At the Nordic Pavilion of this summer’s Venice biennial, Adel Abidin will make history. It is an event that in itself is not a huge step for the whole of humanity, but it certainly is a very significant symbolic move for the cultural policies of a small nation state called Finland. At Venice, Adel Abidin will be the first ever representative of Finland who is originally not from there, a person who in the current jargon is called as a “New Finn”. He shows a video installation that goes by the label ABIDIN TRAVELS – welcome to Baghdad. The work is a construction of a travel agency that promotes vacation trips to Baghdad. The agency gains presence and functions through two videos (presenting animated material and authentic footage from the city), posters, two light boxes and brochures in 8 different languages. A work that is as sharp as it is sarcastic. How should we react to these images of utmost terror? Or, if we turn it around – how do you think he feels and reacts to what he sees and witnesses taking place in his old hometown where over hundred of people are killed daily in bombings while the so called coalition forces claim that everything is still going in accordance to the plan? ABIDIN TRAVELS is a difficult and disturbing work. But it is not a silly joke, and it is not just black humor. It is a sign of our times that we ought to face instead of denying it or seeking cover in political correctness. *1973 in Baghdad. Lives and works in Helsinki. www.abidintravels.com


Pilvi Takala

Helsinki in 5 words: Nice and easy but boring

Pilvi Takala is an artist who works with a socially engaged practice. In her case this, means working with a group of  cheerleaders in Helsinki, for example, to whom she designed clothes, worked on the choreography and organised their performances during one cold November evening in the city. Sometimes Takala’s ideas do sound dangerously close to acts we recognise from the tacky “candid camera” scoops on television. Like the idea of staging an act in a tram in Amsterdam (called Easy Rider, 2006) where two seeming strangers get into a conversation, while a third man ends up helping the one in trouble by giving advice and even lending him his jacket. For The Switch shown in the 2005 Istanbul biennial – she located two typical Turkish men’s cafés in two different districts of the city and then found two card players who were willing to swap places for one afternoon. Against quite a lot of odds, Takala not only managed to convince these passionate card players to go to a “foreign” café and game table while orchestrating and filming the events of that afternoon, she even managed to lure and tease out of both men something unique and very sympathetic. What we see in the work is a convincing social study of a habit, of reasons and ways how these two guys structure their lives and how they find meaning and happiness in them. An achievement that shows a very accurate sensibility for both the way of telling stories and also of getting ever closer to people you do not know and with whom you do not have very much at all in common.
*1981 in Helsinki. Lives and works in Helsinki.