Being/s
Being/s addresses various forms of being and living characters. Each piece is a portrayal of different feelings and beings – personalities. Just like in real life, the boundary between the realistic, the imagined and shapes is blurred. The dependence on one another is sometimes very clear, sometimes almost invisible. It depends on the viewer. The spectrum of shades of being is broad and encompasses both deep love and irreversible evil.
Dialogues
Short film: Super 8mm, HD, sound, single-channel projection, 15:58 min
Cast: Lucie L’Heryenat, Grégoire Veyret
Re-Recording Mixer: Svante Colerus
Music: Jaaku https://soundcloud.com/jaaku-music , Adhil Moorish published by Κhôros Records: https://soundcloud.com/adhilmoorish , https://soundcloud.com/khoros-label
Dialogues is a short film about drug misuse, depression and staying by the other’s side. Everything happens mostly in one space, a room, a shrunk universe, with two figures inside. One is ill, while another is the only one who sees and knows. They embody the voices of many. It is about communication, trying to understand, hiding, fear and action. The dialogues of the two, in the form of a voice-over, happen partly inside their heads, partly in real. You don’t always know who is thinking or speaking. And this describes the situation itself.
Seeing
Short film installation with sound, single-channel projection (HD, 08:53 min)
Music: Francis Gri, sasha&mia (Sama Sasha, Mia Tarkela), Mikko H. Haapoja
Seeing speaks about aging, revealing the person under the wrinkled, old skin. It can be hard to see the human behind it, because age is such a strong category. How to see the kid, the young, the adult hiding beneath? They are never gone, just often so invisible. The work is a combination of different memories, separate images, flashbacks and the voice-over. Those words are memorizing, pondering and questioning. It is not a pure portrait of a one, single person, rather a thought about looking, seeing and identification.
Glitter Dreams
Installation with sound, 14-channel projection (HD, variable duration of 30 s – 7 min)
Duration of the short film version: 05:52 min
Music: sasha&mia (Sama Sasha, Mia Tarkela), Mikko H. Haapoja
Glitter Dreams is roughly about looking at others and oneself. About daring to find own patterns of being and letting others be what they want. We all have our personal glitter dreams, and the way they shine for us should not be judged. Glitter Dreams can be presented either as a single channel projection or as a multiscreen installation with surround sound. When presented as multiscreen installation, projections are scattered over the space, varying in size and the sound uniting them. Voice-over is focused on a certain spot and starts with a small delay after the visitor walks into the space triggering the sound.
Pour toi / For You
Short film: sound, HD, 05:33 min
Music: Jaaku D.M.T. Records, Luigi Tozzi, Mikko H. Haapoja
For You is a flow of images which hide a simple story about a girl who wants to learn skateboarding. Besides there are several personal stories. They can be interpreted in different ways, depending of the viewer’s background and thus associations made. It is a short film about love, daring, loneliness and from other side, about the warmth existing around us, even if we are physically alone.
The girl can be a memory of an old lady, or one of an adult woman or opposite. Or maybe they all are her. We don’t know who of them has been, isn’t anymore or probably hasn’t even been born yet. We all have inside part of our past, genetically and in the form of memories. And we also have the future. Their manifestation isn’t obvious but sometimes you have the moments of feeling them.
The Wave
Short film installation with sound, single-channel projection (HD, 09:39 min)
Music: Francis M. Gri, KrysaliSound – B/ue
The Wave is a work about intuition and yet undefined powers people have in them besides those we know with our reason. It is about letting go the control we try to have over everything and trusting the intuitive feeling which helps navigating in life. One cannot control the future things which are not visible or cannot be estimated. Though, when being afraid of moving towards that unseen, one ends up repeating the same patterns of thinking and acting. But if trusting the inner intuition, that unconscious wave, one could get closer to personal freedom and understanding of self and others.
The Wave is a second part of the short film Pour toi / For You.
The Green Elephant
Installation with sound, single-channel projection (HD, 01:46 min), live-stream projection, text and two chairs
Music: Viljami Lehtonen
Light: Anttoni Halonen
Live-stream: Niklas Pöllönen
Sculpture: Maikki Pekkala
The Green Elephant is a symbol for a private reality only one person can see, and which thus creates a part of their real world, but invisible to others. This negative being is a misconception of self and the surrounding world a person creates for him/herself. It can affect relationships with others and at worst lead to fanaticism or self-destructiveness. Video is part of the installation, which was exhibited in Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki, in 2015.
The Arch
Installation with sound and 3-channel projection
Duration of the short film version: 05:12 min
Music: Jarkko Kela
Camera: Alisa Javits, Aarne Tapola
Masks: Alisa Javits
Kids: Venla Lyytikäinen
Adults: Lotta Blomberg, Pietari Peltola
Old dog: Sutonen
Catering: Lau Maldo
Thanks to Helen Ltd Hanasaari Power Plant, Elise & Rainer Lehtinen’s kennel and Tomi Pelkonen.
Life can be seen as a circle. Only one half of it is visible, the arch. The work is a metaphor for the arch of life, which includes growing up and getting old. At the same time, life is more like a continual circle but we easily perceive and see only the visible part, the arch.
Inside Yard
Installation with sound, single-channel video (HD, 04:38 min) and 5 photographs in light boxes (each 16 x 28 cm)
Girl: Emma Kantanen
Old Man: Bo Erjestad
Musician: Markus Kuikka
Sound: Viljami Lehtonen, Alisa Javits
Inside Yard is a video and photographic installation that explores the relationship between moving image and photography and the ways they convey experiences.
Inside Yard is a metaphor of an unknown person. It is an imaginary look into a human being from the inside, into the world that hides behind the visible surface. The individual is like a courtyard; outsiders only see its closed façade. The inhabitant is on the other side, safe and happy in his or her own world, on the one hand, but also feeling anxious and longing to escape the isolation, on the other.
Strata
Installation with paintings (ink, wood, paper, epoxy, size varies), photograph in a light box (16 x 28 cm) and a sculpture (cardboard, plexiglass, paper)
Stratum, plural Strata, sedimentary rock layer bounded by two stratification planes, the latter being produced by visible changes in the grain size, texture, or other diagnostic features of the rocks above and below the plane. A stratum that is less than one centimetre (0.4 inch) in thickness is termed a lamina, whereas one greater than this thickness is a bed. See stratification.
Stratification, the layering that occurs in most sedimentary rocks and in those igneous rocks formed at the Earth’s surface, as from lava flows and volcanic fragmental deposits. The layers range from several millimetres to many metres in thickness and vary greatly in shape. Strata may range from thin sheets that cover many square kilometres to thick lenslike bodies that extend only a few metres laterally.
[Global Britannica]
Just like soil, a human is made up of layers created by different stages of life. They are formed by big and small events, acts and experiences. The layer below affects the next one and together they shape a person’s external surface layers and sense of self. In order to explain the current form, one has to go deeper and dig out the layers hidden in the subconscious or memory.
My Roots (Mother’s side)
8 photographs assembled on black background wall, (each 63 x 42 cm, pigment print on Aluminium Composite Panel)
The work is based on photographs of my female relatives from my mother’s side I found in my grandmother’s archive. All together they represent four branches of my roots. Biologically I inherit a bit of all of them. When looking at these individuals I think of them and wonder what kind of inner similarities we might have. How would it be to turn into one of these persons? How do the time and the era of the photographs affect the way I see them? The four image pairs are illustrating this process of identification.