AV-arkki collaborates with Institut finlandais, Paris, in their Mobile Home 2017 project KOTI Sleepover from late January to May. Designed by Linda Bergroth, KOTI is a 100-day living installation celebrating the Finnish home. Cottages are available for guests to stay overnight and open to public viewing during the day.
Each cottage includes KOTI Kino, a selection of carefully curated audiovisual content that can be accessed with personal device via wifi. Among other Finnish documentaries, animations and short films, KOTI Kino features Anssi Kasitonni’s Masa (2009) and Hanna Saarikoski’s See Paris and Die (2012).
Anssi Kasitonni‘s Masa is a touching story of a technologically surprisingly advanced and creative guinea pig who plots his getaway plans which always run into the impenetrable wall of his owner’s love. This movie features electric gadgets, bodybuilding, Steve McQueen and surprisingly long monologues spoken in guinea pig language. Anssi Kasitonni is a skateboarder and an award-winning artist from Sahalahti, Finland. His films deal with age-old questions related to morality, love, death, generation gaps, sexuality and, of course, submarines. The ideas are epic, the films decidedly homespun. Kasitonni won the esteemed Ars Fennica Award in 2011.
Still from: Anssi Kasitonni: Masa (2009)
See Paris and Die depicts the artist’s first visit in France. She spent four days in Paris keeping her eyes shut the whole time during this performance. On her eyelids she had a second pair of eyes painted with masquerade paints. Hanna Saarikoski is a visual artist who graduated from Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. In her artistic practice she combines painting, drawing, video art, installations and performative elements. Saarikoski’s works have been on display in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland including Mänttä Art Festival 2012, Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova in Turku and Espoo Museum of Modern Art.
Mobile Home 2017 is a joint project of the Finnish cultural institutes of Paris, Benelux Countries, Berlin, and London. The project explores and interprets the different meanings of home in 2017 through architecture, art, science and society. Mobile Home 2017 will culminate in a joint showcase of all five projects in Helsinki at the end of the summer. Mobile Home 2017 is part of the programme for the centenary of Finland’s Independence in 2017, and it is supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
KOTI Sleepover, Institut finlandais, Paris, January–May 2017
More information: KOTI