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Clément Beraud: I Was Born (2020, 04:17)
I was born
in the suburbs of Paris.
In a middle class family.
I grew up in the concrete.
I’m 31 years old and my brain is struggling.
My memory
is not clear.
And my mind
is fading.
I walk in the forest and
I try to remember…
Marjo Levlin: Dividual Individual (2017, 19:25)
Dividual Individual discusses racial biology and the research and educational work that the Florin Committee – currently Folkhälsan i Finland – carried out in the Swedish speaking regions in Finland. In 1914, the entire population of Malax was examined, and anthropological skull measurements were taken of all people aged 25-40. These measurements sought to identify which fraction of the population belonged to the long-skulled Germanic or Nordic race and which to the short-skulled races such as the Finnish and East Baltic peoples. It is probable that the artist’s great grandparents were subjected to the measurements. The 5-channel installation’s video footage mainly consists of both Finnish and Swedish portrait archives. Butterflies accentuate the installation: The first professor of genetics in Finland and the secretary of the Florin Committee, Harry Federley, was a world-renowned zoologist and lepidopterist – but also an avid supporter of eugenics.
Salla Myllylä: Haihara (2019, 06:38)
The panoramic video installation follows changing seasons and passers-by in a view opening from the terrace of Haihara manor house in a suburb of Tampere. The view features a birch alley leading down to a lake. Daycare groups, dog owners, cross country skiers, picnickers and joggers pass by. The subject of the video might be, quoting Georges Perec, ”what happens when nothing happens.” The installation was filmed using a trail camera.
Salla Myllylä: Yo-cha (2017, 06:03)
The installation “Yo-cha” observes a field visible from an old sports commentators’ hut in Joutsa, Central Finland, for nine months. A trail camera is used to record the changing seasons. In the unheated building the weather conditions are also visible on the surface of the window between the camera and the landscape: ice or dew can be formed on it before the sun can melt or dry it away during the day. The work was made as part of a site-specific project and was first shown in the same space where it had been filmed.
Jaakko Ruuska: Rantasalmi-Savonlinna – Disconnected Space (2018, 02:21:57, in featured image)
“Panoramic views” were early products of cinema, that introduced the peripheral landscapes colonized by the railway network. This work introduces a panoramic view over the locality, that has been peripherized in the disconnection of the railway. The view is commented by the testimonies of the last residents of the area.
Kaisa Salmi: Fellmann’s Field (2013, 23:44)
Kaisa Salmi’s large-scale performance ”Fellman’s Field – The Living Monument for 22.000 People” focuses on the biggest concentration camp in the Finnish history, that of Fellman’s Field in the Finnish Civil War in 1918. Over 10.000 people from all over the country took part of the performance. In 1918, 22.000 soldiers and citizens were gathered in the prison camp in Lahti. The prisoners were forced to spend almost a week outdoors without food or drink before they were sent to smaller prison camps in old army barracks. Thousands of prisoners died. This documentary film triptych combines the performance, stories of the five main characters and a poetic text voiced by dozens of volunteers. Kaisa Salmi attempted to create a framework for working through the Finnish Civil War in a safe, collective, and constructive way. At the same time, the work shows solidarity to people involved with the current civil wars in different countries.