New artists’ moving image in our online archive / May–June ’20 pt II

Discover these recent acquisitions in our online archive! For professional preview, please register to see the full-length versions.

Narrative experimental films and artists’ moving image

Elina Brotherus: Glassblower’s Island (2015, 06:32)

Elina Brotherus: Glassblowers’ Island (2015)

On a winter’s night a traveller arrives in Venice. In the morning, a gondola takes her to Murano. The boat passes by the cemetery island of San Michele. About her grandfather, the glassblowers said: “Era un vero muranese.”

Noora Geagea: Life Goals (2020, 04:50)

Noora Geagea: Life Goals (2020)

A pregnant woman acts as a goalkeeper on a football field. Sometimes the ball goes past the goalkeeper, other times she makes an amazing save, and once in a while she loses her strength. In Life goals, a human being is everything: an active subject, an object of action, a survivor, a mortal, and a protector of life. The video is a condensed depiction of life.

Noora Geagea: Waiting for Godot (From Struggle Series) (2018, 03:20)

Noora Geagea: Waiting for Godot (From Struggle Series) (2018)

STRUGGLE (2014-2018), is a series of short video works, exploring resilience, our need to survive and moving forward through everyday struggles. Made in collaboration with the actor Niko Saarela, the work humorously evokes the paradoxes of modern life.

Marko Lampisuo: 4 Channel Edinburgh (2020, 29:42)

Marko Lampisuo: 4 Channel Edinburgh (2020)

A family of four is writing a travel diary in Edinburgh, Scotland. The mother wants to network, the father needs some rest, the kids are after play and amusements. All of them end up questioning their journey. In the film, we see the original videos monitored and re-shot until the scenes turn into an abstract play of colour.

Elian Mikkola: Magdaleena (2019, 14:21)

Elian Mikkola: Magdaleena (2019)

As a patient, a captive in her own inner life, Magdaleena succesfully resists her psychiatrist. The confrontation, filmed in split screen, is less an actual case study than a metaphorical story, based on the filmmaker’s personal experience of being looked at as the ‘other’ because they live and perform outside the binary gender norm.

Anu Pennanen: A Poem to Read When I’m Gone (2020, 27:49)

Pennanen: A Poem to Read When I’m Gone (2020)

A man, perhaps Syrian, perhaps Afghan or Kurd, runs away from a refugee centre in Berlin’s former airport Tempelhof. Surviving from winter to summer, he finds himself locked outside in limbo. Neither documentary nor fiction, the film speculates over our mediated relationship to reality when we try to represent it. By appropriating the resources of lyricism the man’s lament reveals the horror of his clandestine condition, but also presents itself as the slow construction of a protest of being made an undesirable.

Tero Puha: Original (2020, 08:28)

Tero Puha: Original (2020)

A handsome and cool looking man enters a lush park in Madrid. The peaceful afternoon birdwatching soon turns into a fierce chase among the trees and pathways. The mystery that the man tries to solve makes him question everything.

Animations:

Taija Goldblatt: On Being (2018, 06:05, in featured image)

Taija Goldblatt: On Being (2018)

A short study of living and everyday life at times when the constant demands of productivity and efficiency, accomplishment and presence are lurking behind every corner.

Niina Lehtonen Braun: My Father (2019, 04:07)

Niina Lehtonen Braun: My Father (2019)

Olento Orchestral´s powerful and surreal music video Isäni (“My Father”) is made by Berlin based visual artist Niina Lehtonen Braun. The animated paintings and collages of the video open a distinctive visual world of birds, balloons, potatoes and steaming tea cups – a lot of flowers. The rhythmically edited collage and the unusual music of Olento Orchestral connect in a deep level. 

Documentary form:

Gun Holmström: Aura Kanerva Merivuokko (2020, 15:07)

Gun Holmström: Aura Kanerva Merivuokko (2020)

The video is a portrait of Aura, a blind trans person who has found a way to express her spirituality among other things through sexuality. From an early age she longed for experiencing true love and this led to very difficult encounters and complicated relationships. 

Aimo Hyvärinen: Art as Problematic Waste (2019, 24:50)

Aimo Hyvärinen: Art as Problematic Waste (2019)

There are artists in each city, country – even in each village. There are art collectors, art galleries and art museums as well. We all are tied with the destinies of artworks. This film follows some stories and problems related to artworks

Anna Knappe & Amir Jan: Warland (2019, 20:47)

Warland is a film about belonging to a place one does not recognize as home. In the film, young Afghan migrants who were born outside Afghanistan, talk about their so-called homeland which they have never seen. For Afghan migrants, the homeland is not only a matter of identity, but also the place where they are forcefully deported when their residence permits in other countries end or will not be granted, or when they are born in a country that does not recognize them.


AV-arkki is a non-profit artists’ association. It was founded in 1989 and now has over 250 Finnish or Finland-based artists as its members. AV-arkki’s main purpose is to distribute Finnish media art to festivals, events, museums and galleries within Finland and internationally.