New artists’ moving image in our online archive / October–November ’20 pt I

Discover these recent single channel works and installations in our online archive! For professional preview, please register to see the full-length versions.

Heini Aho: Touching the Modern Life (2020, 09:30)

Heini Aho: Touching the Modern Life (2020)

In the video a pair of hands first emerges from a black space and starts to slowly shape out of clay various simple objects from the human sphere of life. Familiar everyday items come into view from the dark: a jug, a book, a plate, a table and a chair. The wet clay, which gains a light colour in the dark space, gives this work a strong visual feel of material.

Heini Aho: The Inner Life of Things (2019, 08:00)

Heini Aho: The Inner Life of Things (2019)

A dark pair of hands appears in the black image. The character dips it’s hand into the white paint and paints a paint dripping circle to the foreground of the image. Hand continues to paint the circles. Gradually, as the character crawls backwards, the painted rings form a three-dimensional white tunnel.

Risto-Pekka Blom: Canary (2020, 07:07)

Risto-Pekka Blom: Canary (2020)

Every morning thousands of children go to school like canaries in a coal mine, measuring toxicity. The film deals with the chain of harassment and the way we all are broken in our own ways.

Shia Conlon: Exalted (2019, 10:49)

Shia Conlon: Exalted (2019)

Exalted is a tale of working class childhood in Catholic Ireland. Here the camera roams the landscape in search of portals connected to lost time; a whistle in the dark recalls a former body; a witness shows up and attempts to disrupt narratives they have once lived through.

Marja Helander: Suodji (2020, 04:25)

Marja Helander: Suodji (2020)

Shelter (Suodji) is an adaptation of an old story from Utsjoki, Sápmi, to the present. It is a legend of the director’s relative, Ovllá-Ivvár Helander, and about what he did during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 in Utsjoki. Ovllá-Ivvár decided to fool Death and take his fate into his own hands. Today we are facing a similar threat in the form of coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. The protagonist of the film is walking in Ovllá-Ivvár’s footsteps. But at the end, who is really who?

Pilvari Pirtola: F40 (2020, 01:52)

Pilvari Pirtola: F40 (2020)

Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by anxiety in situations where the sufferer perceives the environment to be dangerous, uncomfortable, or unsafe. These situations can include wide-open spaces, uncontrollable social situations, unfamiliar places, shopping malls, airports, and bridges.

Shubhangi Singh: Anywhere But Here (2014, 14:00)

Shubhangi Singh: Anywhere But Here (2014)

Anywhere But Here explores the meaning of home while attempting to break away from the ideas of romantic nostalgia nesting within its traditional definitions. In the process, the piece attempts to complicate the understanding of an abode in relation to one’s own developing, pivoting and transitioning identity. The work also further questions accumulation, abundance and cycles of desire within the scope of movement and possession.

Maria Valkeavuolle: S E O M / I W N M (2019, 11:00)

Maria Valkeavuolle: S E O M / I W N M (2019)

The protagonist is shredding a pile of documents, then making new paper from the shreddings. The actions of the protagonist are machine-like in this ritualistic act. The soundtrack gives a rhythm for the film. A mantra-like poem is growing letter by letter, slowly revealing the three-sentence structure, and finally taking form of a concrete poem.

Aishe Vejdani: Fog (2020, 09:12)

Aishe Vejdani: Fog (2020)

A Turkmen woman finds herself wrestling between an unsettling nightmare she had and the reality where she is spending a weekend with her Finn husband in a lake cottage. Reality and nightmare get merged into each other and it’s impossible to separate the two from each other. They become one. This film is an attempt to show identity and sense of being somewhere in between of different awareness, good and evil, self and other where they all neighbour each other to form a mosaic identity.

Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen: Reflector of Living Will (2018, 08:02)

Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen: Reflector of Living Will (2018)

Film tells about Maria, living with arthritis. She doesn’t like the rehabilitative attitude of her new care robot. One night Maria re-programs the robot to fulfill her true needs. The robot becomes her living will and protector against the violent behavior of personal assistants. 

Installations

Lauri Ainala: Sex and the Shitty (2020, 04:07)

Lauri Ainala: Sex and the Shitty (2020)

Experimental, partly fictive documentary depicts the lonely, alcoholic life of a single man during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paula Lehtonen: Vortex (2020, 04:15)

Paula Lehtonen: Vortex (2020)

Vortex simulates the experience of finding yourself in the eye of the storm; the wind is carrying debris and visibility is poor. Inside the video one can imagine what it would feel like to be caught in the throes of a hurricane on a distant ocean coast.


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.