Panu Johansson’s Water Tower Symphony (2023, in featured image) and Pink Twins’ The Transient (2023) and The Eternal (2021) were selected to the art section at Nordisk Panorama, held in Malmö, Sweden, September 21 – 26 2023. The programme also includes Speech Karaoke Action Group’s Speech Karaoke on September 25 2023.
Water Tower Symphony is included in Nordisk Panorama x Malmö Gallerihelg programme in Form/Design Center on various times and dates throughout the festival. Water Tower Symphony is a tribute to Finnish water towers and the memories associated with them in the form of an experimental film. These slowly disappearing surreal eye-catchers of the local constructed environment deserve to be depicted through art – they deserve a visual symphony of their own.
Panu Johansson is an artist and an experimental filmmaker from Finland. The medias he mostly works with are moving image and sound. Some important influences and reoccurring themes in his work are the history of avant-garde/experimental film, but also cultural history in general.
The Transient and The Eternal will be installed in the Urban Arts Hangar. The programme, titled Temporal Landscapes, will be shown on Friday September 22 2023 18–22, Saturday September 23 12–16 and Sunday September 24 12–16.
What is The Transient? It is that fleeting moment when you question what you are seeing, when uncanny valley takes over and when harmonious wildlife is revealed as a monstrous result of cloning and obsessive manipulation of nature. Or the moment when you ignore the lure of the real and give in to the overwhelming beauty of growth, the blooming of spring and the glow of midsummer night. Real, based on a true story, artificial, imaginary, a natural paradise, an apocalyptic corruption of nature. The Transient is all of these things and more.
Chinese classical gardens are a synthesis of a thousand years of landscaping, architecture, poetry and painting. The idealized artificial terrain of the gardens have influenced artists for centuries to create architypal landscapes images, which in turn have inspired garden design. The gardens are trancendental spaces, providing artificial landscapes and virtual oases to silence the surrounding megalopolitan overload. In their new work The Eternal chaos animators Pink Twins distort the views of gardens with a crystal-like caleidoscopic tunnel, adding a psychedelic layer to ancient harmonic panoramas.
Pink Twins was formed in 1997 by brothers Juha and Vesa Vehviläinen, artists, filmmakers and electronic musicians, born and raised in Helsinki, Finland. Since starting in the hotbed of arts and underground music that was turn-of-the-millennium Helsinki, Pink Twins have polished their musical and visual output into a distinctive and superimmersive audiovisual mayhem. The colourful, abstract cyclic flow of their animation works focus on human perception, its functionality and limits.
The Nordisk Panorama programme includes Speech Karaoke, taking place at Babel, a performance and film venue, on Monday September 25 2023 at 20:45. Speech Karaoke is an exciting twist on the classic karaoke event, where instead of singing, you get the chance to deliver the most iconic speeches in your own voice – from powerful political manifestos to tear-jerking scenes from movies.
Speech Karaoke Action Group is an artistic collective formed in 2009 for the sole purpose of propagating the idea of Speech karaoke to the world. With an ever expanding catalogue of speeches about 100 events were held so far, at Film Festivals, Art Exhibtions, Night Clubs, Sport Bars, Cruise Boats. In 2018 SKAG hosted the First Noble Speech Prize with a Gala event.
Nordisk Panorama, September 21 – 26 2023, Malmö, Sweden
More information: Nordisk Panorama
AV-arkki has promoted and distributed Finnish media art since 1989. AV-arkki’s promotional efforts have made the artists’ participation in this event possible. If you want to hear the latest news from our distribution, subscribe to our newsletter!