Pilvi Takala’s short film The Stroker (2019) was awarded with a special mention at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Bilbao – Zinebi 61, held from November 8–15 in the Basque Country, Spain.
The Stroker is based on Takala’s two week-long intervention at Second Home, a trendy East London coworking space for young entrepreneurs and startups. During the intervention Takala posed as a wellness consultant named Nina Nieminen, the founder of cutting-edge company Personnel Touch who were allegedly employed by Second Home to provide touching services in the workplace.
Pilvi Takala (b. 1981) lives and works between Berlin and Helsinki. Her video works are based on performative interventions in which she researches specific communities in order to process social structures and question the normative rules and truths of our behaviour in different contexts. Her works show that it is often possible to learn about the implicit rules of a social situation only by its disruption. Her work has been shown in MoMA PS1 and New Museum, Kiasma, Palais de Tokyo, Kunsthalle Basel, Manifesta 11, Witte de With, and the 9th Istanbul Biennial. Takala won the Dutch Prix de Rome in 2011 and the Emdash Award and Finnish State Prize for Visual Arts in 2013.
International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Bilbao – Zinebi 61, November 8–15 2019, Spain
More information: Zinebi 61