
Jonna Kina’s Secret Words and Related Stories (2016, in featured image) and Pilvi Takala’s The Stroker (2017) are included in the screening programme “Takeover“, streamed in e-flux during the fall 2022 and curated by Julian Ross. The programme explores the experience of letting another being—their voice, or their mind—into our own. Would we become them, or would they become us? The act of letting someone in, or of being the recipient of a possession, can involve a loss of self. But it can also be a trigger for learning, sharing, or becoming.
Jonna Kina’s Secret Words and Related Stories is streaming until November 16 2022. The selection “IV. Words Takeover” explores the act of reading as a summoning. The writer enters your mind, you let them in, and their thoughts hover alongside yours. And when you read them out loud, you become a vessel for their thoughts to enter the world.
Kina’s video piece is composed of anonymously collected passwords and stories behind them, read by young actors between 12 and 16 years old. Each of them stands in front of a red backdrop and reads from a single sheet of paper personal confessions, childhood memories and clichéd rationalities. These are thoughtful, humorous, and emotional stories about a chosen word that often discloses personal information, which is the antithesis of its purpose.
Pilvi Takala’s The Stroker will be streamed from December 1–14 2022. “VI. Scene Takeover” considers how film and television genres can take over our thoughts and even subliminally dictate how we act in the real world. But it also explores how we can act against expectations, become parasites, and inhabit worlds not necessarily designed for us.
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.

Takeover, September 22 – December 15 2022, e-flux
more information: e-flux