The formation of "Jalo Kivi"

It's very interesting to learn new things about my own creative process. During this course I changed my ideas occasional times, sometimes because of uncertainty, sometimes just because the course created the frames for amazing ideas. When I look back, the thing I learnt was to have enough time to develop and brainstorm a lot of ideas and then pick a few out of them. Then present some ideas,  choose one and keep my head and heart to it. On the other side I also realized that it is essential to me to wander around in the planning process and question projects. I don't think my performance and installation  "Jalo Kivi" would have turned out as it was if I didn't get the space for doubt.

At some point the visual plan looked very promotion-like. I wanted to have a camouflage promotion-looking stand. In the end I decided to arrange a more down-to earth installation and here's a primary sketch of that vision:

In "Jalo Kivi" the stones were laid in a circle made out of 19 planks and logs. The performance was to hand out the stones and remind people about the weight of nature.

Who´s pulling your strings?

The truth is that Everyone is subject to manipulation. 

Who or what has power over you? 

My performance is about becoming aware of those powers that often are hiding from our conscious mind. Media, Society, Authorities and Social environment shape us for who we are, or who we think we are and make us think and act in a certain way. Humans are like marionettes.

Artist Jenna-Mari Saarinen

Music&sounds by Olli Kannaste

Artist presentation: Ernie Kovacs

Ernest Edward "Ernie" Kovacs (1919-1962) 

American comedian, actor, writer and "early media artist"

Kovacs' uninhibited, often ad-libbed, and visually experimental comedic style came to influence numerous television comedy programs for years after his death in an automobile accident. Many shows, such as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, The Uncle Floyd Show, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street and The Electric Company are credited with having been influenced by Kovacs. On or off screen, Kovacs could be counted on for the unexpected.

When working at WABC as a morning-drive radio personality and doing a mid-morning television show for NBC, Kovacs disliked eating breakfast alone while his wife, Edie Adams, was sleeping in after her Broadway performances. His solution was to hire a taxi driver to come into their apartment with his own key and make breakfast for them both, then take Ernie to the WABC studios.

While Kovacs and Adams received Emmy nominations for best performances in a comedy series in 1957, his talent was not formally recognized until after his death.The 1962 Emmy for outstanding electronic camera work and the Directors' Guild award came a short time after his fatal accident. A quarter century later, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. Kovacs also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in television. In 1986, the Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media) presented an exhibit of Kovacs' work, called The Vision of Ernie Kovacs.

At WPTZ, Kovacs began using the experimental style that would become his reputation, including video effects, superimpositions, reverse polarities and scanning, and quick blackouts. He was also noted for abstraction and carefully timed non-sequitur gags and for carefully allowing the so-called fourth wall to be breached. Kovacs' cameras commonly showed his viewers activity beyond the boundaries of the showset—including crew members and outside the studio itself. Kovacs also liked talking to the off-camera crew and even introduced segments from the studio control room. He frequently made use of accidents and happenstance, incorporating the unexpected into his shows. One of Kovacs' Philadelphia broadcasts included a homeless man who sought shelter inside the TV studio; Kovacs invited him onto the set, where he slept for the duration of the telecast, but nonetheless was introduced on camera to the audience as "Sleeping Schwartz."

Kovacs helped develop camera tricks still common almost 50 years after his death. His character Eugene sat at a table to eat his lunch, but as he removed items one at a time from a lunch box, he watched them inexplicably roll down the table into the lap of a man reading a newspaper at the other end. When Kovacs poured milk from a thermos bottle, the stream flowed in a seemingly unusual direction. Never seen on television before, the secret was using a tilted set in front of a camera tilted at the same angle. He constantly sought new techniques and used both primitive and improvised ways of creating visual effects that would later be done electronically. One innovative construction involved attaching a kaleidoscope made from a toilet paper roll to a camera lens with cardboard and tape and setting the resulting abstract images to music. Another was a soup can with both ends removed fitted with angled mirrors. Used on a camera and turning it could put Kovacs seemingly on the ceiling. An underwater stunt involved inveterate cigar smoker Kovacs sitting in an easy chair, reading his newspaper and somehow smoking his cigar. Removing it from his mouth, Kovacs was able to exhale a puff of white smoke, all while floating underwater. The trick: the "smoke" was a small amount of milk which he filled his mouth with before submerging. The list of his inventions goes on and on...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfB3jj8vKlo

Artist presentation: Lars Ø. Ramberg

Lars Ø. Ramberg (born 1964 in Oslo, Norway) lives and works in Berlin, Germany, and has a degree from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. Ramberg "produces architectonic projects that function to intervene with a practiced public space with the intent to infer a political and social commentary".


Zweifel

Palast Des Zweifels (the Palace of Doubt) transformed the non-functional architecture of the old DDR's Palace of Republic, into a virtual institution for doubt.

Once a fancy modernist building, set up in the 1970's, Palast der Republik (the Palace of the Republic) was a giant steel construction consisting of a solid white marble facade and copper-gold coated windows. It was mirroring the Berliner Dome, Schinkel's Lustgarten and other historical buildings on the Museums Island in the river Spree. It was open to public and ordinary people dated, married, dined and danced in this hybrid of a parliament and communal house.

After the fall of DDR in 1990, the palace was abandoned and left empty for over 15 years. Between 1998–2003 asbestos was removed and in the process the complete interior and the facade was ruined.

On daily basis, ever since the Reunification, the building was subject to massive debates: Which position could the Palace have in the future, as icon of a former totalitarian regime? Could it fulfill a new function, becoming a new cultural place like it used to be? Or would the social site where East Germans had spent their leisure become a problem for a new Germany?

Monitoring these debates over years Ramberg developed an idea: to create a monument over the debate itself. Palast des Zweifel was his tribute to the new era of German history, where he sees "doubt as something that has become a proof of reflection and democracy. Collective doubt has brought Germany out of its totalitarian background and in fact united the two German nations".

The project was realized in 2005, with aluminum letters illuminated with white neon tubes, visible from far.

Liberté

Liberté is considered to be an interactive monument. Originally intended to be built outside Eidsvoll Castle, the place where the Norwegian constitution was written.

After being rejected, the controversial work generated aggressive public debates. Two years later it was realized as permanent monument in front of the National Museum of Art in Oslo.

As part of the Norwegian centennial, it "acted as a ‹Statue of Liberty› for the nation" celebrating 100 years of freedom from Sweden.

According to the artist: "Liberté was developed as a concept based on the French - as a provider for both the highest and the lowest institution for a modern society: the democratic constitution and the invention of public toilets.

When Jacques Chirac was mayor of Paris, he challenged the company JCDecaux to design unisex public toilets, reflecting and fulfilling the French ideal of individual rights in democratic society". 

In 1979 JCDecaux presented the innovative self-cleaning toilets in the streets of Paris. In 2005, the company supported Ramberg's project Liberté by supplying it with three of the same original toilets from the streets of Paris. One in red, one in white and one in blue, just like the colors of the French, US and Norwegian flag. The were also inscribed with "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité".

Inside the toilets, three different radio programs broadcast historical speeches; Charles De Gaulle, King Haakon VII, Franklin Roosevelt, etc accompanied by national hymns from Norway, France and USA. The installation allows an intimate relationship with its audience; the visitors fulfilling the Work, performing inside.

The work is now located permanently outside the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo and was placed there on occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution. 

Link to short documentary on the project: https://vimeo.com/107149790

A presentation of Superflec

 Hi people, 

Here's notes from my presentation about SUPERFLEX. Sorry that's a bit long. 

(http://www.superflex.net/)

SUPERFLEX is an artists’ group founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger (b. Roskilde, 1968), Rasmus Nielsen (b. Hjørring, 1969), and Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen (b. Copenhagen, 1969).

Projects as tools (a proposal that can be modified by the user).

Direct intervention in real society.  

The works are typically initiated and rooted in social, economic and political power structures, which are located outside of the art institution’s framework – therefore the works are often not recognized as art in a traditional sense. SUPERFLEX has exhibited their tools worldwide.

Superkilen:                                                                                                                             An urban park project in Copenhagen divided into three main areas: The Red Square, The Black Market and The Green Park. While The Red Square designates the modern, urban life with café, music and sports, The Black Market is the classic square with fountain and benches. The Green Park is a park for picnics, sports and walking the dog.

More than 50 different nationalities.

Instead of using the designated city objects/furnitures used for parks and public spaces, people from the area was asked to nominate specific city objects such as benches, bins, trees, playgrounds, manhole covers and signage from other countries. These objects were chosen from a country of the inhabitant’s national origin or from somewhere else encountered through traveling.
 

Modern Times Forever (Stora Enso Building, Helsinki):                                                      A film about what would happen to the Stora Enso building as an architectural and ideological symbol over the next few thousands of years, if only time

The film was first time shown in Helsinki Market Square on a 40m2 LED screen, so that one could see the original building simultaneously with the building in the film. The film lasted ten days, i.e. the work lasted as long as its exhibition period. This continuous exhibition period meant that the film could be watched 24 hours a day for ten days. 

 

Foreigners, please don't leave us alone with the Danes                                              During 2002 the poster with the wording ‘Foreigners, please don't leave us alone with the Danes’ was put up in the streets as a comment on the increasing harsh climate in Denmark with regards to public debate on immigrants and issues on integration. As part of the exhibition. Malmö, Copenhagen and Odense.

  

 

Mjølnerparken   

The Mjølnerparken neon sign was SUPERFLEX's contribution to Sid Ned!, a public art exhibition in Copenhagen, 2006. The sign was placed pointing in the direction of a large social housing area in Copenhagen, Mjølnerparken, often referred to in the media as a ‘bad’ neighbourhood. would affect the building.

 

Flooded McDonald's

Flooded McDonald's is a film work by Superflex in which a convincing life-size replica of the interior of a McDonald's burger bar, without any customers or staff present, gradually floods with water. Furniture is lifted up by the water, trays of food and drinks start to float around, electrics short circuit and eventually the space becomes completely submerged.