Articles about the project

 

Turun Sanomat (in Finnish) PDF

Åbo Underrättelset (in Swedish) PDF

 

This installation is a part of group exhibition Out of Joint. Look related project in Estonia: Art isn't my hobby, it is my job!

I thank everybody who helped me to build installation and participated in my artwork.

Turku City Board Vice Chairperson Seppo Lehtinen:

„Society need artists. They are for us.“.

Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution Of Everyday Life: "Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom."

Materials: Crushed stones (1000 kg), three monitors, a pink sexy radio, video and noise. Click here for videos.

My project is about artists’ life in capitalist society.

One of the functions’ of culture is to be critical towards society. An Estonian art critic Anders Härm divides culture as following: critical, idiosyncratic and affirmative. He derives critical and idiosyncratic categories from Richard Rorty’s pragmatical theory and affirmative is added by Härm himself. Critical culture explores society’s influence on us, idiosyncratic culture explores our personal influence on society and affirmative culture recreates national identity. Seems, that Western world have became more conservative and expects to see rather affirmative than critical culture. Contemporary artists are often seen as troublemakers who only spend tax payers’ money without giving anything back.

With my exhibition I am asking questions about the purpose of being an artist. I haven’t got answers. I only have got my personal life experience and locals’ stories. I will present videos, where local artists are talking about their life, Linnankiinteistö building is shown and Turku City Board Vice Chairperson Seppo Lehtinen gives his opinion.

My project’s aim is to create a dialogue in Turku between desicison makers, art audience and artists about artists current role.

The most serious problem in Turku at the moment seems to be working spaces. City needs money and most buildings where artists have studios, have been sold and artists have told to leave. My project explores Linnankiinteistö case. Leaving from there has been psychological and financial loss for the artists. Negotiations with Turku city have been confusing. Seems like city and artists belong to different worlds which are unable to speak the same language.

Most artists are unemployed or work part time in some other field than art. They are used to live with low income. Seems like society expects them to be poor. There is a strong myth about romantic and poor artist, who wears a beret, daydreams constantly and knows nothing about real life. Artist might be rich and famous after death. While s/he is alive, her/his studio functions like a storehouse. It is filled by works which no one buys. There are some star-artists in the world like Mark-Kalev Kostabi and Damien Hirst, but majority of artists even haven’t dreamt about becoming famous. The artists I have talked to have said they had no expectations when they went to study art and they didn’t care to become famous. They make art because they love it. In democratic society everybody should do what they like. Reality is that most people work in the field they hate. Working is inevitable and alienating. What would happen, if everybody would stop working for money and start doing what they really like?

If artist is critical towards the society, then it doesn’t make sense to ask money from the same society s/he is critical at. But if artist is not critical then the money s/he gets from society is spent on confirmative culture, which in long run doesn’t offer anything new for the world.

What is the point of being artist under capitalistic pressure where non-confirmative artists seem to fail already before they have even started? What is the point, when the rebellion is just a joke and when the society makes profit from avangard as it happened in 1950es with abstract expressionism in US?

Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) - marxist and member of group of left-wing thinkers known as the Frankfurt School was an active upriser during Paris 1968 intellectuals revolt. He was very popular among Paris’ fine arts students. He said art was pointless. Instead of making art people should rebel in streets. Maybe he was right.

Quotes by people I interviewed:

In the end… why cares? (Jouna Karsi)

We need artists, they are for us! (Seppo Lehtinen)

I have heard, there is a huge art market somewhere… out there… it is more or less a big joke. (Jari Kallio)

The art market is not hot in here, it’s not even mild, it’s cold. (Laura Miettinen)

Sometimes I feel that all art is pointless and I don't want to see any art and do any art and in such kind of moments I dream about working for example with cows... If you don't milk the cow, the cow dies, but if you don't create art, nothing happens! (Fideelia)