Elina Minn

The art critic as cartoonist

2012-01-10T14:46:00.003+02:00

The first by Ad Reinhardt, The second via unbuiltroads.tumblr.com and the third probably from samuliottohenrik.tumblr.com

Random Mirror making

2012-01-06T02:48:00.001+02:00

Some work in progress shots from Kutomo, two nights till the opening *__*

Some neighbor has been listening to a really fat bass beats all night.

I've been listening to:
Elite Gymnastics mix with Korean Pop and Industrial and an annoying name which is actually super good

Begena-sele gena by Alemu Aga... an Ethiopian Arthur Russell, pure beauty

Claudine Chirac - Nautilus

annnndddd a lot of basic Clipse and Kanye to boost.

I was also super happy to notice my favorite Finnish poet Henriikka tavi has a new blog: http://henriikkatavi.wordpress.com/

When I read her debut Esim. Esa first time in winter 2009 I had to immediately read it again, literally, the same night, and now I picked it up again a good two years after. I still like it a lot. Of course it's never like the first time and her second collection was a bit hard to get into but I'm really looking forward to what she publishes next. Kind of pointless writing about Finnish poets in English, oh well, good poetry doesn't happen all the time so it's ohhh kay.

2 day solo at Kutomo

2011-12-22T14:56:00.000+02:00

Random Mirror
2 day exhibition/performance at Kutomo, Turku

Opening on Saturday 7.1. from 18 onwards
Performance at 19

On Sunday the installation is open from 12-18,
I'm present for talking and breakfast

Welcome!

ehka.net

How do birds see?

2011-11-17T08:20:00.008+02:00

Yesterday a bird flew into our studio through the door.

We opened the two windows that could be opened but it didn't know how to get out. Our space is very high, we couldn't reach the bird and hush it out (no tall lightweight objects around). the bird was sitting on lamp chords like they were reeds sticking out of water.

Getting it out back through the door was out of question: we could have got it back into the corridor but the corridor has no windows that can be opened. If we got it out through the door through which it had entered, we should've first chased it first into the corridor, make sure it doesn't turn left towards the light, but down the stairs and then make it sure it doesn't fly towards the light coming in through the window in the stairs as it can not be opened either, but make sure it flies down the stairs, and then out of the front door. I'm pretty sure birds don't get the concept of "going down the stairs".

Luckily just as I had googled "How do birds see?", and seen this potentially helpful image

the bird flew out the open window.

Agent

2011-09-06T14:17:00.008+03:00

This is my illustration agent Marjo Granlund.

Colorscape

2011-08-23T20:21:00.009+03:00

There was weird light at my studio today.

I turned the folder around.

The color of the light got dimmer.

I tried a piece of moss,

then coal.

Moss and coal are nice but they don't really work here. I grabbed a red pencil box for some contrast,

then a roll of tape.

.(I tried the tape before the pencil box but I switched the order so the best would come last).

After playing I realized what the photos reminded me of. The colorscape that was installed in Turku for the past few weeks. Inflated rooms in cel-like constellations where you could wander and sometimes hear music. It sounded nice but I was unable to go. Some friends went but didn't take the time to wait, there was always a long queue. A Facebook friend had taken photos there. Families smiling, posing and goofing around in flowing capes, it looked like utopian imagery from the sixties. Everything bathed in RGBs.

Shine on you crazy diamonds

2011-08-19T14:24:00.005+03:00

Stills from documentary Boheemi elää about the great Finnish actor Matti Pellonpää. As a film it's horrible but the 8mm films from Peltsi's childhood are amazing and inventive. He made them with a friend who lived closeby. There was one 8mm still image I wanted to include, opening credits with letters placed on two red pillows, but it was hard to find because it was edited further away from the other 8mm bits. I didn't remember what part it was linked to and I couldn't bear to rewind and forward among the messy documentary for very long. So this is what I gathered:

The lady in the last pic was a neighbor (?) of Peltsi's, "a natural born actress".

Pattern with girls

2011-07-31T23:40:00.001+03:00

Pattern with girls, originally uploaded by Elina Minn.

Via Flickr:
Based on a fashion illustration I made circa 1992-1993.

Internet content

2011-07-31T22:49:00.006+03:00

I feel bad for my last post.
I didn't even leave a link to a nice italo song.
So here, a classic:

Valerie Dore - The Night on Youtube

Also

two fellow Napa illustrators just started Tumblrs that are pretty funny:
kasperstromman.tumblr.com
twisteri.tumblr.com

Kasper's blog deals with one of my favorite themes (like Tati's Mon Oncle, one of my favorite films ): how funny and humiliating design can be. Christer's blog is a collection of screen caps. I have to warn you though, if you're not a Finnish speaker you might be missing something.

My relationship with my blog is boring now

2011-07-31T22:45:00.003+03:00

It's summer.

Listen to italo!

Cover art for Tv-resistori

2011-03-11T15:08:00.004+02:00

Turku based pop group Tv-resistori is releasing their third LP in April. Yrjö commissioned me to make the cover art for their self titled release already in 2008 but then things like babies and solo projects happened among the group and the process was put on hold for over two years. I didn't feel like using the images from 2008 anymore so I compiled the covers from various pencil drawings that I made with Jaakko Pallasvuo.

Retreat

2011-02-12T20:40:00.005+02:00

Retreat
Zine out now on Medium Rare

Drawings from 2009 by Elina Minn and Jaakko Pallasvuo
34 pg / 8.25 x 10.5 / full color
digitally printed / perfect bound
edition of 100

Isles of Maybe

2011-01-24T16:25:00.003+02:00

I'm so glad now I didn't get rid of my National Geographics (mainly from the 70s) when migrating to Berlin.
i'm now browsing them at my studio in Turku. Such gems, like this kodachrome by Adam Woolfitt in the article about the Faeroes, titled "isles of maybe".

Inspiring collabos from 2010

2011-01-15T15:07:00.002+02:00

Islaja + badminton

Kemialliset Ystävät + Brennaa Murphy

And all that's nice

2011-01-06T10:40:00.002+02:00

I made a poster for Anna Torkkel's And all that's nice, a solo performance piece on the weirdness of beauty.

Premier on Wednesday 12th January 2011 at 7 p.m. at Kutomo Turku.

Dance, performance, video.

More info.

This is working

2011-01-02T12:12:00.001+02:00

Happy new year 2011!

Stabiles

2010-12-29T20:33:00.003+02:00

http://stabiles.tumblr.com/

Remember my film still tumblr with Ida Lehtonen? I thought not.
Nothing's been added in months. I checked and it's still good.

Tray and postcard design

2010-12-13T12:37:00.004+02:00

I designed a tray and postcard for Napa Books.

Available now at Napa Shop Helsinki and online at Napa Books.

Performance and animation

2010-11-24T19:52:00.007+02:00

I will perform the second part of Consoling Dawsoncrying.gif this Friday in Turku. Welcome!

Bonus BETA / Off Turku (offturku.com launch party)
A space for experimental and unfinished performances

26.11.2010, from 7 p.m onwards
@ Kutomo
Kalastajankatu 1B
Turku, Finland

More info on Kutomo's facebook

+

Kiasma will screen my drawn animation Stage Fright next Wednesday. If in Helsinki, go!

Stage Fright
drawn animation, 2 min, 2008
1.12.2010 at 6 p.m.
@ Kiasma-teatteri, Helsinki.

More info on the screening here.

Just published, Space Jam & White Label

2010-11-10T18:54:00.004+02:00

Space Jam
Elina Minn and Jaakko Pallasvuo
edition of 100
Out now on Cafe Royal

I also contributed a text in White Label -project curated by Jaakko Pallasvuo.

A publication delivered to strangers in the form of an anonymous letter.

Online version here.

Consoling dawsoncrying.gif

2010-10-18T23:39:00.005+03:00

Performance at Beta - space for performance at Kutomo (Turku, Finland) 16th of October 2010.

2

2010-09-27T22:59:00.000+03:00

Illustration in PWR #2

2010-06-08T11:44:00.004+03:00

I made an illustration in the latest edition PWR paper.

Info on where to pick it up or order it here:
www.pwrpaper.com

Drawings, 2009

2010-05-16T17:13:00.002+03:00

See more here or here.

Collaboration with Jaakko Pallasvuo continues

2010-05-11T00:41:00.008+03:00

Placeholders (for tattoos), 2010

This installation was realized at Detroit Gallery, Stockholm in April as part of the exhibition Borders curated by B-galleria. Our work comprises of an animation and an installation of the objects used in the animation. Zines, drawings and collages were also included.

On the opening night of the exhibition I made a Seinfeld related performance. Jaakko got a hesitant line tattooed on his left arm.

Mike Mills on careerism

2010-05-10T16:28:00.007+03:00

Transcribed to my journal from a Mike Mills interview written by Momus for 032c magazine:

"Charles Eames speaks very radically quoting Lazlo-Moholy-nagy, with whom he probably studied, saying that medium categorizations are just a product of capitalism. They have nothing to do with the huma spirit and the soul and being creative and living our life. Are you a graphic designer? Are you an illustrator? Are you a sculptor? Are you a filmmaker? Are you an artist? Those lines are 20th century manmade art school constructions and career constructions. Moholo-nagy's manifesto is all about dismantling that."

Bravo, danke.

Print and interview at Little Paper Planes

2010-05-03T20:58:00.003+03:00

Check out my triptych print and interview at Little Paper Planes.

10/2/10 - Installation at KIM, Berlin

2010-04-29T13:15:00.005+03:00

See my first Berlin installation (Marine Biology 2, paper, polyester mesh) at KIM tomorrow. Next to the Rosenthaler Ubahn exit. Come out on Brunnenstrasse, turn left, it's there.

It's up for two days:
Friday 30th of April and Saturday 1st of May

The exhibition is curated by the 10/2/10 collective

Regarding the show

Come Get Your Stars Aligned With 10/2/10

Travel and relationships with people in countries other than your own will be very fortunate for you now. This is a very expansive, growth-inducing vibration that will help you introduce some new elements into your life - friends and business opportunities, not to mention new sights, sounds, and concepts. Import-export of ideas, goods, and services will bring bright opportunity, as will any project involving publishing, broadcasting, and university instruction and study. If you are creative, a major artistic project will come to a glorious conclusion at month's end, within four days of April 28. Your career is about to bring big, exciting developments next month, but you'll need to be ready. Venus' tour of your reputation sector indicates the word about your performance is quite spectacular, and has filtered to executives at the very top. In love, finally, your prospects are looking up! Venus will tour your true love sector from April 25 to May 19. If you are single and not dating, you may have a memorable meeting - be sure to be out. Look your best! This will be an enchanting period for love, and perhaps one of the best of the year. But when in doubt, the answer is more velvet. More velvet in your wardrobe, more velvet in your paintings, more velvet in your cheese, more velvet in your approach to life.

See the 10/2/10 site for list of other artists and more info.

Borders Show at Detroit gallery / Stockholm

2010-04-16T15:54:00.008+03:00

Tonight!
Group show
Borders at Detroit, Stockholm, Sweden
Opening begins at 7 p.m.
I will performing at 8 p.m.

My work in the show:
Placeholders (for tattoos), installation with Jaakko Pallasvuo
Marine Biology 1, installation
Marine Biology, performance

Info of the show: detroitstockholm.com.

Other artists in the exhibition:
Jaakko Pallasvuo, Ida Lehtonen, Hertta Kiiski, Ville Varumo and Tenhola

Show curated by Johanna Wahlström and Ilari Laamanen of B-galleria

On how to create atmosphere

2010-04-03T22:56:00.002+03:00

MetuLegend, genius Finnish d.i.y youtube anime
Maggie Cheung for Rodarte by Wing Shya

Immaterial Survey of Our Peers

2010-04-02T20:07:00.008+03:00

My work is exhibited Immaterial Survey of Our Peers, a group show curated by Lauren Christiansen and Brad Troemel of The Jogging.

"An Immaterial Survey of Our Peers presents installation images of an exhibit that never physically took place. Using digital compositing techniques, we have re-imagined the process of browsing through a Google Reader by adding art to images of the Sullivan Galleries’ empty walls."

Read more about the concept and visit the show here.

Read the feature on Rhizome.

Retreat

2010-04-01T18:37:00.001+03:00

Drawing with Jaakko Pallasvuo last week.

More of our collaborative work here.

Grey Melange

2010-03-25T10:15:00.004+02:00

melangelina, originally uploaded by Elina Minn.

, originally uploaded by stanleylieber.

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Remember Pyjama Infinity

2010-03-17T18:45:00.010+02:00

This flipbook of mine came out from Napa Books in 2008.

It is a small object based on a big revelation. It had to do with a pair of pyjamas and the vast. infinite. space. gasp. of. the. universe. gasp. Somewhere late eighties, early nineties.

Since I havn't got around to documenting it, here are some images other people have taken of it. Thanks for the help Elizabeth Dunker, Jenni Rope, Mieke Willems and Anna Lehtonen.

You can buy Pyjama Infinity online at Napabooks.

It is also available at other Napa Books retailers ie. all the coolest book shops around the world.

Monument for the possibility of a Simple Life

2010-03-16T15:03:00.001+02:00

Open spotify. Search Bonnie Tyler. Sort by popularity. Listen.

Meditation imagery

2010-03-15T15:28:00.003+02:00

Life Aquatic

Contexts

2010-03-13T18:09:00.004+02:00

My moodboard for summer 2009 consisted of Korean babes, photobooth party picture, Wayne's world, escape fantasy imagery borrowed from Truffaut and primitive eskimo sculpture.

This is my work station in March 2010.

Happy Birthday B-galleria

2010-03-12T18:47:00.006+02:00

"So all the artists are your friends?"
"... and you say it like it's a bad thing?"

B-galleria is a non-profit art gallery located in Turku, Finland (population 176 242). It's run by a group of young local volunteers: artists, designers, art and art history students and other people who are interested in being involved in creating happenings, art shows, music shows - instead of just whining and pining for a better, richer "cultural life". I've been involved in B activities since the second show held in February 2005 and today is the celebration of the gallery's 5th birthday.

Miércoles, originally uploaded by Suunnitelma B.

These guys in the pic are Irana Douer and Hernan Paganini, from Argentina, who put up a show in the back room of B-galleria this week as they were touring Europe and passing through Finland. I couldn't attend in person but I hope to meet them soon as they are visiting Berlin.

I've known Irana and her work through the internet since the early 2000s. Now she came all the way from Argentina and was in my home town! Maybe that's normal now, sure, but I can't help feeling amused. A bit unsettled too, to realize how I'm pleased with internetassisted globalization for bringing all these cool people into my life. My best memories of B have to do with putting up small happenings and shows with friends, like the Plastic Bag Happening last summer with Jason Rosenberg and Emily Ryan. The ability to share time and make something happen, in the privacy of your own home town, but extending towards other corners of the world via the internet. Of course running a gallery is a lot of work and the way we run it at B is often bordering on chaotic and disorganized, but I feel it's all worth it. This wave of _____ when you are turning the key to the gallery to step in. That there is this space. And we've held a show here every month for the last 5 years. It's amazing.

Some people -quite often middle aged men-, had a hard time understanding why I spent so much time with the gallery and I've had some confused and ultimately tiring conversations over the issue.

- So let me get this straight.. you don't get any money from it?
-No, I just do it because I like it.
- So like... a hobby?
- Yeah you could say it's a hobby.
- (pause) Well, I play basketball and I know why I play basketball- I play basketball because it keeps me fit. But what do you gain from having these shows, I have no idea.

Well. Sometimes it's hard to give answers for other people straight away.

I'd want to put up all the names of the cool people who I've met through B / who have helped in creating things there / driven a screw to the wall etcetera but too many to mention and forget.

So happy birthday B-family! Stay small, expand!

Magic Crystals

2010-03-12T15:27:00.001+02:00

"Everyone dozes off when you say Mp3... we should just start calling mp3s Magic Crystals"

Karl Blau yesterday at Schokoladen.

B-home in Berlin

2010-03-06T15:10:00.002+02:00

It's been almost a year from Grey Melange, the last B-home exhibition by me and Antti Hiljá. Tonight it's happening in Berlin!

Starting at 7 p.m. Friesenstraße 6 (nearest U-bahn stop: Gneisenausstraße)

Come around!
BYOB

Facebook event here.

Tagging pt. 2

2010-02-20T21:25:00.004+02:00

I just deleted some tags. Tags like

Aesthetical

and

Political

You know the embarrassing feeling
“This is political!”

Of course it is
But that is not a category in my brain
It is way too vast

Most of the time I find myself tagging a feeling
Intuition
I may say to myself
Feelings are true!

ok

This picture is more about a feeling than anything else!

ok

But things fall apart at some point
And you don’t know what you meant by tagging a film still
“breathing”

Maybe you were hoping to make more posts about breathing

It seems kind of important

Like partiolaismarssi- that's a word for the annual Scouts Marching in Finnish
I tagged it at the moment
Because I heard the drums outside

As I was deleting tags
I wanted to make that tag useful
I decided to keep it
Because it was so specific and dumb
But not dumber than breathing, because of its specificity
It was eaxctly something

So it could be used

I figured, I will take this word and define what this means for me
It will be a strange rule
Among simpler ones
I can’t make categories that are obvious and deceiving, like words
I might be cheating myself of some vital experience-

I don't want a pool without a bind

2010-02-20T21:17:00.004+02:00

Objects that I Ffffound.

Binds and a shoe-

Reference to an older entry: Narrative image collecting i.e. that's my business

original sources for images before Ffffounding: thejogging, katejinx, looselybound, image=magie, confetti system, other sources obscured by memory

Tagging

2010-02-16T03:44:00.004+02:00

Why do people tag things on delicious with inspiration? Does someone have a category like that in their brain? Please enlighten me. I am genuinely interested.

Sharkey's day

2010-02-15T17:17:00.013+02:00

I am willing to go the distance for you.

I am willing to go the distance for you.

I am willing to go the distance for you.

I am willing to go the distance for you.

I am willing to go the distance for you.

images from: Anna Törrönen, Chris Filippini, Tavi, Haw-Lin, here and here and there. I would link the youtube clips better but I need to go the bathroom.

An attempt to make any sort of situated sense

2010-02-12T20:17:00.013+02:00

Gözleme girl from Click Opera

I have to say goodbye to my favorite blog Click Opera. The blog that gave me Anne Laplantine. Aesthetics as politics. The blog that gave me Berlin. The blog of blogs!

It feels funny to start writing about Click Opera in a past sense but i feel like I've been secretly wishing for it all the same. I want to make a narrative and a narrative is hard to do in a place where you don't see clearly in both directions, back and forth. After a closure, it's much easier.

I started following Click Opera sometime around 2004 when I was in my early twenties. I didn't read it daily, by no means, but regularly. I spent the better half of the 2000s with it. It was no earlier than spring 2009 when I became conscious of it. It happened when I noticed myself typing search site:imomus.livejournal.com into google so many times -the search function was always the worst if not entirely obsolete aspect of Click Opera. In livejournal there are no such things as tags.

So what have I been doing all these years with it? I have been collecting thoughts. So many to mention. Another way to put it, I have been influenced.

What I'm going to talk about are thoughts as images. Thoughts and images, thought as images, images as objects that transform reality.

Personally Click Opera has pretty much defined the way a blog could be and should be. The way he takes things in his everyday existence and weaves them into a context and the way he uses text and images. You could say his text is dominating the images, yes, but there is definitely not one without the other. Starting to deconstruct the waves of influence, I feel ambigous about which things I have picked up from there and what I had before, so entwined they are in my aesthetics now. For instance I can remember discovering David Shrigley before he was ever mentioned in Click Opera but I recall not reading about him anywhere else. Now that the first decade of 2000s has passed, I can state he is one of the most influential artists of the decade. Easily. His images were everywhere, writing about him wasn't. So it was not so much Momus introducing me to artists and bands, more often it was him writing about them, making them visible and narrated into the 2000s art story.

Sometimes it was almost backwards. Like when Momus blogged about the japanese horror movie Hausu! in the end of 2009, I had already been psyched about it for a good while. Reading the entry was a strange receding recognizition, like he was no longer ahead- I was just happy that he had the chance to see it, or something.

But he did introduce me to concepts! And words, words like

superflat
cute formalism
tender half-lit
play ethic
gözleme girls

Along the way I went, picking up things. Things that were useful for me. Saving an image on my harddrive, writing down a new word in invisible ink.

I go back to the initial feeling, the beginning, the concept that made me take the first indirect steps of following Click Opera. It was an image of Pierrot. Momus called his beauty clumsy grace- an unfinished, melancholic kind of beauty, he saw embodied in a David Bowiesque character, a sad Pierrot rooted in the Commedia Dell'Arte archetypes. At the same time I worshipped Fellini films. Since getting into them in high school I had identified most with the character played by Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina in La Strada and Nights of Cabiria. A kind of autistic, half-witted but tender figure. I had invented an affectionate word 'hiccup beauty' to describe what I felt in the presence of such beings. Oh now I remember! Momus was talking about a music video for David Bowie, Be My Wife. In the video Bowie appears as a Pierrot character. He is out of it, as one YouTube commenter put it. Out of pride, out of the game. He does indeed resemble a Masina character, a ridiculed clown pleading to be cared about. It is the opposite of everything aggressively deliberate or try-too-hard-sexy or "rockn'roll". Seeing Momus, this strange old guy coming up with a concept for something that I craved for, how could I help but listen more?

Momus often referenced Rainer Maria Rilke, who spoke of beauty as the first sight of terror that we're still just able to bear. To me, the concept of clumsy grace has somehow replaced or perhaps reconnected sexy and beautiful, whatever those words mean, and I find myself lusting after it, depending on it. The same kind of graceful clumsiness I have lately found in Berlin-based Molly Nilsson's music for example... a mix of half-hearted and passionate...

When I started writing I felt it would be a mistake to illustrate this letter too much. Perhaps I was afraid I would get carried away with the images. Instead, to paint a picture in your ear, here is my favorite song from 2009, a concrete italodisko clip that Momus recorded in an Italian cafe to serve as a reference point to his 2005 Ocky Milk album.

It has been said that a strange and wonderful part of Click Opera were the anonymous commenters who provided the discussion around the topics. Anyway, the experience of reading Click Opera was not only about reading his entries but reading the comments too. Not pulling open every thread, livejournal was much too stiff about that, but a few every time. Of course not everything Momus was talking about appealed to me nor did I agree with him about every topic. I could even argue that none of that mattered much to me. I was not taking part in an argument or passing judgement. Momus was noticing things in the time that where simultaneously things that I half-consciously aspired towards. Simply because I felt I needed them to be alive. So I consumed images, images like Berlin.

Image by Erin Jane Nelson

Yes, let's talk about Berlin- the subject I most hate and love to talk about. It's highly dubious to me what people are talking about when they are talking Berlin, or any city with a strong Aura. I don't even know where the line between Berlin as a place, and Berlin as an image exactly runs, but I will try to direct my gaze towards the latter. Berlin as a picture, Berlin as a picture painted by Click Opera. I don't have to look at actual pictures to look at it. I already see people sitting in cozy flats knitting and playing music. Color. Patina. Artsy book store interior. A certain interior has been burned into my brain forever. The grass green of the carpet evokes the same kind of perfect romance of outside and inside as that lovely scene in Godard's A Woman is a woman with Anna Karina riding her bike inside. Snapshots of the Turkish Market, and the image of Gözleme girls in their multicolored, pattern-clashing outfits. Sea shell pattern, the focused gaze of the young girl who is folding the Gözleme. Open my eyes. I am now in Berlin. With the wooden floors, eating the same Spinat Gözleme at the Turkish market every Friday. My body is eating the fruit, riding the bike, breathing the air, browsing the art books, not paying for them.

Images affect you, whether you like it or not, my friend, artist Jessica Williams writes.

I think a problem with my generation of early internet-adapters and artists is that we take references for granted. We are involved in a discussion that circles around itself, re-blogging and re-referencing like we all know what we are all talking about. Taking air for granted seems dangerous to me. It's like that David Foster Wallace quote with the two fish swimming and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

This good-bye letter to Momus is perhaps my own attempt to make my own structures a bit more transparent. And by that to emancipate a piece of myself, seeking new air to breath. Of course the new air will again get filled again with bits of garbage but new bits, until-now neglected bits. Imagine dust gathering on the gallery floor. And a ray of light cutting through. I need to do this, to continue devoting myself to this cycle of making sense and not making sense, to be able to be in the game, and out of it, and in again.

It's the strangest thing with images. As much as I want these images to appear, I want them to disappear. So I could emerge again, create, go on living. So good bye digital daddy! I will miss you.

"The kind of blogging I do has to be based in personal obsession, in spats and rivalry, in a kind of light, oblique but perpetual autobiography. There has to be a subject for all this data to make any sort of situated sense, and that subject has to be seen to have a body, clothes, a way to wear those clothes, and so on. As soon as I get tugged out of that embodied, situated world I get bored and anxious and mistrustful. I want to know always who's speaking, how old they are, what culture they were raised in, what their vested interests are, and so on. I do think pictures supply some of this background. I find the rational-enlightened taboo on pictures as curious as the religious-superstitious one it replaces but never quite displaces."

- Momus

I thought, okay, I guess’ll start with the alphabet and then we’ll talk…

2010-02-11T16:14:00.002+02:00

Isabelle Antena

2010-02-08T16:11:00.005+02:00

via Hanna

Hanging on the edges of a strange and lovely weekend.

Le Rayon Vert

2010-01-30T23:27:00.003+02:00

Le Rayon vert, Erik Rohmer

Bread images

2010-01-20T23:17:00.002+02:00

Home is the place you left

2009-12-16T15:25:00.006+02:00

Antti Hiljá posted some pictures of our first Berlin home on his blog. That dude has amazing pictures just filling up his harddrive but he doesn't use his flickr so you'll just have to wait until he finishes his photo portfolio.

Yesterday I started reading this Elmgreen & Dragset book that Maria gave me. I like the title of it because I can turn it around 1000 times in my head and I'm till not sure if I agree with it or do I like it. The book seems pretty good too. It's basically an art exhibition catalog with different artists speaking about their notions of (emotional) homelessness and belonging and stuff. Not all the texs are very good but I find it reassuring and inspiring, as I often feel I am a visual artist with an obsession to write who shies away from showing writing. Now that was a bad sentence but I let it go.

Approaching 2010

2009-12-16T13:59:00.003+02:00

I would imagine it as a room in an old factory. In the other room I can hear people making noise. The noise comes from making labor. I am in my own room. But it's not "my room" as in I don't own it, I am just borrowing it from someone. There is a table in the middle of the room. Glue stains on it. Leftovers from someone elses work. I work on the table sometimes myself. After I work, I clean up the table so when I come back next day I will find it nice and neat and I can start off with Fresh thoughts. But I find myself not returning to the room for many days. I take long walks and I enjoy them. I sometimes talk to people. I take pictures with my celphone of things like a mint colored blanket with cat figures thinking I will show it to my friends who like cats more than I do. When I return to the room I have a lot of trouble remembering why I actually keep the table there. I spend a lot of time doing other things. I clean the room again. Someone has been in the room and left something on the table. I take a look. I find it strange and nice that somebody was here while I was gone.

2009-12-07T04:31:00.004+02:00

Parco ad by Eiko Ishioka, Balthus, still via Heavy Puff

Let's talk about Berlin

2009-11-27T02:45:00.003+02:00

Do you find the city stimulating in terms of what you do?

In Berlin you can do whatever you want. Sadly this means that most people do nothing. Honestly, I get awfully tired of talking about Berlin, wherever I go people wanna talk about Berlin. Even here in Berlin, we all just seem to sit around and talk about Berlin all day. It's almost like she is our senile grandmother, and we don't know what to do with her. This city is not going to inspire anyone into doing something they wouldn't be doing anyway. Although, she is gonna make it easier to find a studio and an affordable flat. And therefore we are grateful to Granny.

-Molly Nilsson doesn't want to talk about Berlin on Acne Studios

Spot on.

Molly Nilsson at Les Yper Sound

2009-11-26T02:45:00.006+02:00

I made a poster for Les Yper Sound club today. Molly Nilsson is playing there on 4th of December. I'm sad to miss her, so please Turku-people go see her if you can!

Her song Europa has been one of my favorite tracks this fall.

2009-11-21T17:46:00.000+02:00

ie

2009-11-18T22:15:00.005+02:00

Some more pictures of my work for the ie exhibiton with Ida Lehtonen. Photos by Olli Laamanen.

GOLD

2009-11-09T04:50:00.005+02:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall!

Berlin days are getting darker

2009-11-04T19:23:00.005+02:00

So I bought a light.

Mirroring my thoughts after another fruitful Monday evening at Temporary Künsthalle

2009-10-20T02:41:00.003+03:00

, originally uploaded by pete halupka.

Perfect is a death word.

Retreat drawings / Golden Age

2009-10-18T20:23:00.009+03:00

Some drawings I made with Jaakko Pallasvuo will be exhibited this month in the Medium Rare group show at Golden Age, Chicago. The exhibition is curated by Medium Rare publisher Milano Chow.

The show is open from October 17th to November 17th. Please stop by if you are in the Chicago area. Info on Golden age blog.

Artists:

Anna Peaker
Brock Potucek
Elina Minn
Emily Ryan
Eric Marth
Jaakko Pallasvuo
Jason Rosenberg
Jessica Williams
Lucas Soi
Megan Plunkett
Michi Turner
Pia Howell
Tara Sinn

2009-09-21T00:26:00.001+03:00

Travess Smalley

2009-09-15T23:41:00.005+03:00

I can't stop looking at these drawings by Travess Smalley.

Knot, band

2009-09-11T12:11:00.003+03:00

Frank O'Hara

2009-09-10T22:03:00.003+03:00

Berlin, week 2

2009-08-30T22:11:00.004+03:00

"for 11 months, I was right...this Christmas tree is a work of art for eleven months, and in the twelfth month it was no longer art, it was Christmas."

- Jean-Luc Godard

Jaakko Kangosjärvi

2009-08-25T12:34:00.001+03:00

Berlin, week 1

2009-08-25T11:44:00.002+03:00

ie

2009-08-21T03:10:00.007+03:00

Collage installation I made for Rotor2.

ie / Making something out of nothing with Ida Lehtonen

Rotor2 gallery
Gothenburg, Sweden
31.7-9.8.2009

More pictures in my flickr.

collage

2009-08-10T01:13:00.000+03:00

.gif for ie

2009-07-31T17:34:00.005+03:00

Tonight, opening at six!

ie

Summer art show with Ida Lehtonen at Rotor2 gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Tao Lin reading “i went fishing with my family when i was five”

2009-07-26T19:37:00.005+03:00

via Tao Lin's Tumblr presence

i e

2009-07-24T19:49:00.002+03:00

Ida Lehtonen & Elina Minn

Rotor 2 galleri, Gothenburg

1.-9.8.2009

It has to happen again and again and again and again

2009-07-18T13:38:00.011+03:00

Two images from Turku this week.

The first from Titanik art gallery where two Turku based artists Antti Jussila and Jari Kallio had their art exhibiton opening on Thursday: Epäonnistuneelle, vallankumous. For the failed, a revolution.

Their statement is something like:
Art is a matter too serious to be left in the hands of artists who don't dare to make mistakes anymore.

I left the opening feeling refreshed.

Second from the front yard of our studio where they are starting to build a new building. (I love this stage.)

Also, I'm leaving this town in a month... to BERLIN.

!!

image from this great milos forman film via hannahandlandon.blogspot.com

There exists there does not exist

2009-07-11T18:36:00.008+03:00

Both from Flower Delivery New York City.

Girls

2009-07-11T17:13:00.003+03:00

Another scan from 1968 photobook Kibbutz profiles.

Crazy ass internet art

2009-07-10T19:39:00.006+03:00

Dennis Kopf has edited bootyshaking videos on Youtube and created his own ones. Basically bootyshaking sans the booty and the shaking. I love the tension created by the domestic rooms and the music.

Some of my favorite ghost booties:

MI CAMA

Dancing wit no music!!!!!

indian booty dance

YES

See all Bootyclipse videos here.

I usually try to avoid reading youtube comments but there were some amazing ones, like:

"What kind of program are you using to take the people out of the clip, where can I get it, and how much does it cost?"
bblack1213

---

Read more about Bootyclipse here (scroll down on the page) on internet art curator Olivia Lialina's website.

Max Maslansky

2009-07-09T23:13:00.003+03:00

Max Maslansky

Torrance, 2008-9, acrylic on canvas, 35" x 35"

2

2009-07-08T21:33:00.005+03:00

HIMAA

SABI VAN HEMERT

Arthur Russell - Let's Go Swimming

2009-07-07T00:30:00.004+03:00

Grass skirts

2009-07-06T00:17:00.004+03:00

Ideal summer styles sported by these three Israeli women.

Scanned from Kibbutz profiles, 1968.

Confetti system

2009-07-02T20:41:00.001+03:00

Confetti system

Their aestethics are soo up my alley it's making me dizzy.

B-home / Retreat in New York

2009-06-30T21:38:00.003+03:00

The drawings I made with Jaakko Pallasvuo for Retreat zine were briefly exhibited in Milano Chow's hallway.

The zine comes out in 2009 on Milano's small press Medium Rare.

www.medium-rare.net

Les Yper Sound

2009-06-30T15:46:00.003+03:00

Flyer for my friend Johanna's pop club Les Yper Sound.

Afterparty images

2009-06-29T22:06:00.006+03:00

When making illustrations I'm never working on one image only. That way every commissioned image actually initiates various other images- like these. If making an illustration can be a party at best, then making these private images is like the afterparty of the illustration. The kind with dancing going on.

Some songs that played when I made these images

Wedding - Shugo Tokumaru
Red and purple - The Dodos
Two weeks - Grizzly Bear (this song is addictive!)
Work it - Missy Elliott
Vacuum - Gang Gang Dance
Big Grey Ears - Scratch Pet Land
Your Motion Says - Arthur Russell

holding what

2009-06-28T18:48:00.002+03:00

visual thesaurus

2009-06-24T00:14:00.001+03:00

controversy

2009-06-24T00:04:00.000+03:00

no time to blog
time to blog

Ichizawa Hanpu post box sack

2009-06-16T23:56:00.002+03:00

Ichizawa Hanpu post box sack, originally uploaded by hige_megane.

I put this perfect bag on my ffffound, tumblr, flickr favorites and now here. The contrast of the faded worker cotton and the color is just perfect for me. I have a lot of love for faded pink. It makes me feel good in a fuzzy, silly way and it just works with so many other colors. I used to dismiss pink as a child because I thought it was little girl color and I didn't identify with that. I think I'm somehow working that out now with all this pink and peach. Ahh. I always think I should lay off off it already but I always end up using it in my images..

Why fight. I'm just a big softie.

(I never thought this blog would be so much about color? But again, why fight.)

Plastic bags are happening in Turku

2009-06-16T13:51:00.005+03:00

Two artists whose work I've been loving in the internet for a long time are visiting Finland next week. Good times!

They are:
Jason Rosenberg www.jason-rosenberg.net/
Emily Ryan www.emily-ryan.nu

I'm looking forward to Jason's plastic Bag Happening that he's putting up in B-galleria on Monday 22nd. The happening is a celebration of the colors, ideas and textures of plastic bags. There's also a small expo of Emily's whimsical drawings. Please come and join us if you are in Turku!

Here's the info:

//

PLASTIC BAG HAPPENING is a plastic bag exchange, in which you are
invited to come with a plastic bag and leave with a different one. The
time in between these two actions has many possibilities also.

PLASTIC BAG HAPPENING is also an exhibition, which celebrates plastic
bags from around the world, so bring one in, and participate in the
exchange and cross-pollination of textures, colors, and ideas.

Show us your favorite plastic bag! Or trade it in for a new one! Or
purchase a plastic bag creation! Or just come in and look around!

It is only a one day affair this time, so please come say hello!

MONDAY, JUNE 22 2009
2–8 PM (KLo 14-18)
B-GALLERIA / B-BUTIK
ANINKAISTENKATU 5 L 5
20100 TURKU
FINLAND

The age of Rubens

2009-06-14T18:48:00.006+03:00

Separation perfected

2009-06-12T19:43:00.000+03:00

Society of the spectacle, Guy Debord 1967

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

Synchronize!

2009-06-11T23:43:00.002+03:00

Prepare the clap

2009-06-08T13:48:00.001+03:00

Himaa

2009-06-01T19:31:00.004+03:00

Himaa

via Referencelibrary

Weekend in color

2009-05-30T20:48:00.000+03:00

I prefer beginnings to endings

2009-05-30T18:26:00.008+03:00

I've realized that my love for film stills is probably purer than my love for films.

I used to think it's wrong..

2

2009-05-27T20:38:00.001+03:00

The weekend in the internet

2009-05-25T12:43:00.004+03:00

ihardlyknowher.com/ where you can make a minimalist Flickr stream. Here's mine.
i love sammelgedanken.tumblr.com

Retreat zine

2009-05-22T21:28:00.002+03:00

The zine I made with Jaakko Pallasvuo is soon coming out soon on Milano Chow's small press Medium rare.

Is this it?

2009-05-22T17:52:00.007+03:00

When I picture my dream residence I have this image of illustrator Julie Verhoeven in mind. The peach colored walls with her pencil drawings on them. A scan from Face circa 2001.

Looking at this image also makes the Strokes debut album autoplay in my head. Times..