For Women and their Rights

Does reality shape language, or the other way around? Does the answer to previous question make a difference to how language is related to gender equality? Yes it does.

One way of elaborating could be to read what I have copied below: a unique instance of language organized into incredible, terrible beauty and sense by one of my favorite poets.

"What Language Did" by Eavan Boland

The evening was the same as any other.
I came out and stood on the step.
The suburb was closed in the weather

of an early spring and the shallow tips
of washed-out yellows of narcissi
resisted dusk. And crocuses and snowdrops.

I stood there and felt the melancholy
of growing older in such a season,
when all I could be certain of was simply

in this time of fragrance and refrain,
whatever else might flower before the fruit,
and be renewed, I would not. Not again.

A car splashed by in the twilight.
Peat smoke stayed in the windless
air overhead and I might have missed: 

a presence. Suddenly. In the very place
where I would stand in other dusks, and look
to pick out my child from the distance, 

was a shepherdess, her smile cracked,
her arm injured from the mantelpieces
and pastorals where she posed with her crook.

Then I turned and saw in the spaces
of the night sky constellations appear,
one by one, over roof-tops and houses, 

and Cassiopeia trapped: stabbed where
her thigh met her groin and her hand
her glittering wrist, with the pin-point of a star.

And by the road where rain made standing
pools of water underneath cherry trees,
and blossoms swam on their images, 

was a mermaid with invented tresses,
her breasts printed with the salt of it and all
the desolation of the North Sea in her face.

I went nearer. They were disappearing.
Dusk had turned to night but in the air—
did I imagine it?—a voice was saying: 

This is what language did to us. Here
is the wound, the silence, the wretchedness
of tides and hillsides and stars where

we languish in a grammar of sighs,
in the high-minded search for euphony,
in the midnight rhetoric of poesie.

We cannot sweat here. Our skin is icy.
We cannot breed here. Our wombs are empty.
Help us to escape youth and beauty.

Write us out of the poem. Make us human
in cadences of change and mortal pain
and words we can grow old and die in.

I could think about this poem for days without sleep. With it, I am wishing a great and hopeful international Women's Rights Day to everyone, irrespective of gender!

A few more, for those who felt what I feel.

Project D

I tend to be suspicious of all new inventions and technological progress. I can't help it. Whenever I am offered or introduced a new gadget or appliance, I am opposed to it, by default. At the same time, I am eternally enthusiastic about all novel means of communicating and making a connection between people (hence the blog). This is why I am particularly thrilled every time I arrive at something meaningful and with a genuinely personal feel while I am surfing this world wide web of ours.

This week, I was glancing through what was new at Publishing Perspectives, a cool blog itself, when I incidentally spotted a banner for a reading blog: Project D.

Project D is a blog edited by writer, journalist and blogger Dennis Abrams. It is devoted to the reading of four Dostoevsky novels, starting with Crime and Punishment. So convenient! I am already halfway through my Finnish translation, but reading Abrams' carefully gathered and thematized (albeit at times even too detailed) background info is the perfect companion to the reading itself. An added bonus will be the other readers' comments once they start to appear (the first chapters of Part I were only assigned for this weekend).

What better cure for my inherent suspicions than imagining a global readership with their respective copies and translations of for instance Crime and Punishment, reading in their homes and rush hour buses and park benches, and then logging on to something like this blog to share their thoughts.

P. S. If your new year's promise was related to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost instead of Dostoevsky, as my 2012 promise might be, you might enjoy checking out Abrams' previous reading group, The Cork-Lined Room.

2011 Anticipations Vol. 2

Happy this year! Time to add a third line to this blog's year-tracking blogroll... Having experienced a wonderful, high-spirited turn of the year, and consequently caught some kind of a wicked flu to balance the amount of cheerfulness in my life I guess, I'll continue my list of things I'm looking forward to this year. (I've almost beat that flu and the sun is shining brightly right to where I am sitting, so I am most cheerful and expectant again.)

This flu jumped right between me and my gallery tour plans, so I missed that Markus Kåhre's exhibition. Luckily there's still time to catch the other two mentioned in the previous post. Another exhibition that I am very much looking forward to is Terike Haapoja's next solo exhibition in Gallery Kalhama & Piippo, 11.2.-6.3.2011. Her art is truly multidisciplinary, multimedia, and multi-many more things – some of the most insightful works I have encountered in a while. I am not familiar with the works of the coming exhibition, though, but was impressed with her previous exhibition in 2008. As she is preparing her doctorate for the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, I predict there is some continuity in these shows that form major parts of that doctorate. If you want to learn more about Terike Haapoja's work, provided you know Finnish, here is a link to a text about her previous exhibition by critic Otso Kantokorpi; it is the latter text on this page.

A detail from Terike Haapoja's 2008 exhibition Suljettu joukko - avoin kesto. 

Picture from Gallery Forum Box's website.

Okay, that was a lot more advertisement for something I have not yet seen myself, than I usually deem appropriate. Let's hope the exhibition meets my expectations. By the way, in between these Anticipations, I have organized that visit to Turku 2011. In addition to the co-exhibition of Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Isaac Julien, we will see Anna Karenina in Turun kaupunginteatteri - a play I was afraid I would miss as it was sold out for so long. There appears to be tickets available to most of its additional spring shows, and even if you could not find many happenings to your taste in the official Turku 2011 programme for your chosen theatre date, there is still an awful lot of sympathetic places and things to see. If in doubt, do check my older Turku-post, one of the very first posts in this still-searching blog.

What else, 2011? Books? Lately I have had way too little time to read non-research-related literature. With a stack of books from 1866-2010 awaiting, exploring the coming treats in publishing is misguiding at best. Before any newer masterpieces, I intend to get lost in Crime and Punishment (1866) – my current read, in preparation for its dramatization in Ryhmäteatteri in February – and J. G. Farrell's Troubles, a novel depicting the troubled 1919 Ireland, that recently won the "Lost Man Booker prize of 1970" in retrospect. 

I have contemplated reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, labelled among Books of the Year in many an American medium. A fellow novel-devourer says this book is one of the best he's ever read – and he has read plenty – but recommends reading Franzen's previous work Corrections first. I have not been convinced I want to read another white American literary intelligent's woes of the state of the nation and its middle class, especially in such lengths. But this was before I read an essay about Franzen and American avant-gardism in the most recent Parnasso magazine by Tommi Melender. I hold Melender in high regard after reading (this far only) his recent novel Ranskalainen ystävä. Melender does not necessarily hold Freedom in too high a regard: he appears disappointed in its conventionalism, maintaining the novel is built on the same premises as the classics of the 19th century: psychological character depiction and linear plot development, entirely ignoring the inventions of both modernism and postmodernism. The obvious next step in the essay is where he gives me his cue – comparing Freedom to Tolstoy's War and Peace (and only if this is your first or second visit to my blog can you have missed the fact that I admire War and Peace to the point of uncriticalness...). Consequently, I have found the same comparison from the heart of numerous reviews of Franzen's book – apparently there are in fact numerous direct allusions to Tolstoy in the novel (which makes me wonder whether Mr. Melender's argumentation hasn't been slightly superficial?). In any case: I think it has been decided. Must read Freedom (and Corrections?) in 2011.

 Wow, I am afraid that last section on Freedom got out of hand to the point where virtually no-one aside from Franzen or Melender fans has had the stamina to get through it. Better call it a day and proceed from words to action: with the last moments of precious daylight I will return to young Raskolnikov and the last Christmas chocolates. Hopefully, I will return to most works discussed here before we've arrived at 2012.

P. S. I'm very happy to receive other noteworthy suggestions for the 2011 agenda!

P. P. S. Two more things about Freedom: it will be published in Finnish translation by Siltala next fall, and apparently its movie rights have been sold already, too.

2011 Anticipations Vol. 1

Most media like to look back on past highlights today, so I thought I'd look forward into the New Year. 

I haven't got much time on my hands on this last day of 2010, so I'll make it short and concentrate  mostly on the immediate future.

I think I will kick off my 2011 with a small gallery tour on Sunday the 2nd. I want to see at least Ilari Hautamäki's solo exhibition Planet Paint in the gallery of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Kasarmikatu 44), as well as Eija-Liisa Ahtila's new work, the three-channeled installation Marian ilmestys, in gallery Heino. If I have time, I'll try to visit Markus Kåhre's exhibition Pidot in Sculptor. Unless it's already been taken down? Check this at the Sculptor website...yes, Sunday is the last day of the show! Definitely worth visiting, I believe.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila is one of our most renowned artists working with moving image. You should not miss her previous work, Where is where?, either. It will be shown as part of Kiasma's ARS11 in the new exhibition space in Turku, European Capital of Culture from January 16th. Another plan for 2011 is obviously to travel there and see Where is where? again, together with a work from another wonderful artist, Isaac Julien, plus all the other cultural goods that the city will supposedly lay before us.

Once Turku has inspired us to cultural travels, the next destination is naturally Tallinn, also a European Capital of Culture 2011. Comparing websites, I have to hand it to Turku, but as far as actual content goes I have not had a deep enough look yet. I will probably come back to these as the year rolls ahead.

Returning to Helsinki and the more easily reached experiences, I am looking forward to seeing Sofia Coppola's new film Somewhere, even if I've heard the theme of hotel life in a foreign country is growing old with this movie and might pale in comparison to the pretty unforgettable thing Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson got going in Lost in Translation... Still, I think I will prefer this flick over Rare Exports Inc. when next contemplating going to the movies, since I did not have the time to see the latter before Christmas - seems a little less necessary after the holidays, doesn't it?

My time is running out - it already ran out 15 minutes ago; I am forced to call this text vol. 1 and come back to the topic once the year has changed. Staying true to the looking-into-the-future theme, I'll end this with the poster from Somewhere and a few vague thoughts about the summer...

H A P P Y  N E W  Y E A R !  M A K E  I T  A  G O O D  O N E !

Tolstoi - in memoriam

The shortest of notes here, honouring the life, craft and wisdom of Leo Tolstoi  today, when a hundred years minus one day have passed since his death.

A century ago tomorrow, the 82-years-old writer, who had finally followed his aspirations to become a wandering ascetic and left his home, wealth and family – in what must have been some level of delusion, given the harsh Russian winter and his very old age – gave in to pneumonia and passed away in the railway station of Astapovo.

His was an important life for so many generations coming after him. There are few dilemmas or phenomena in life that you cannot contemplate in terms of what you've read from War and Peace.

Post-Love&Anarchy

That's all folks. Rakkautta&Anarkiaa is over, once again. The post-festival feeling is always a classic example of "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".

Luckily we're blessed with Elokuvasyksy. Someone is always showing something good and ambitious. It's still not quite the same for me, though, 'cause only R&A for me equals tradition, which equals a peace of mind and an ease in one's existence.

My R&A 2010:

The Good Heart (Hyvä Sydän). Intriguing and fresh in the beginning, but turned quite predictable once the stage had been set. Enjoyed the way the context was left "timeless" and the message conveyed mostly outside the dialogue.

The Eclipse. I love Ireland, I love literature, so I had to love this film a little. Particularly, I loved Ciarán Hinds in it, as well as the way in which it escaped genre-classifications. Always a welcome feature in this world of categories.

Ciarán Hinds and Iben Hjejle in The Eclipse

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I went to see this alone. Boy, do I wait to meet my Mom tonight so I can finally discuss it with someone! Many scenes progressed way too slow for me, but then again that got me thinking about the different concepts of time - a good topic to continue after seeing Mr. Nobody.

Brotherhood. Danish filmmakers did not let me down this time either. Despite the pretty standard, Shakespearean basic elements, the way love and lust is described between two men has never been this appealing and convincing to me. The film's message is also really important in this brave new world of increasingly popular neo-fascism, "immigration criticism", etc. 

Nothing Personal. A friend gave me tickets to this aesthetically inspiring little piece of work. The two roles are impressively played, but despite the film's general slow pace I think the development of their mutual dynamics was still portrayed somehow too quickly - or then too much was left unsaid for me to really feel I knew how they were feeling. 

(Untitled). I gave this film three stars in the voting, because immediately after seeing it it felt too predictable and elitistic, actually the topic was really good and the execution - the script in particular - where pretty good. I regret the three stars, since it would have been nice to have it run in Finnkino theatres for others to see, too. Look it up if you missed it in R&A!

La Tournée (Kiertue). J'absolument adore Mathieu Amalric. He did a great job in his role here, once again, but as regards direction and script, this movie was a bit of a let-down. I think it missed depth and direction. The ladies were genuinely lovely but as characters they remained pretty shallow, and the theme of an attempted homecoming couldn't carry the movie on alone for two hours. Dommage.

Mr. Nobody. Now this was a movie - The Movie - to my liking. Its complex structure was challenging.  Its larger-than-normal amount of patterns, balanced with strong emotions in the story, really appealed to a semi-neurotic yet romantic mind such as mine.

Rakkautta & Anarkiaa, your loyal friend would like to thank you in the same sincere manner that Mr. Lanerva always thanks the audience (in what always feel like exactly the same words) before the Closing Film, every year!

Adam Goldberg is the artist with the greatest integrity in (Untitled)

P. S. A piece of dialogue from (Untitled) has stuck with me. I'm not sure if it was insightful or not, but from the way I keep thinking about it I think it must have been. At a dinner party someone asks Adam Goldberg, who plays a composer of atonal contemporary music (kicking the bucket and all that, and the pun was certainly intended) "What's the difference between art and commercial art?" and the cool gallerist lady with good intentions answers before him, that "commercial art has never posed a question it could not answer". The script was full of witty insights like this - earlier in the same table conversation Goldberg's character Adrian snaps at someone questioning his atonal music with: "Harmony was created so that capitalists could sell more pianos!"

P. P. S. Obviously that film also pleased me particularly for its choice of a title!

Into Pieces

Street art is reeeeally slowly becoming more and more kosher in Finland. A few legal graffiti fences have been put up, first in the "big" cities and consequently in the neighbouring communities (e.g. Kirkkonummi!).

Sure enough the Stop Töhryille -campaign was an epic waste of money that should have been spent on health care, schools, for the benefit of the elderly (the list goes on) - but we could hope stupidities of that scale are in the past now. Couldn't we?

It sure was a pleasure watching these pieces come to existence in Kalasatama last Saturday.

 EGS

EGS detail

TRAMA

Both pieces, plus countless more, witnessed on the chilly end-of-the-summer Saturday August 28th 2010.

Four more days

Lord almighty, I feel my temperature rising... The FIFA World Cup 2010 will be kicked off in Joburg, South Africa, on June 11th. That is, in four days.

R. W. Johnson wrote, already a while ago, an insightful and informative blog post for the London Reviw of Books blog about the spectacle's currently most potential downsides. His take was quite  appealing to a rigid realist such as myself. Might be a good idea to take a good, well-informed and unbiased look at the games and all they will come to mean before it's on and we'll all get carried away by the greatness and nobility of the sport itself (for that cannot be compromised!).

For those litarate in Finnish I have to add one Messi-related blog post, by Mr. Jari Tervo.  These days one comes across the lemming-like face of Lionel Messi, that Argentinian foot-magician,  pretty much everywhere. Admitteldly he has inspired a lot of things...

From June 11 to July 11 it is rather obvious a good many relationships are risked, while male bonding  explodes globally to become even more commonplace than usual. A certain gentleman recently contemplated out loud, in all seriousness, how many more World Cups he is likely to live to see. I think all this is highly entertaining; both the sport and its socio-psychological side-effects. Let's hope the experience will be a good and entertaining one for South Africa, too.

P. S. Check out the evolution of the World Cup Ball from 1930 to date!

This one's for Louise Bourgeois

A few lines in honour of the original spider woman, sculptor extrodinaire, Ms. Louise Bourgeois, who passed away at the age of 98 on Monday 31 May.

Her life is connected to mine in two somewhat far-fetched ways. First, I have always been utterly intrigued by the spider sculptures she has left behind her around the world, like bizarre footsteps. During my short Ottawa period I used to walk under one many times (see picture below). She named her first spider, which was an ordered work for the opening of Tate Modern in 1999, Maman because it represented something she felt for her own mother. This delicate piece of information leaves me thinking.

There are millions of better pictures available online, but

I wanted to do the right thing and use my own archives.

Check out my  P. P. S. 

My second connection to her is that, being a French woman born in the early 20th century, Bourgeois was a contemporary and fellow Frenchwoman to Simone de Beauvoir, whose Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter I've just started to read. This far I have discovered, due to Ms. Bourgeois' sudden death and the flood of epigrams and articles that have consequently been published, that they both lived remarkably courageous, determined lives. 

The most important thing connecting the two artists is, in my opinion, that they both recognized and often articulated their awareness of the strong impact of early childhood on one's later actions. “Everything I do,” Louise Bourgeois has declared, “was inspired by my early life”, a life overshadowed by her mother's illness and her father's concurrent infidelity.

I'll probably come back to Ms. de Beauvoir once I've finished her memoirs; I dedicate this post to Ms. Louise Bourgeois and her amazing spider sculptures, and make a solemn vow to get to know her art better in the near future.

P. S. Maman is Tate Blog's "Work of the Week" this week, check it out here.

P. P. S. Surfed onto a travelogue with pictures of several Maman spiders around the world. I've stood next to the creatures in Havanna and Ottawa, gazing into where their eyes probably were...

Mr. Adams, I presume?

Thanks again, Yle Areena. 

I never catch TV programmes when they are actually aired these days. Yle is now showing yet another HBO production - I had enthusiastically earmarked it in advance, but then missed its broadcasting: John Adams, a mini-series about the making of the United States of America. So I watched the two first episodes in a row from my computer, and nothing wrong with that.

The series' seven episodes depict the incidents that lead to the declaration of independence of the thirteen British colonies in 1776, via following the life of John Adams, one of the undersigners and America's second president. The first episodes touch upon important events that I think are briefly mentioned even in the Finnish school books, such as the incident that came to be known as "the Boston Teaparty", and introduce all the important characters responsible for the insurrection that lead to 4th of July 1776.

The first two episodes can now be watched from Yle Areena (the first one for only 3 more days!), the third will be aired next Tuesday. Call me nerdy but I do love revising my knowledge of U.S. history by watching Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney in an impressive epoch setting. Besides, the thematics are obviously far from old-fashioned: disagreement between groups of people, leading to only partially controlled violence. We can only wish for this storyline to one day become old-fashioned.

P. S. Despite my soft spot for historical faction, I have to ask: would the modern audience be terribly mislead if for once the set-up and costumes had at least some artificial color in them? The grimness in John Adams is once again pretty tiring.

P. P. S. I have yet to discuss the show with other people, but I know my Mom also finds it extremely good.

P. P. P. S. Now, go watch it!

Festive! (e.g. Inspiration Information @ Flow!)

This turned out to be another reeeeally lengthy post, so what I'll do this time is provide you with an abstract from which you can decide whether you're bothered to read the full text, below. Here you are:

Exciting times! Summer 2010 looks pretty much like this:

Ruisrock: Florence & the Machine! Regina Spektor! 

Ilosaarirock: DJ Shadow! FNM!
Alppipuiston kansanjuhla! Basso Festival?

Provinssirock: Mew, Cypress Hill, Rammstein!

Pori Jazz: Massive Attack! Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings! (Toto?) N.E.R.D.! José James! Gil Scott-Heron! Tori Amos!

Flow Festival: Air! M.I.A.! José James! Jimi Tenor and Tony Allen present: Inspiration Information!

Helsinki Festival: programme TBA May 4th; this far we got Caetano Veloso!

Y mucho mas...

 Allen and Tenor, supposedly pretty inspired

On to the full text:

It must be April! Every week comes around with new festival line-up publications: the Finnish summer is slowly revealing its 2010 form, and it's looking mighty fine.

Ruisrock is already known to host, once again, The Sounds, with a bunch of other Swedish sensations, as well as the lovely indie ladies Regina Spektor and Florence and the Machine, plus a heavy load of heavy and the cream of the Finnish pop crop. Also Ilosaari and Provinssi have come out from this year's closet, hosting bands such as DJ Shadow, Faith No More, and Bad Religion (in Joensuu), and Mew, Cypress Hill, and Rammstein among many others (in Seinäjoki). Not bad, Finland.

Risto at Ruisrock 2009

One particularly blaaah day in the library last week got a very welcome new direction when I noticed that Pori Jazz has announced its entire programme. Thanks to the new creative management (the catch-all guys Tuomas Kallio and Teppo Mäkynen, with Markus Partanen), it's simply awesome! The past few years have not been too inspiring, but now a change came with a vengeance. Old Pori Jazz regulars (myself included) seem to be pretty excited again. The programme as a whole is not dedicated solely for the jazz purists this year either, though. There are quality acts from several fields of rhytm music in good proportions and impressive variety.

I have already bought a ticket to the joint Kirjurinluoto afternoon of Massive Attack, N.E.R.D., and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Uncanny! That's 24 July; and if after Kirjurinluoto we still got some stamina, nothing would be sweeter than José James and Timo Lassy at the LP-fortysomething club the same night. And Gil Scott-Heron plays there the night before! Many other excellent acts in the line-up, too. And then they have Toto, a special treat for the corruption guests behaving badly in their casual jackets at the VIP tent I believe.

Speaking of José James and Timo Lassy; there should be no need to feel blue should we miss them in Pori, because - thank you again Tuomas Kallio - they will also be playing in our own Flow Festival, Helsinki's new pet event, in mid-August. The three-day urban festival published its first  list of artists today, among them such treats as the aforementioned dynamic duo with an orchestra, the now-legendary French twosome Air, rising star M.I.A., Sigur Ros's vocalist Jónsi, and a bunch of street-cred names that a mainstreamist such as myself does not yet recognize - hello Spotify! Flow has already published its tentative Spotify teaser list, in fact. Hear it out, here!

 Picture says all - Flow 2009

And what do you know: two living legends Jimi Tenor and Tony Allen will enlighten Flow with their collaboration project Inspiration Information! Great title! Grrrreat sounds! I'm very pleased. Watch & listen to a preview here. Looking back into last summer, my Flow memories are among the fondest: Jenny Wilson with the sun in her eyes and ours, Top Billin' partying in the enormous Voimala hall, midnight dances by Itäväylä, brunching together before the next day, Lily Allen with the aching backside, skumppa-breaks with the girls and then some more sun & music...ah!

Helsinki Festival a.k.a. Helsingin juhlaviikot, of which Flow forms an independent part, publishes its extensive programme on May 4th - can't wait for that either! A few advance concerts have already been announced (Caetano Veloso, meu amor!). Looks like there's no need to step outside national borders this summer. If you want to take this advice to unnecessary extremes, you can now even invite the festival into your livingroom! Act fast, though, by applying here.

 Recognize me?

If, by contrast, you're badly yearning for a foreign experience, there's always Roskilde, the countless UK festivals, Way out West, and others in Sweden - apparently they (the Swedes) are not organizing the winner of the lamest name competition, Where the Action Is festival this year though. Despite the name I have heard it was super last year, hosting all those golden artists that couldn't be bothered to cross the bay to Finland. 

Well, that particular story of our lives is at least partly in the past now, as you could see from all the names listed in this post! Hurra och heja Finland, och hjärtligen välkommen sommaren 2010!

P.S. Best not forget the lower-key, free and pleasant park happenings around Helsinki either. ELMU ry. will be back in Alppipuisto in July with I Was A Teenage Satan Worshipper, Kiki Pau, and others. So far, I've only found info on this Kansanjuhla in Facebook. We're hoping that the people at Basso.fi are just late announcers (as they were last year, too), and that we'll have another Basso Festival in Koff park, too.

P.P.S. This was just a quick overview of the biggest events - you are free and very welcome to list smaller scale events here, those that we should also remember to mark in our calendars and get excited over!?

Choke on it!

Good old Eyjafjallajökull is providing us a sneak peak of who it is exactly that we're messing around with. Our skies are invaded by an ash cloud who threatens to stay there indefinately. The audacity of that thing! Well, now both those who have had to cancel their travel plans and everyone else happening to be in Helsinki this weekend have the opportunity to attend the awkwardly named Helsinki Woman Film Festival, a.k.a. Artisokka!

From today until Sunday night, high-rated movies made by wise women are showed at Bio Rex. If you for instance have not yet seen The Hurt Locker, Sunday 8.15 pm is your chance (and mine). Tomorrow, on Saturday, my choice might be Drew Barrymore's first direction Roller Girl / Whip It, and I'm confident Pipilotti Rist's Pepperminta on Sunday afternoon is a real treat!

Here's to a) Mother Nature, and b) independent film festivals!

A Thousand Times (Good Morning)

Oh tidings of comfort and joy! This morning my blog is 4 clicks away from having hosted a thousand guests! You might not have any idea how happy I am for that. I'll celebrate by playing my new-ish Midlake: The Courage of Others vinyl extra loud. It was finally carried home by the mailman after a fair wait a while ago. Remind me to write that post about online vinyl shopping in the near future; I think I'll do it by interviewing a certain expert dear to me.

My boyfriend recently made a pretty accurate observation: I like what he calls "beard music". Midlake, The National, Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes all sound like (and many of them are, too) music made by men with thick and messy beards. Should I analyze this further? Probably not.

 Sweet Beard Music

But with Midlake, especially Acts of Man that is at least currently the first song on the Myspace playlist, I want to  THANK ALL OF YOU loyal and new visitors so much for coming, and promise I'll try to keep up and improve my blogging.

"Great are the sounds of all that live / And all that man can hold..."

On the Streets of...

Here's a blog post the concept of which is copied (w/ permission) from Liisa Mirjami's beautiful 00530 Helsinki blog. Seeing her post made me go nostalgic about my past travels, and the street styles (not the Hel Looks kind!) I've documented on them.

My favorite sticker. Berlin, Rosenthaler Platz, 2009.

Immigrant ostalgia? Toronto, 2006.

Lifesize loving pandas in a Berlin wall, 2009.

Forever growing downtown Bangkok, 2009.

Hasidic themes in Marais, Paris, 2008.

I've witnessed the traces of painter-gone-fashion-designer Ms. Claw in a couple of cities, not "yet" in Finland. That day might not come, but speaking of Claw and graffiti, check out the documentary Infamy in which she and a couple of other painters are properly introduced. It was screened a couple of years ago at HIFF, and if I remember correctly it was a fun film to watch.

Claw in Berlin, 2009.

And home town NYC, 2008.

Hmmm-kay, I think I'm close to exceeding the limits of reader-friendly amount of pictures one above another, I'll stop here for now. I might have to publish an entirely other post on the Tats Cru sightings from New York, 2008. They're so skillful, albeit eventually their style is a bit too clean to my taste, missing the rawness I for some reason appreciate. But thumbs up I'd get the chance to go scout for fresh Tats pieces in NYC soon, so I'll save that collection for later.

Liisa Mirjami is blessed with a real fresh touch with her camera,  don't forget to check her  awesome blog. Following her example on this topic was a bit of an anti-climax, but lately I've been wanting to post some of my own photos instead of using ones taken by other people. Despite the vague moral guidelines on picture borrowing I follow, it still sometimes feels sketchy, and definitely very impersonal. I'll try and keep my camera with me more often in the future and document the things I am going to write about. (Would be heaps easier if only I knew it already by the time I see it!)

These heartsick babies grew by quite a few buildings

in Ottawa, 2006. Hopefully still do.

P. S. One thing I'd sure like like like to spot from Helsinki street sides is LM's infamous dog sticker!

Not just any of those 364 days

 This charming opening picture is from the website of The Feminist Association Unioni

Next Monday is the International Women's Day. I've found I have two opinions that are seemingly opposed but in reality actually quite well in line.

Brought up to embrace the smart, the bright, the right kind of world view and notion of equality, and having rolled the gender questions around in many different contexts, I am genuinely happy that such a tradition exists. But at the same time I think we might be ready to try on Equality 2.0, where men would get their own day, too. That's equality for you, ladies and gentlemen. Don't you agree?

Possibly the coolest cartoonist in the world is Swedish Nina Hemmingsson (check her Myspace). In this picture: "Welcome to today's seminar, surely we'll proceed just like we usually do, so that you with penises get to speak a little more, while you without one get interrupted more often. Allrighty, let's roll."

Like the DocPoint film selection this year already kind of  showed, this decade it might be Miesten vuoro, the men's turn. And don't you go thinking now that I am ignoring the age-old oppression and gender inequality which comes as close to being a fact as it is possible for any historical material - but it's hardly the bulk of today's men that are to be blamed? By now, everyone should get treated in exactly the same way as anyone else, irrespective of their gender or sexual orientation. I want equality and I want it in everything, full stop.

While we keep that in mind, there's no reason not to celebrate Women's Day as a gained benefit of sorts.  This goes for all human kind - no gender reservations. Here are a few suggestions:

Disney's freshest,  The Princess and the Frog, with original voices of course. The fact that they are showing it at 9pm proves my point: they are movies for the entire family, whether you already have one or not is utterly irrelevant!  I've heard that this one - quite unsurprisingly coinciding with the industry's first African-American heroine - has all that jazz in it, spicing up the eternal moral lesson.

Projektori theatre festival in Q-teatteri; on Monday you can watch Ari-Pekka Lahti's and  Juha Luukkonen's play Ihmeellinen armo ('the amazing grace'). Allusion to Women's Day might be a bit far-fetched, but they only show the festival productions three times per play, so it's time to act.

Them Bitter Virgins

For people of leisure: nothing fits the day's agenda better than the wonderful cabaret ensemble Kitkerät Neitsyet (the Bitter Virgins) with their special Women's Day programme in Itäkeskus' Stoa, at 1pm.

Since Monday nights usually don't equal a vibrant gig night, the evening could perhaps be best spent in the company of a good book. To celebrate the day's occasion, I encourage everyone to find a copy of one of the first emancipated works of feminist fiction, Kate Chopin's The Awakening from 1899 (!) is a superb work of fiction that has finally been translated also into Finnish (Herääminen, published by Faros).

If you'd rather flip through something that's doable with a shorter-to-short attention span, and if you're fluent in Finnish, have a look at the web version of Tulva, a kick-ass magazine published by The Feminist Association Unioni.

And who knows, some of the attitude might stick beyond midnight! Have an excellent Women's Day, everyone!

  Rokkia, rouvat!

  Tulva's list of women
  with rock and roll.

Reality check, check!

So I missed all the film festivals in November, being abroad. All the more reason to get hyped up about DocPoint, the documentary film festival in the end of the month (Jan 26-31). It is, I believe, Finland's biggest documentary festival, and confusingly extensive this year.

I plan to enthuse over it a little now. Let's start with the trailer. The funniest one is in Finnish, watch it here. The lines go something like: "You, cashier in Kamppi. Why did you wish me 'good day' when it was already evening? How about a little attentiveness!?"

DocPoint 2010 screens films in 16 different seria, which seems a little exaggerated. They have however found relevant commentators for each series, which probably explains the decision. You can browse the seria, movies and expert articles on the programme page.

The Two Horses of Genghis Khan (Mongolia/Germany) is screened in

the Winners and Bestsellers series

We'll review the films later; what's urgent now is to practice some skillful schedule planning in order to avoid overlaps. Six days is not that long a time, especially when in addition to the films the festival features numerous other related events and happenings. (And some of us go to work, too.)

Many of the related events are held in English, including most of the Meet the Directors hours at Painobaari, 6-7 pm from Wednesday to Saturday. You can also step inside the Story Tent in front of Kiasma Museum of Friday, and dancing some tango, humppa and jenkka to the live music of the super sympathetic Vallilan Tango at the festival's opening club on Tuesday comes oh-so-highly recommended!

Among the likely more original screenings of the festival is Robert J. Flaherty's 1925 documentary Moana, to which his daughter Monica has created the sound environment as late as in 1981, based on her childhood memories from the Samoa island on which the documentary was shot.

Other must-sees, for me, include Finnish Virpi Suutari's Auf Wiedersehen Finnland, and the opening film Steam of Life ('Miesten vuoro'), which shows us Finnish men in sauna - can you get any closer to the core? Luckily it's subtitled so that non-Finnish speakers can also get the presumably insightful lesson. Male friends are very enthusiastic about the Swiss-Belgian football documentary Kill the Referee. I could list a hundred more interesting films, but you might as well browse through them by yourself, since we all have our individual interests.

(All the films I've mentioned, as well as most of the others, are subtitled in English.)

It's not like I haven't wondered myself: How does it really feel to have that

much "power"? Are they scared, do they live behind gates and control

cameras? Kill the Referee is screened on Thursday and Saturday.

And finally, a crucial piece of information: the web sale of tickets opens on Monday the 18th. Don't be late, as most films only have one screening and the expected hits two at most.

See you in the intimate dark of the theater; hopefully some reviews after the festival will appear in the shape of blog comments, and I'll try and share my experiences in early February as well.

Oh the Surface, the Dimensions

While Mr. Picasso is still looming somewhere in the near future, waiting for the minimum requirements of the perfect 3 hours all to myself and the consequent five or so hours for reporting the experience here in my blog, I had the chance to walk among a lot of painting the other day.

For a few more weeks, you see, the ground floor or the Amos Anderson Art Museum will continue to be home to Gottberg-Kåhre Project, a most beautiful and captivating piece - or pieces - of art. A Saturday morning before noon is always a good time to visit museums in order to avoid the crowds. With the Gottberg-Kåhre project, I’d say that avoidance was pretty much a precondition for grasping the installation in its entirety. There is no point in describing the experience with facts, as that would equal a spoiler for anyone still planning on visiting; suffice it to say it is an excellent example of interdisciplinary art collaboration between a painter (Susanne Gottberg) and a sculptor, (Markus Kåhre) something that invites the audience to consider the very fundamental qualities of each medium: dimensions of sculpture, surface of painting. Ah. I will have to go again before it closes; I only heard after we had left the museum that my companion spotted several, meaningful things that I had not, despite unhurried and careful observation, noticed.

Once you’re inside the museum, it’s well worth the while to take the elevator up to the top floors that still contain much of Mr. Anderson’s home décor, together with paintings and sculpture from the turn of the 20th century onwards - you’ll spot plenty of Magnus Enckell, the occasional Helene Schjerfbeck, and many others, and all this will further nourish your recent contemplations on painting and sculpture as traditional yet contemporary media - it is quite an excellent combination really! And further fulfilled with a) the middle floors’ exhibition ‘Modernin kahdet kasvot’, a collection of Finnish modern art, curated by Timo Valjakka, and b) finally the refreshing, colourful and often seemingly abstract contemporary paintings (and plastic arts) by artists such as Anna Retulainen, Liisa Lounila and others, all recent purchases to the Museum’s permanent collections, exhibited on the second floor.

What made my Saturday even fuller, was an additional visit to Gallery Heino, where Samuli Heimonen’s saturnine paintings were shown. All but one had already been bought, even if the exhibition “Kaikessa on murtumansa” (from L. Cohen’s line “There’s a crack in everything/---”) is on until the 25th of October. I really liked many of the paintings, such as the dog embraced with several hands, or the bird that is held in someone's hand, whereas others gave me an uneasy feeling I would not like to get in my living room - especially the biggest painting, Laulu, in which a stranded seal is singing a melancholy tune from bottom of its lungs. Or the eerie Yhteinen historia (if I remember the name correctly), in which two people standing on thin ice become the feet of an enormous bat, hanging upside down below the surface. That really made me shiver.

Generally, I am a big fan of ‘new’ media such as moving image and site-specific art, too, but this Painting Saturday somehow came to mean more than the sum of the paintings I saw. The kick-off with Gottberg-Kåhre Project opened my thoughts to the elaboration of light, surface, colours and dimensions, therefore everything that followed was like a new, relevant piece of information. I strongly recommend that whenever you go see an exhibition or a work - make sure you see something else immediately after that, too! If you’re not sure what to see right now, I would go to the brand new Ars Fennica exhibition in Kiasma, to the aforementioned exhibitions in Amos and Heino, and probably to Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary to see the works of Antti Ruuhela (as I’ve been told he is What’s Hot Right Now).

And, honestly, what could be better than wandering around galleries and museums on an unhurried Saturday, sipping some sparkling wine in museum cafés in between? You tell me that.

These friends are an allusion to Picasso, but can anyone tell me how?

My kind of Turku, and it's in English!

Arjen kiinnityttyä syksyn myötä niin tiiviisti tänne Helsinkiin, ajattelin jatkaa blogissa nostalgiaosastolla ja fiilistellä vielä yhtä Itämeren satamakaupunkia. Ja koska tarkoituksenani on tehdä tästä blogista kaksikielinen, olkoon tämä ensimmäinen tekstini jonka kirjoitankin englanniksi. Sanoista sanoihin:

Hello and welcome to my blog Inspiration Information, English-speaking friends and strangers! As I noted above, my idea has been to publish this blog in both Finnish and English, depending on the topic and my activity levels on time of writing. In the earlier note (Note? Or? I am very insecure in my English blogger vocabulary, I notice) I already had an "international" topic, if you will, as I was sharing my nostalgy for the Tallinn Museum of Modern Art KUMU. Unfortunately times of day were such that I couldn't deliver in English (not sure I should have said anything in Finnish either...).

Now I'm back, all energetic and with a new, borderline international topic, the same amount of nostalgy and another Baltic Sea Port destination: the city of Turku!

Rather than an expert's report, this note will be a little travel diary in retrospect, of my most recent trip to our previous capital (until 1812) - now, thanks to the new highway (Cheers Mr. Kanerva!), only 1,5 hrs from Helsinki!

In August, I was recovering from an action-packed and tad stressful week around a certain beaaauuutiful wedding. Narrowing my social contacts to my most closest ones I was driving around Western Finland and its archipelago. After a few nights we wound up in Turku (with a really cheap hotel room from City Börs!), our old friend.

I need to rewind here a little, because it is absolutely necessary that all the fine people and congenial readers who are taking their time to read my blog know about the adorable place we stayed in before Turku: Faffas B&B on Korppoo island, two big bridges and two car ferry rides from the mainland. If you're looking for a weekend getaway or a stop during summer cruising, I suggest you take a room OR a shed (see picture) here. Their sauna is awesome and I'm pretty sure the BBQ shed and sunflower field work pretty well until late autumn. 

 Faffas, our cute little aitta

You can try and connect Faffas to a larger Saariston rengastie (the archipelago route) plan. We had bad luck because the ferry from Nauvo, via the infamous Seili island to Rymättylä, could not take its route that day due to "technical difficulties." So we had to proceed by land to

Turku. Here follows a list of what I've found fun, recommendable and/or inspiring in the city:

- Best things first: Club Dynamo has a good thing going on almost every night I guess, with various live acts and theme clubs (such as the C-Cassette Club! I was once in a C-Cassette Party...). As it happened, Dynamo's Levyraati, returned from summer break on the Thursday we were there. Which was (super) nice. The deal is: one Thursday each month, club clientele brings CDs, MP3s (and vinyls I think?), really good and really crappy, out of which the dj picks at least 10 songs which are then played and rated one by one by a 5-member panel, interviewed by the Dynamo host. I don't know about regular members, but on this August Thursday the panel was formed with dj Jori Hulkkonen, singer-songwriter Samae Koskinen, this producer man of Ilmiö-festari, and two ladies whose names we missed.

Levyraati @ Dynamo

Music played included some sketchy 80s Finnish Rap, the new Phoenix single, something heavy, the Finnish fresh-and-hot Vuk, and one nice curiosity from Kid Hytönen. The winner of them all was a recent, really pleasant acquaintance who seduced all of Dynamo: gorgeous Bill Callahan got the highest score from almost everyone, including majority of the audience (who also get to vote - fun!). Listen to him and weep - you cannot NOT click this link. Seriously. His album Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, to me, is one of my most welcome new iPod inhabitants. 

The next Dynamo Levyraati will be held on Oct 7th. With panel members such as Kauko Röyhkä! Makes me wanna just go and forget all my duties (oh yeah)...

- Before Dynamo, we (and half of the crowd who went to Dynamo later) were in Bar Kuka, the name inspired I think by The Who although it wasn't manifested in their atmosphere or decor, except for the one lamp with the band's logo in it. We sat on the tiny terrace (in Turku the terraces stay open for longer, too!) before hearing adorable singing from inside. This girl called Vilja (in the distance in the picture) was singing old jazz classics and pop, accompanied by an acoustic guitar played, apparently, by a guy called Partamies. I know nothing more of Vilja, but she really touched me!

- After Dynamo, a local "friend" took us (once again) to Klubi, where we got to hear the last songs of a Swedish trucker rock (?) band, name of which I've forgotten. Klubi is a totally okay place to be in; there's three different floors, out of which the downstairs bar called Kolo is most to my liking (mind your step though).

- Our culinary Turku experiences this time 'round included Panini, which has never let us down (pizzas, salads and the beef panini, pictured, all nam nam. And the desserts too!). The biggest kebab roll I've ever seen, not mention tried to down, was purchased from the joint opposite Hotel Hamburger Börs.

What else, Turku? 

* Visit the medieval Turku Castle. 

* Check out brand new architecture (plus the news and your e-mails) in the City library, just off the market square. Very cozy & lively!

* Browse the myriad local designers' shops and boutiques - I love everything I've seen from KUI design, for instance.

* Into Arts? There is the impressive up-on-the-hill building of Turku Art Museum, which despite it's relatively small size had many memorable and interesting works when I last visited. Also, it doesn't leave you exhausted. Might have energy left for Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, too. Oh yes and the Wäinö Aaltonen museum.

*Act local and spend endless evenings drinking beer in the river boats along the Aura river. At least that's my impression. The name "Donna" tends to come up a lot.

*If it happens to be the first weekend of July, go to Ruisrock. If it's late July, maybe Turku Modern?

Okay, it's starting to seem like this is another blog text that I can't bring myself to finish. So I'll gather up some indifference and just do it.

One P.S. is allowed: I'm pretty sure loads and loads of other things are bubbling under the surface, as Turku will be a European Capital of Culture in 2011. Looking forward to it!