gossip

To observe, analyse and then what? What changes between people? Power relations, who wins and who loses?

| Henna Timanttimetsä

To be afraid of falling off the edge, of being left outside, any kind of fear there may be that is terrifying and paralyzing. If one is not aware that being afraid is one of the most central issues to grab and learn to know why and what it is all about.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
Fear for a woman and for a child is an everyday issue. We must be careful because there are dangers but we cannot live in fear. Danger is a sharp edge, falling down, sudden accident, a crash, an explosion, an attack, a stalker, a stranger, unknown, losing honor. Where are they those who threaten, what are they, those scary monsters, threatening future prospects, masked and armed enemies who hate? A black cloud, radiation, cancer, illness, losing one’s mind, losing friends, losing a job, losing hope, losing everything there is to lose. Fear in media fed to us is there for a reason, fear the emotion is dictating largely how we act and react, what we see and don’t see, how we feel and are allowed to feel. What happens next, what should we think and do. What are we afraid of and why, there is the safe inside space and the unsafe outside space, there is fear of life unlived, fear of death, fear of shame, being shamed and ashamed, fear of hurt, of losing, being forgotten and left aside, stomped down. There are so many ways to be afraid, how we keep silent, go with the crowd, tremble, stumble, stutter, shiver, feel frozen of fear, panic, scream, try to escape, run, go out of breath, don’t want to face the things that frighten us, how we show fear we must not show but we sweat, how we inflict fear, spread fear and terror, keep people in fear for their lives because everything is uncertain. To rule with fear is to bring horror for your people. One can be fearless when one is tired of being afraid, constant fearing does not make things change, to be brave and do whatever you think you can you should do, maybe little hesitant thinking what will others think, what will be thought of me when I do this, fear of being judged and abandoned, labelled, bullied. Can we smell fear?
 

 

Art hires bullies and incompetence: my well-educated analysis which is based on experience. Experience is bad which I have been wondering how I am so unlucky, or there truly is something seriously wrong but not enough leverage to make that needed change. Some parties do not look for change in art because stagnant state of things works better for them.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

When one first begins studying sculpting and your teacher is sexist chauvinist, strongly biased male to whom pedagogy seems to be an unknown concept, one gets a pretty good idea of what to expect when one graduates. So it all is educational after all. There are no illusions whatsoever of what lies ahead and how slowly things change in the arts, which hugely relies on tradition, what comes to gender roles, social and career mobility, position and power of institutions and money, what is good art, what can be shown and said. Mostly art looks back so keenly because it likes the male heroes. Needless to say I have argued and questioned a lot at art school and was deeply unliked because of that. Old fashioned are also ways to do business, put up exhibitions, funding, how artists and artistry are seen and treated, how much there is preconception and thinking you know even when you do not know shit. That is of course when you need the consultants. You can always rely on knowledge of a consultant but artist is an underdog if he or she is not well-known and well-networked. What else is there other than self-interest and all one can do is work for only one’s own benefit, why else do it. Business in which one has to be an expert and know a lot there are many doing the work who do not have the needed capabilities: understanding, courage and knowledge, capabilities to spark change, unbiased, only talk is what happens, which does not change anything, just like politicians do.

As curious as it sounds when you start looking at the issue of what kind of people are drawn to business of art, it could not be more clear: it is made to those who strive to win, be best at posing or at least look like they are good at something, mostly the latter. The importance of image cannot be emphasized enough. To work in art you have to have a big ego to stand behind your work, be confident enough to stretch as far as possible with ideas of your own, try out ideas which you believe in and very often only you, fail or succeed, and accepting the result to move on with all the enthusiasm possible. What kinds of results we accept as a community and in what kind of environment we want to work plays a big part of how to choose one’s perspective, on which side to stand and look into the scene where one is to create, be creative. How creative is the art world? What is the scene where art is shown or made to exist and why is it so narrow and unwelcoming? It is not new that narcissism is a regular trait for artists and in the arts in general and need to be admired for one’s position, networks and art must be one thing probably. All want to have the fame, which is one thing essential in art, admiration, grandiose, infinity, eternal art and eternal unforgettable artists, heroes. Artists are admired when they get fame and fortune. Fame is much talked about as it is the gold pot which might be found when one is talented and lucky enough. What is luck, how one gets lucky and what is part of talent there? It is a weird business where money circulates, art gets centered to certain places and artists have to be presented in certain places to have a name, be seen by right people and be noticed within the system. So to be stepped over is not irregular, to be sexually harassed either, minimised, discriminated, talked about in ill manner happens regularly. There are things to be expected but still they strike always as surprise because one wants to believe in kindness and good intentions. Cynicism is the first impression I get, always. It is no wonder, I am always up against a crowd of fanatics who think they know better and are better because art is about finding the truth, being good and admired, and those who are on pedestals think, they have found it and are deserving of their status.

There are those who like to repeat over and over again one idea, imprint it where ever they can because it is theirs and it represents the good they have come up with, themselves, something unchangeable, an era, an -ism, history, tradition, spectacle, experience after which tourists are expected to travel and spend money for. When we starve the idea of art into movable modules that function as branded palaces for money, it is art for money and art for business’ sake. It is tourism that dictates and the tourist is offered an art awe grandiose to witness and experience, remember, photograph, be educated by. An art awe is.., sensation, uplifting, knowledge, learning, the act of looking and feeling the once in a life experience, time to touch, something grand again, special, new or old and spectacular, always bigger and more expensive. To find the spectacular it has to be imported. Interesting is when new art is made it often is made in the marginal and by those who have rebelled the establishment, education, hierarchy and traditions, those who have made the most interesting art and have had the lasting changing impact on art are the dissidents. Always there is a clash and crush necessary for that necessary change to happen. The procedure of producing art is machinery of media coverage, expensiveness, size, names, what catches the eye, mind and heart. To preserve quality and process of the creating progress and the new which can be exciting, cynicism is not good at all.

Artist, captor of light http://www.words-to-use.com/words/art/

Facial expression

| Henna Timanttimetsä
How close can you get to another person? How close to someone is it possible to be, is there a limit of closeness when there is no space in between? When will you suffocate for being so close that you cannot breath?
What do you know of anyone? How well do you know yourself?

Finding honor

| Henna Timanttimetsä
When we find honor via other people through what they are and mean to us we see other people as extensions to us, parts of us that are elementary but controllable ones. When what other people represent as wholes or just parts that fill the whole of you how whole are you?  When to bring honor is master-subject relationship, tyranny, ownership of slaves kind of relationship, what kind of honor is there and how easily it can be put to dirt. Honor which is taken away and put to dirt must be cleaned, revenged, suffered for and for many people honor is found only through suffering, hurt and pain. To have no honor is a stigma and people with no honor for whom that state is given which is strongly dictated by society and community are usually lost people. When property is source of honor and that property does everything that is expected of it honor is very short-lived and easily lost, pride is to have that relationship with property unchanged, property following plan that is given for it because there is no other way to live. To dishonor is to break something that should not be broken all happening in life must happen within rules that are deemed codes for living unchangeable, solid and holy. When there is an institution which has all power to give life and take it, it has taken place of god, doing work that has been taken from god, thinking this position is given by god for a reason and this power cannot be questioned, taken away or rebelled against because it is good and righteousness. When children rebel against their parents it is mostly seen as dishonoring and bad behavior, bad judgement and wrong against an institution. Our relationship to our parents is juggling between whether to do what they want or what we want, when we become aware of power we have over our own lives and bodies and often parents see those bodies they have given life to as their possessions.
Family and parents are those who in many parts of the world have absolute authority over their children especially girls. Though it is common still everywhere that parents guide their children in the direction chosen by the parents themselves pressuring career choice in making money, status and name, having grandchildren, making money to buy a standard of living, doing things that parents see proper to do in life and as honorable things to do continuing ready-made paths of living and way of life in which certain objects and signs of success belong. To fail is to do the opposite. It is to disagree, disapprove and that alone can be disrespect too much to take. To honor is to be honorable in the eyes of the rest, of those who are comparing and to whom we compare, why else honor would exist as strongly as it does. We feel deeply ashamed and can be shamed in front of other people when we do what is seen shameful, disrespectful in a community braking rules and traditions, hierarchy and authority jeopardized. To disrespect is to take power and find power of oneself, to understand that there is no honor in doing only what is expected of you. Of course there is disrespect which has no honor and that is disrespecting human rights, disrespecting dignity, disrespecting authority to self and anyone’s autonomy to know what one can do in life. How to find dignity when it is almost undignified and a burden to be born a girl? When dignity is to do what you are told to do and nothing else.

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2016/02/29/3754753/pakistan-honor/ ”Rafia Asim of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told ThinkProgress last year that her organization receives information about an average of 30 “honor killings” a month across just over one third of the country’s districts.”

Interesting talk by Esther Perel: adultery and infidelity, for anyone who has ever loved.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
This is my stand: I am not for betrayal but when I am betrayed I betray you. Quite brutal don’t you think?

 

The Gossip is solid proof and enjoyable one. It is deadly and vicious aimed only to cause hurt and loss by those who speak it forward. My aim has been to reflect you to yourselves and to those watching.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Gossip is the spectacle of our time, of any time. It is the destruction and decay of the art world made visible. When word spreads this fast and in this magnitude to paint black one person it is evidence of a bubble existing and relations between people who aim to preserve self-interests, tale of art life in a bubble which serves the few of those inside, suspicion and contempt against the different and someone who is seen as less. Art world does not serve art or artists. Artists who think so serve interests of theirs only and the system that does not seek change as it thinks it is perfect. World where self-promotion and greed shine is a dead world already. Justification would be very interesting to hear as you obviously see someone like me garbage who can be completely trashed. Gossip continued the trashing that had already began as I heard what people had talked about me, people whom I had not even met. How an image of an artist and a woman lives on in talk and creates her public image which in its way makes her in the art world. Art is seen the undeniable good, fighter against ill, social rot, ugliness and discrimination, at least for some the ideal is true. Contradictions and simple mistakes in thinking shine through. You see it?

In this image it is interesting to reflect the world of how artists are seen in general as there is contempt inside there is a lot of it outside. As from where I come from arts is done by distant and weird people who are more or less mentally ill, drink a lot, live a messy life etc. All kinds of images live on, any ideas there are of artists are kept alive just to keep arts distant because it is not understood nor wanted because it is something disturbing, disturbing balance of what is seen as good, good to picture, good to like, what is seen as beautiful and worth while to depict. To be a great artist is to be legitimized inside by legitimized people with position and only great artists have the right to be artists. For an artist who is female and has contradicting questioning thoughts it is a complex field of struggle, mostly struggle against prejudice, a struggle to be heard and make lasting change of how people think and what is art for.

Only thing I am surprised is how fast and wide word has spread. Viciousness nor cynicism do not surprise me in any way. Here comes the sun and it will burn you. See I understand you way better than you think. That is your flaw, underestimation and arrogance, you do not think much of someone like me. Someone like me, who is that? Someone who looks like me, someone you heard a gossip about?

Appearance oriented world and can it be fixed.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
World is to be fixed in a manner that women and men whatever they may look like would be appreciated for their personas, their work, for themselves as whole individuals.

How does this happen this fixing, would of course be a matter of conscious learning and acknowledging priorities. What do we appreciate in people and what they do, what is important to pay attention to. If our priorities are looks, posing, clothes and accessories, possessions etc. we can complement people for those things and they can probably feel good about themselves for a while. This kind of situation is the one to pay attention to for the reason of what do we value in other people. If you are about to compliment an artist, talk about the work of that artist, art in general, or scientist who is a woman, it is absolutely vital to pay attention to the work of that person. I myself do not like to pose in front of my work which is usually asked for an artist to do. I like to talk about issues concerning my work and why I do what I do. It is a strange way to present art as a trophy and an artist on pedestal. Such is a relic of a culture which I wish to be changed. Yes people want to know what the artist looks like, maybe we could start change that culture of adoring an image of a person. It is difficult to explain why this is important otherwise than via personal experience where me as a woman artist am not acknowledged as an artist because of my work, which for me is the most important thing I do in my life. This is also difficult to understand as you do not know me and I am not going to tell you my history, but when I tell you that my work is my most precious thing should believe it. When you want to compliment my photographs do not compliment my camera. You do not compliment my pencil for my drawings, I hope you do not. It is a conscious decision that you make to what things you pay attention and think other should pay attention to too.

So when I say I do not wish to be photographed, don’t argue and say that all artists do this and we do this way as it is always done this way. I have my way, you respecting that I appreciate. All other artists do what fuck they like obviously.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/10/compliments-tinder-charlotte-proudman-offended?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

Just wondering the amount of stimulation and noise needed to have an impact and get noticed. What is interesting and why.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
Yes it is cacophony the media presents before us and why wouldn’t it (should it continue to make it more over the top with stimulus that in the end result is numbing for us to truly understand the insignificance of information today). Interesting is what is left untold, what is marketing and what is abuse of space for selling things, selling lifestyles and junk, what is pushed to our faces for us to adopt the already exploded package. There is no limit because we have to make a living, we have to do something, we have to stay connected and interested in what we are given as well as interesting, we have to stay up to date, know what is going on, what we should be and look like. And still we don’t know what is going on.
How do we define what is good, what is stimulating and interesting content seems to be extremely shallow straight forward line and have a body of well toned entertainer whom all wish to look like, so we work for it at Times Square (vomit freely, this is the place to do it). Thank you. Time well spent.
Madonna’s Trainer Reveals Her Workout Secrets, tick tock time goes by