I never stop wondering. Curiosity attracts me. The kind of curiosity of how we get made, curiosity towards the world, what is it and how it works, keeps making itself. Desire to know has never left me nor has desire to push myself as far as I can. It is the most pleasurable feeling to learn to know what I can do and learn. Me, the small me.
Distance to those unworthy, to the garbage, to those who are to be forgotten and unspoken of. Distance to foul, to smelly, to politics, to difficulty, to hunger, to trouble, to suffering, to death, to murder: distance can be silent killing, denial and horror in front of life and cruelty of man. To make a gap between clean and dirty in order not to be infected, exposed nor influenced by: not to change. Distance is to dream the far away land, to dream something to find out of reach, something unexpected and new. It is not understanding, something that is incomprehensible and for some reason out of grasp. Distance is to hold a secret, to feel veiled, to feel hidden, to avoid speaking the achy issues, to be in silence. Distance is to be silent when one should speak, to not speak for those who would listen, to not see those who wish to be seen and not to face what becomes of seeing. Distance can be fear of change, fear of acting out, fear of putting oneself into it, into solving the problem of distance. Distance is inability.
Distance meaning the state of not wanting to face oneself, somebody among somebodies, not to face things done, but escape, escape situations of shame in shame, distance kept from feeling appallingly ashamed. Distance is to make a difference between us and them, between people and people, between not understanding. Distance is isolating, it can be too much to live in isolation, but it can be living in periphery without a need to leave. Isolated from what, far from what, marginal to what? Distance now is an effort to make it unimportant, making it important still as a making.
Oh you are so far away, there, somewhere, come here. How distant are we? Do we know each other? What is the distance between us? The actual length? What kind of journey does one have to travel to get here, to get there?
Distance is guilt. Distance is how you look at things. It is to forget and it is a physical fact. How well do we admit that we are unable to take over distance. How much are we unwilling to acknowledge our incapability to rule completely distance, conquer length and void of an area as material and immaterial. To acknowledge distance is to make immaterial visible.
work ←video
Ai millainen kuva minulla on Suomesta. Se kulminoituu hienosti kuplina ja raja-aitoina joita on vaikea kaataa tahi ylittää. Toki puhetta ja keskustelua on runsaasti, että pitäisi tehdä sitä ja tätä, mutta päästäänkö puusta pitkään onkin toinen juttu eli tapahtuuko toiminnan muutosta, totuttujen kaavojen ja käytäntöjen muuttumista niin että yhteiskunta ravistuisi todella ja uudistuisi ajatuksiltaan, teoiltaan että ilmastoltaan. Suomea ja suomalaisia edelleen vaivaa yllätyksettömyys, rahan perässä juokseminen, sanomisen ja tekemisen pelko, pienet piirit, epämielyttävän ulkopuolelle sulkeminen. Kohtaamattomuus, ja uskalluksen puute jähmettävät koko kansakuntaa haluamaan ainaisia samoja asioita. Jähmettyneisyys tulee erinomaisesti esille taideyliopisto Aallossa, joka on luonut itselleen kaikkivoipaisen ja puhtoisen imagon paikkana, josta ponnistetaan saavuttamaan uraunelmia. Ajatuksellinen, opetuksellinen ja taiteellinen anti on kovin laiha ja tuntuu pyörivän vanhoissa hyviksi koetuissa uomissaan. Hyvä on kapea, jo nähty rata ja laihanlainen. Elitistinen leima ei katoa eikä sen halutakaan katoavan. Elitismi, muuttumattomuus ja hierarkisuus ovat osa Aallon imagoa ja kompastuskiviä. Eläkevirat ja samojen naamojen pyöriminen samoissa kuvioissa eivät auta asiaa, joka olisi toimintakulttuurin muutos. Tavat tehdä ja ajatella laahaavat jossakin kultaisissa vuosissa. Yritysraha ja suuryritysten kanssa vehtaaminen kelpaavat liiankin hyvin, epäpoliittisuus, aktivismin puute, tietämättömyys, kiinnostuksen puute ja poliittisuuden suoranainen karttaminen lyövät leimansa siihen mitä opitaan, miksi tullaan, kuinka ollaan, mitä opetetaan ja millaisina pysytään. Yritysten kanssa hyvää pataa -leikissä kärsii se, mitä varten yliopisto on olemassa. Pelko lamaannuttaa, puolueellisuus ja hännystely vievät shampanjasosialistilta kärjen ja pohjan. Kritiikkiä, erityisesti sellaista suoraa palautetta, puhetta ja tekoja jotka pyrkivät repimään elitistisiä vanhentuneita rakenteita hajalle kartetaan, halveksutaan ja pelätään eikä osata kohdata saati haluta kuulla, muuten kuin tuhahtamalla ja puolustautumalla naurahtaen (aha ha). Kritisoija on valittaja ja saa hankalan henkilön maineen. Suomi ei ole vieläkään oppinut, että hankalat ovat niitä, joita tarvitaan jos muuttuvassa maailmassa haluaa pysyä kärryillä. Mainehan se on josta tässä on kyse, josta Aallossa on kyse; Suomi-kuvasta, sen kiillottamisesta, puhtoisesta imagesta, johon ei liiallinen yhteiskunnallisuus, poliittisuus ja kriittisyys luo varjoaan. Suomen puhtoisuus on melko likainen ja säröttömyys kuviteltua pintaa. Jos mielenkiintoista keskustelua, tekoja, designia ja taidetta haluaa tuo jämähtänyt lika on pystyttävä kohtaamaan ja korjaamaan. Se on itsekritiikin paikka. Muutoksen tekeminen on vaikeaa, toivottavasti ei ylitsepääsemättömän. Toivoa sopii. Tietysti rahaa tarvitaan, eihän sitä ilman tulla toimeen diibadaapa. Pidätän hengitystä kun paska haisee.
We like to sink in illusion, believe in it as it is the perfected truth, another kind of reality. Illusion is so beautiful and it can be bought. Illusion makes one beautiful in the illusion and for those others who live the same image. Out of many reasons we like to remain in the state of oblivion. Laziness of mind, ease of it, of not paying attention, making an effort, not knowing that illusion is an illusion, not wanting to know, unwillingness to believe there is something wrong, that something else would be better and truer. Sink in imagined perfection that is fed for us via images as someone kind, perfect and gentle is telling us how and why this is what we should want, this is what everybody should be like, an idea of ourselves, and what we are supposed to be, where we are supposed to be. What we are is born out of comparison. Not making a distinction between illusion, because that is dangerous. I do not exist without that other, without dreaming. I have to belong with others to exist as human and be with a group of similar kinds with the same illusion.
Idea of a person, of me, you, persons that are born out of spoken words, adults, adulthood, proper and improper images, advertising, movies, liking, disliking and mutual understanding of what superiority is, what is good, what is perfection, what is there to achieve for us as sexes, origins, places and individuals as a group. What we are supposed to be is a collective understanding, a result of collective comprehension and we must understand and discard anything that breaks, anything that disturbs, anything that we cannot understand. Because we are unable to repair. We are scared of that moment of being broken inside, being separated. Of having to face that person who is needy and weak. Who says things that you do not want to hear, you say you do not understand. That person is crazy, that person is anything you are not.
So what is the illusion here, one might ask. What is the superior and seemingly perfect should be always questioned. We compare, but we do not necessarily use the information found via comparison to evolve, but we use it to compete and win in jealous gaming and to make division building barriers, not connections.
”To appreciate how effortlessly we bisect the world into outward appearance and inner reality, one need only consider cinematic portrayals of vampires. Under most circumstances, vampires are indistinguishable from genuine human beings. You might strike up a conversation with one in a bar without having any suspicions at all, until the moment she sinks her fangs into your throat. ” http://aeon.co/magazine/society/how-does-dehumanisation-work/
One of the most powerful ideologies and movements in human history is scary to those who like their comfort, their status, their unchanging likable fun with buddies. It is too easy to ridicule women, to laugh at them, to forget them, to diminish them, to step on them. Women also do it themselves; discouragement, envy, conformism, indifference, class loyalty, isolation, separation and ignorance hurt women the most. Women are the most hurt group of people in the world in continuum. That is what we must make end to. Change is coming and you better believe it!You find feminism threatening, ask yourself why.
Character of mist that makes you feel cold inside. Her reputation precedes her, irregular person, despicable. She is what you heard, you think. What you made of her in your mind via your and other people’s speech. Isn’t she. Talk works like clay. Story of her could be continued in this way unless she would not act for her defense. Get that clay into her own hands. She needs herself to oppose, resist and defend herself. Nobody else does it. Nobody else is interested in her life. Her life what it really is, what she really is like and able to do. Her reality is not interesting to anybody but herself, she lives it, not you and makes it interesting. She makes her life even there is discouragement, contempt, laughter, ill talk, threat, there is so little faith in her that it is unbelievable and unbearable. To accept passively what goes on and on, because others accept it, it suits them and they say there is nothing one can do, for her it is not an option. That is her exceptional quality, active resistance, energy of hers.
Evaluations, descriptions, adjectives, measurements and comparisons, faults, flaws, drawbacks. Qualities we need. Qualities we have made us and what are they worth, how do qualities change. We imagine, make, consume and refine ourselves.
She is not right. Characteristics that is stated as a fact without further evidence than hearsay. Demonizing her to people who listen. Who asked about her. Without her she gets made. As if she died. Character of mist that makes you feel cold inside. Is this the same world we inhabit? You speak of me, but you do not confront me nor speak to me. How little respect there is, how little trust. She is what you heard as a fact. To think otherwise would be unthinkable. Thinkable pleasure, envious joy of dragging her down speaks mountains. She is not right.
She is not right. To kill is to entertain. It is to better yourself. To paint a picture of malicious woman is to draw a separating line. Pointing her out from above, from a distance, from acclaimed perfection, from accepted shameless perfection undeniable.
To know her is to say what she is. She is loud, she is noisy, she is quiet, she is broken, she is tense, she is irrational, she is shameless, she is lost, she is dead.
Thing is many do not know what fascism is. It is something outside the good common people have and do, because it is the ultimate evil. How far right people’s opinions and deeds eventually are seems to be something people fail to acknowledge and define. People like to define others instead of themselves, themselves the self-evident good. You have already made yourselves? People like to say not me but that other, that who doesn’t do things like most must be doing something wrong because the most are not doing the same wrong, the most of us have the right and are right practicing a norm. Logic there is funny and often nonexistent. Who said the most of us doing something is the right thing, the most equal, good thing to do. What is the proof of good for us? Unhurt, discomfort, future prospects?
Normality defined by the most of us, by what is said and done, by traditions, customs and human sense. Show me where we are going, but do not change much, we cannot take it. Inability to change is clear and change is slow. Does it look like we know where we are going? How does it appear we are changing? To know what is fascist, what should we look for? Surveillance, exclusion, indifference, what kind of voices are heard, who gets to speak.
Scar which I repeat, because it is a deep cut and inescapable. The scar of the society which society repeats because it cannot do otherwise. It cannot or does not want to heal itself because it does not see itself sick:
To me fascism is an extreme and violent idea of purity and exclusion. Extreme idea and desire to stay the same what is defined as good to be. As a woman and an artist I have been placed in to marginal of impure. To look for scars, flaws, dirt of mine, spreading it all over (see her and place her behind) and suspicion over me not being as good as those already defined as good has been an everyday occurrence. It has been difficult to understand what is going on, but it is clear I do not belong to the accepted norm which begins over and over again from a moment of I don’t have to say anything but to appear/exist being enough to raise the alarm. Well I have become to like the situation and making the most out of my excellence. As it goes it takes the personal experience to launch major fight. Your good is not good enough.
Fascism has not left anywhere. Situation is scary when you fail to recognize it.
Is public good something that pleases most everybody? Is it about pleasing in the end, helping, accepting and to put human good will in action?
http://www.berfrois.com/2014/03/foucaults-don-quixote/
“Don Quixote is the first modern work of literature,” Foucault writes, “because in it we see the cruel reason of identities and differences makes endless sport of signs and similitudes; because in it language breaks off its old kinship with things and enters into that lonely sovereignty from which it will appear, in its separate state, only as literature.”
Majakollektiivi Timanttimetsä 