violence

Drunk passed out

Image | | Henna Timanttimetsä

Midlife crisis

| Henna Timanttimetsä

crazy

Image | | Henna Timanttimetsä

 

Missing person

Image | | Henna Timanttimetsä

pencil on paper, 2015

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/

Culture of shame rules with humiliation and fear. Too hard to handle.

| Henna Timanttimetsä
Girl who learns from early on that there is something wrong and it is with her because there is shame she cannot quite understand why or what but it is like an animal which is her and the ultimate evil and is because of her not knowing quite why. Any other person is above this shame and constant wrongdoing because they are bigger. It is something she did which was being born, her sex which she must be ashamed of, she feels constantly a look which is angry, looks upon her that are looking at nothing, hate in the look, in those looks, contempt and disgust or something to take away, burn and run. Shame which exists only because of her, her sin, her existence, her rottenness is brought by her upon others to be ashamed of and talk about to purify those who speak of her and look at her but don’t see anything but dirt, something to turn backs to. She becomes to feel guilty for what she is completely, that she has caused such horrible thing as she is, her becoming, anything she represents and is, is bad and all wrong, a mistake and accident. She has to hide herself. Best way to do it is to be silent, be as invisible as possible, as quiet as possible afraid that she will be revealed and hated again and again. The only one who does things wrong breaking the silence which cannot be broken because everything and the wall of silence and effort seen would be ruined. You must not cry or be sad, it would break the unspoken, it would tell how all is wrong. To be revealed is the worst thing to happen. To face the ill there is would be too much to take and shameful as is crying. Things that are wrong, emotions that should just be likable not to annoy and reveal anything that might be wrong, she does them things wrong anyway so why try anything but not to push that wall of shame and weeping. She is the wrong, she is the wrong, the out-of-place to be ashamed of who can break and destroy the comfortable silence and not having to face any negative emotions there are. There is nothing wrong with the environment but with her still. Easiness of finding a scapegoat and squeeze her into being as small as possible. All the blame there is is placed on her and she carries it all until it is too much. It is quite a burden to carry and to give, be pushed aside and forgotten until guilt finds you until you cannot hide.

 

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.”

Image | | Henna Timanttimetsä

Most stunned I am how persistently bias live on, that people are convinced their thinking they know is absolutely correct and such bias and idea of superiority is very difficult to change.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

To learn to think otherwise seems to be the hardest thing to do as it means consciously admitting flawed judgment and thinking, knowingly changing one’s perspectives and point of views which are often learned and hard stuck as there may be the whole community who thinks the same and with that same thinking assume they are correct and cannot be proven otherwise. Collective wrong thinking can be seen as the most harmful way of humanity doing wrong on regular basis which regularly tend to repeat over and over until there are enough people who stand against ill patterns of society/people, of a group of same. Most appalling situation is when one has to convince a group of similar minded jackasses, convince after convincing, prove after proving, results happen so slowly when minds are made up, when world views are stuck as if Earth was center of the Universe again and again. Biggest blasphemy of all is to show prove that men are not the most intelligent self-evidently, the best at everything, know everything and to show that men can be corrected, talked over, punched back, argued with, questioned. Authority that cannot be questioned is losers’ authority. To take authority and primal stage of having a say over mean to take responsibility. It means one is capable of giving spotlight for others, for diversity of others, it does not mean having right to rule and judge. To think you are among civilized people can be proven wrong every day makes a strange picture of people and what is true. Civilized? I haven’t been thinking mankind is civilized for a long time now. Civilized people do not hurt just because they can.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/20/pakistan-violence-schools-girls-my-law-plan-international_n_8164716.html?utm_hp_ref=uk“He is realistic that it will take years to change a society where “boys are by definition born with authority and virtually given immunity to being corrected”.“http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/professor-louise-serpell/rosalind-franklin-female-scientists_b_8146848.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/08/the-book-that-shocked-tinsel-town.html?utm_content=bufferc6247&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitterbfi&utm_campaign=buffer
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/female-guerrilla-fighters-pkk-2044198184““A woman can’t feel free just by pursuing her own individual freedom – she has to struggle for the liberation of all the other women too,” says Rashat. “In the PKK, our main goal is to uproot from the girls’ minds all the misconceptions hailed from male-dominated societies. Women need to find their mental freedom before anything else.””