Can you say you are a professional without other people’s approval? Of course, in art.

23 maaliskuun, 20176 maaliskuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

What is disapproved professionalism? I highly recommend a kind of disapproval which goes strongly against the establishment and status quo, against those who repeat old truths, truths of theirs. Something out of the ordinary is scary and fear is instant, out of the cult of professionalism, out of the book of solid truths, something to believe in strongly must be put under scrutiny. I strongly disapprove professionalism which sees through corruption, misconduct, sloppiness, carelessness, ignorance, arrogance, unwillingness to make progress, unwillingness to see oneself as student forever such outrage and lack of humility should be disapproved in larger scale there where power to make professionals is and people who can’t take criticism and learn from it. Pedestals oh pedestals, too much respected and feared, way too much.

Disapproved professionalism is something which has moved away from something known, corrupt and repetitious, away from something which sees itself as perfection that can’t be overshadowed, critiqued, put under microscope and be revealed as it is. Unprofessional is to behave badly against other professionals, without a good reason other than those feelings. To look down on and think you are so much better than is highly normal. You want to feel empowered and demonstrate this power position of yours with violence. Maturing is tough, admitting falsehood, doing wrong and failure is difficult, almost impossible. We all have met these kinds of people. They are the menace and sign of ruin of the power structure and themselves. Such thinking costs you, you narrow-minded fools. So never fall into the trap of arrogance and false pride. There is always someone better and other ways of doing. To find out which one’s are the best is a competition where there almost never are winners. To win is what professional competition is all about unfortunately.

To be proud of one’s work is what we should feel, be unashamed, whatever the work. For artist it is a battle especially when the most often thing to come by is rejection, contempt and hate. Art community should by default understand that artists face a lot of discrimination and negative positioning like the artist was the ultimate loser and threat. All you need is family which does not approve what you do. This can’t be too much emphasised. Be empowered and privileged is something many aren’t entitled to. Quality of work is another thing and what is it is the contents not how much your camera cost you and where you are BASED. Those who have reached position which gives them right to look down on do more harm than good. No wonder they are easily hurt, professional emotions are so vulnerable. Most damage they do is at schools. Which I have wondered why assholes and idiots get to teach.

Something which does different from the approved form of status professional? A connoisseur of practise, of thought, ideas and craft, how much does this have to do with feelings? We must feel satisfaction of doing something well and be rewarded for this. We need collective acceptance to be uplifted, respected and valued. This image and game, play or how should I call it, rivalry, fight for right to be a professional, is of course passionate and exclusionary, shutting out those who do not match credentials of the profession. Which is understandable. Sometimes, especially in art, such game of who can and who can’t get interesting proportions and this has got to do with gender a lot and where you come from.

Let’s dig deeper into professionalism, shall we. The credentials for professional vary and the idea is understood in different ways.

22 maaliskuun, 20176 maaliskuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Is there something such as professional pride? Pride of doing one’s job as well as possible, as well as one is able and knowing what it means to do job at hand well, any job? I have come to learn that such pride is not what it used to be, when work was your signature, pride and measure of worthiness in the eyes of those who enjoy fruits of one’s labor. Are we so spoiled already that work is not who we are in the meaning that it only makes it possible for us to live and express ourselves outside work? Is that what being spoiled is, to have free time to express oneself and feel free? I think it is. How does this effect the way we work and do our work and most importantly appreciate as work? Work must make a decent living, be valued as craft and expertise, worker be valued as someone whose effort is noticed and appreciated. Someone who just has a job is not enough, we want more than that because we are fully what we do for work. Job must be something which can be valued as modern and an achievement, an extension to one’s personality, fulfilling ambition, one being able to show talent, capability, proof of all this existing in this one person.

Fair enough, we are entitled to this luxury, aren’t we. Be appreciated and be paid for what we are worth, what our work is worth, our labor input. What other things follow hopefully are plusses. We are entitled to search for fulfilment via work and be tormented when this does not happen. It is unfortunate when work does not involve exchange of money, it is possibly not considered work but something else, a service. Naming is important, exchange is too, interaction. Is what you feel important in this matter? Money is there in one form or the other, work as money possibly. To work and make can be seen as means of exchange, value is in what was made and done and how the exchange happened. Our values are largely bound to money as is our way of living, making money is valuable as such, having money, looking like you have money. How is that the biggest one value there is and why there does not seem to be enough ever? Money gives value to people and money only? Is how much the most used question and basis for understanding value? Value of work done where does it lie? Important seems to be who does the work: gender has an important role in creating value.

My quest is to understand professionalism and how we understand what it is. For most the pay check is proof enough, the title, education, network and being busy, accomplishing and achieving, making progress such as getting more money and more fancy titles, getting ahead on career path. I have been wondering this issue because there seems to be a huge misunderstanding or collective mind-set, one-way path, what it takes to do one’s job well, what is achieving something, having a path, pursuing goals and why this pursuing goals which self-evidently belongs to choosing careers is important to take up and obey, choosing up one’s career. What is a career, who validates it, is it given or taken?

Interestingly rules for professional in business are tightly tangled with art which makes it curious to be an artist when to create something new constantly and being one’s own boss, at least for me, are at risk of becoming something else. Artist should be a brand, a product to sell her art. Ways of becoming a brand and product is very business culture obedient more and more. That is not good news for art. Something goes missing easily which is personality, uniqueness and following path of one’s own despite what happens, doing what I want to do contradicts the business savvy heavily for a reason. What is expected of you is to obey.

When art is an investment what are the expectations and when art pursues not fulfil expectations but move further what happens? When the interest lies in ways of presentation, what and how expensive one’s equipment is, who do you know and where you live, are based, as it is said nowadays, where are we based exactly, where do we base our priorities? What is lost in this kind of interest in showing off and thinking the tools make the art more than you ever can, professional emerges when one possesses the right kind of kit? Yuk. Freedom of making out of scratch, out of nothing without need to impress by things, places and domains, play a role in making something worthy nowadays. Sure to look nice even presentable is what you are looking for go for it, but to expect that be the professional way is corporal setting and harnessing, waste of something good and turning into mass product, likeable and following instructions for professional outlook to impress as professional. Who is the artist in this picture and why the need for grandiose and expensiveness is so important to make an awe, an effect, spectacle and produce value which is bloated ready to explode? Is it business as usual we should have?

Size of one’s studio, sizes of cameras, how does an artist look like, what is the street credible look for an artist, in which city to dwell, where to show one’s art and what kind of art to make? Large prints, monumental paintings, what is the it thing, if it interests anyone? Maybe the contents will tell the value??

I also ask because to come across people who consider themselves professionals due to positions they have been granted, things they deliver and give back do not often strike as well done, having done one’s homework kind of thing at all, quite on the contrary. Professionalism is one issue where trickle down effect goes wrong, something gets in the way, like lack of will to share and contribute. So where is the professionalism when you have to put yourself on the line, your career and what does it mean to do one’s job so that there is pride, ability there in the right way, not in the way that the work serves only you and interests of yours but something larger and as we do not live alone in the world, our work affects others too pretty profoundly.

Truth, difficult to believe. Terrifying truth is always pointing at you.

13 elokuun, 20169 toukokuun, 2022 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Truth, difficult to accept, difficult to write open. Is it in front of us? Can we find it? It can be unbearable, definitely hidden. We so much like to believe the good and the beautiful talk, pictures, that there will be better future for us. Unbearable because it will make us see ourselves as we are, our chances if we have them or not and where we stand. Grim nature of truth is human. Hard to say out loud and hard to stop and listen. Truth of animals is very clear, life is about survival, eating, killing, breeding, over and over. People want to be kings, they want to rule and win, be head of all, say the last word, silence those who say the unbearable and dirty. To just survive is what it still is, kill or be killed, be admired or forgotten. It is as scary and bloody as any survival battle. To be scared is to be alert constantly and to know that there is always a threat or two to watch out. You cannot trust anyone. When you do you make a mistake. How does that sound? Something like trust and faith may be unthinkable but we most have them in something, there is no time to trust and have faith for some. In this picture we rather take the lie because it is more pretty and we like to believe the pretty, it makes us look better than we are, a tale of something better and something to belong to. Choose to live a lie is to think that there is something better than this, that you deserve what you have got. To know what is the truth we must see the effort to find it out which task also is very often hard to do. Truth for humans is there aren’t many things to count on but betrayal and pain. Many like the easy way out of this fact, the unbearable life, unbearable you, unbearable everybody else, cold weather, cold world and endless cruelty.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a46918/heroin-mexico-el-chapo-cartels-don-winslow/ ”Guzmán had worked and killed his way up to the big leagues by the time he first went to prison, in 1993. While he was running his business from his suite inside Puente Grande federal prison, I was working on a book called The Power of the Dog,the first of three novels I’ve written about the evolution of the Mexican drug scene.”

El Chapo and Buddy

Reality hits those who like to cherish illusions.

9 kesäkuun, 201624 helmikuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

Reality of another person can be extremely hard to grasp and see, even though it is right in front of you. It is the impossibility of understanding feelings of the other, seeing the position where one may be and how one got there. Value of the other, feelings of the other can be denied, belittled and despised just because you can. Reality of someone who is despised as such. Christians like to repeat we are born equal, somehow it does not resonate in true life. Christianity, the religion, is an excuse to put people down since God is on side of those who have the right god. Even though people don’t practice faith they are born in to culture which 100% has roots to some religion and practices of religious ideas, stories, beliefs and traditions. We are as cultural beings bound to religion, faith, mysticism, rules, which tell us how to live and how we see our place in the world and among other people.

What are realities now that religious people see in society which is more open to difference but still is very violent towards many people. Society is sexually more open, at least in theory, in entertainment and in advertising, demanding equality, equal treatment of the sexes, open discussion is available demanding tolerance and freedom of expression and speech. Religions are not the most tolerant. Religious entities are not demanding end of violence quite the contrary. Religions make war possible. Hypocrisy flourishes. How easy it is to not look. When religion demands hiding of our nature, hiding of beauty because it is seen evil and corrupt, how divine and godly that religion actually is. In societies where sexual intercourse is a sin, a taboo which makes all sexual topics shameful, all which is banned happens in hiding. We are punished for our sins which usually are of sexual nature. We are punished for wanting, desiring, lusting, having dirty ideas and doing filthy acts. Touching can become illegal and scary. Touching is too much to take, not to speak of kissing.

As an artist I am used to seeing nudity and I think it is the most natural thing as is sex. Just to depict and see nakedness is not porn, female and male sexual organs as such are not pornography to me, sexual yes but anything can be sexual. Asshole is holy as Allen Ginsberg stated in his poem Howl. What a scandal that became, all what he wrote was against the comfort and mediocre American society held dear. Dear hypocrisy, dear silence, dear oblivion, dear order which cannot be broken because it is not proper. Violence is more tolerated than sex. Violence is normal, so normal people don’t necessarily see when they are being violent and accept bullying when someone is to be put in order, be punished for what one is, dares to be in public. Order which cannot be torn apart because it is too frightening, too much to handle.

Finding honor

1 maaliskuun, 201628 helmikuun, 2018 | 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.”

University is a place where you find out the truth no matter what the truth is, that is where you must head, evidence is what you believe.

22 joulukuun, 201515 helmikuun, 2018 | Henna Timanttimetsä

No matter what the truth is, the sentence means it is not our duty to make up truth but be open to it. We do not define truth, we examine it. We can even change our opinion and be pleased someone opened our eyes. It would not be the truth if we would manipulate the information we have. Whatever it is we scientifically find out is the most relevant truth at the moment which can be argued as it should. Absolute truth is hard to come by the further we proceed on any field, somethings are absolutely true. It is unbelievable in the age of science we having proof over how we have become to be what we are now there are people who want to believe ancient texts as absolutes, rule people by centuries old knowledge and laws. Worries over religious feelings being hurt at university is ludicrous. Those with faith getting offended in a place where faith and religion do not have a say over is as an idea outrageously stupid. Such people do not deserve to be in university. Why are people afraid of offense is a case of fear over losing funds and friends, fear of violence. Universities that are afraid of losing funds and friends have lost touch in making science. The more commercial universities get the more they care for emotions and sentiments of those who are the paying customers, also those who fund research. People who have money to pay high tuition fees are middle class people who are scared of conflict, afraid of conflicting ideas, debate and arguing which is something that normally happens between thinking people who make serious conversation to understand each other and the world. People who attend universities obviously do it in hopes for large salary jobs. It is clear corporal policy has attended university in a big way, avoiding offence and critical points of views are punished, banned and outlawed. That is corporations dictating what is useful and what is not, what is allowed to say, how we know and what we know, how we can think.

It has been sad to witness that university is not a place where truth is appreciated and looked for but overlooked and despised.