working class experience

Thoughts on working class identity: it sounds so grand and an invention of the past. How so? When you are looked down upon and there seems to be no unity between workers. Isn’t that how it always was? Well, I still have it, pride.

Image | | Henna Timanttimetsä

Working class identity, working class experience. What do people who haven’t grown into working class know about it? To my experience not very much.

Image | | Henna Timanttimetsä

Co-worker, 2002/ How to breathe

| Henna Timanttimetsä

date that passed was a day, time that passed was once that day, name attached to a
person that was not, emergency of spirit, breath, suspicion over what if. who is that? what does she want? what did she want? depending on how we react, expect, scare dictating how we behave. suspicion, why did we expect the things we did? how did we come up with these expectations? suspicion and scare, how did I end up wanting the things I wanted?

how I grew up to be a man, because that is the ultimate ideal of a human being to be. characteristics of a man woman as assisting, a statist, a decoration, a thing, so surrounding that, I could not think of myself as such.

Co-worker, 2002

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Working class experience

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Rose

I was given a rose at the cash register at a grocery store. The flower didn’t have a smell. I thought it was odd, a rose with no smell. I took carefully off its thirty petals which I counted. Carefully placing them on a paper sheet and let wind take them. It was strikingly sunny.

Yes, it is a question of self-esteem, values in life and where do you come from.

| Henna Timanttimetsä

Out of all experiences I have had working class culture has made me think what is creativity in working class context? How do working class people create and what it means to create? As for many welders welding is an art. And I agree. It is a beautiful work and skill. It is creation made possible at work and through that it is possible to understand one’s own creativity and skill. For people in that particular industry cars are an important way of self-expression. They are well taken care of and talked about subject. Man is his car. When a new guy appears at work his car is firstly checked out. It can be brutal, because man’s personality and character depends on his wheels. How about those who take the bus?  Take a guess.

With the thinking of what is working class goes also what it does not want to be.  It cuts itself out of many possibly fruitful things it thinks are not for it. Laborers like to place the blame of misfortunes on others and stick in their own comfortable circles. This I have experienced myself several times. Funnily same goes for the Arts. It is also curious how people like to find mistakes and errors in others instead of searching themselves. Yes, a working class hero exists, and an art hero exists, but from my point of view they are posing shells, nothing else.