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© 2023 Michaela Casková

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WORKS WITH ME

news ~ December 2017

Mustarinda exhibition
WORKS WITH ME
1. – 30. 12. 2017
in Titanik Gallery

In order to think about each other’s practices, we arranged systematic studio visits and talks throughout a year. It did happen that someone was perhaps absent, and in the end, some of the studios weren’t visited either. But we gave thought to each other’s practices.

The title we have chosen for the exhibition relates to collaborating, or thriving towards acting together, amongst artists, fellow creatures, communities, biocoenoses, and inanimate beings such as art works. It can also be read as a consent: works for me.

Instead of seeing collaboration as a possibility to create extra value, we have wanted to reflect on what collaboration can mean in a larger sense. Collaborating doesn’t here refer to virtuous activity as such, but rather to observing and paying attention to unpredictable, indirect and unconscious forms of participation. Things such as language, technology, fellow creatures, biocoenosis as well as inanimate beings affect the artist’s working processes with or without consent. These factors can also be called preconditions. Defining and analyzing these kinds of elements enables us to bring different kinds of art works into an equal setting.

When engaging in a dialogue with other humans and works of art, an artist engages in a dialogue with a material and conceptual reality larger than themselves. The dialogue enables a creation of undefined methods, which again can create further actions as well as networks of artworks, developing beyond an exhibition setting. An artwork may not have only one author, and an exhibition may not have only one common nominator. The participants approach their own questions through their own methods, and thus create significance for the collaboration. The inner logic of the exhibition may not be explicit, but rather, it may remain silent and implicit. It is based above all on changing ideas and thoughts, within a shared space and a shared experience.

Some of the topics that came up during the studio visits and talks throughout the year were fear, fantasies, ownership, transitional objects, the space, bioscience, cars, embodiment, crisis, health, posthuman mindbody/mindless body, information, and instead of selfishness the desire to just be part of something…

 

“People have surprisingly more phobias and fears than I would have expected. Fear of loosing orientation and connection in this hyper-connected world is also something I see all around. But would it be possible to live without fear?” (Casková)

“tracey emin married a stone, notes, memory sticks, body, painting, artificial, nails, artificial intelligence, fidget, spinner, painted, lips, painted, surfaces, moving surfaces, understanding surfaces, make-up, mustarinda habitat, Dersu, The Illusion of the End, flax-hair, hair-flaz, trolls, cars, Satu, Tiina, Piet Mondrian, mustarinda chatbot…” (Wesamaa)

“As a teenager I started to save tufts of my tangled hair. I made a hat out of them for me to use, and for this exhibition as a pair for a flax wig. While felting the hat, I’ve been thinking if I could be of “material” use for the flax – other than as a fertilizer or as a “pollinator”. Or are plants vegan.” (Leikas)

“I was also planning on doing a performance as part of my work and as some kind of wordless passage to something. But too afraid that it would go out of Mustarinda’s “catalog of ideas”, and also that it could somehow ruin or stigmatize works of other participants.” (Palonen)

“A car sign can be seen as a symbol of thecharacteristics of the car, e.g. the material and technological base. I have gathered glimpses of this base. A car made of rare earth minerals, weavings and mud is in a process of disremembering linear and fossil fueled technological development and has a will to propose to look for more diverse processes for creating human built objects.” (Rantala)

“a surgeon and an engineer give a ✋ high five
shake hands
electrical impulses on a neural pathway
-take your bed and walk” (Kariranta)

 

Sallamari Rantala, Laura Wesamaa
22.11.2017

Mustarinda-society is an artist and researcher collective founded in 2009, which aims to promote ecological rebuilding of society, diversity of culture and nature, as well as affiliation between art and science. The Mustarinda-society participants in the exhibition are Michaela Casková, Saara-Maria Kariranta, Pauliina Leikas, Antti Majava, Mika Palonen, Sallamari Rantala, Nestori Syrjälä, Tuomo Tuovinen and Laura Wesamaa.

© 2023 Michaela Casková

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