About City Breaks
Minna Suoniemi, March 2005
About how I work: My first thoughts
about City Breaks about a year ago when Taru asked me if I would
be interested to participate in the project: How I see my own city,
what is my mapping of Helsinki. Always taking the same routes to
work, studio, home, favorite bar. I end up seeing the same parts
of the city every day, not often going to some other parts. The
way I move is very confident and oriented. (Interestingly, I like
being able to move like that also when I'm as a tourist somewhere,
and I do: I look at the map first and then stroll off with some
kind of sence of direction. I don't actually like being a tourist).
My other thought was about how I sometimes get stuck near my home
or work place, walking back and forward on one spot, not being able
to decide which way to go. Or to be more accurate, I get in a state
of mind where it's not possible to even think about what makes sence,
where to go first. A feeling of your thoughts getting a hold of
your body, getting a bit paralized and num, fighting between reason
and indifference. And then noticing the other people around you,
what they must think of you bouncing here and there like a madman.
And still not being able to stop. Not proper behavior for a public
place.
So, when thinking back of how my
working process developed in relation to how I work in general,
this process was very similar to that in a sence that I finally
ended up making a video about the undecisive walk. This for me is
more a portrait of any anonymous person in an urban environment
than a portrait of a city in itself. It is shot in Helsinki, in
two very urban locations, but it could be anywhere in any urban
situation. The urge to move decisively and confidently is caracteristic
to a city environment, or actually certain kinds of places in a
city, where there are specialized places for spending time and others
for just passing through.
Back to my way of working, I had
a feeling that it would be very hard for me to in any way make something
related to London. My work evolves from spending time in a place
with the people and coming up with my ideas through anything that
might occur in my way. I don't normally sketch much, or make very
many notes, or if I do, they are so vage that I have difficulties
getting my point when reading them afterwards. My work is not based
on any organised or visible research in a sence that it would be
easy for me to look back in to my notes and trace how my process
developed. Still, I have very long processes in making work. Putting
up an exhibition, I usually have been thinking of the idea a year
earlier and made the work a week before (raughly put). How I was
able to trace back my early thoughts about City Breaks was through
an old
e-mail to Taru, where I write about routes, routines and zic zac
-walking.
So, when I first came to London
I remember feeling a pressure to collect material that I could look
at later and use for the project. The problem was that my only plan
was to observe, go around the city with my camera and record anythink
that would catch my attention. London was totally new to me, so
I was, whether I wanted or not, a tourist. And I don't like being
a tourist. So I did not go see the landmarks and monuments, the
must -sees, but tried to look at londoners' routines and ways of
being in the city. It was clear to me that this kind of observations
would be in a way superficial, a scratch of the surface of the everyday
life /lives in London. It was also a very different way of working
for me, going around with the camera and catching bits and pieces
here and there. I write about this approach in my earlier plans
in the City Breaks website: What caught my attention was how people
create a safe space around them in public places. I was spying people
who where waiting for somebody or otherwise taking a break from
the busy rhythm of the city. The people always had something to
do, like smoking a cicarette after another or texting with their
mobile or fixing their suit. These actions were signs to other people
saying that they were not just standing there, that they were waiting
for someone, that they were not alone. The other situation where
I noticed people stopping and taking a break from the walking crowd
was posing for a photograph. I was filming tourists who had their
picture taken, how they were posing to make that moment unforgettable
and then moving on to the next moment worth remembering. These two
materials form an interesting comparison of people who take their
private space in a public space, either with a very conscious posing
action or more non-functional safety actions.
I don't know if the process could
have gone differently for me. My approach is very straight forward
and direct, so I feel that I had to at least see the place (London)
before being able to relate to it in some way, let alone find something
to work with. What would work well in a project like City Breaks
would be a project where you know in advance what you want to do
and how to approach your subject. In a way, a very reseach -like
approach. And I mean in a traditional sence reseach -like, because
I also see my own work as some kind of reseach, without a sketchbook,
but anyway.
About the group and working as
a group. Here I feel that the problem for me has been the same as
with the place: To work more as a group we would have needed much
more time together. The importance of the group has grown through
the project as we have seen more of each other and had time to discuss
together. These discussion inside the group have been some of the
best things about the project, the highlights of the whole thing,
but for the audience in both of the exhibitions they remain unvisible.
There has been little effect on the actual work that individual
artists have made for the shows from the group or the discussions.
I think it has to do with time and the open format of the whole
project. There was no strict rule to work together or no stuctured
patterns to work along, but all exchange was alloved to happen if
it would. There has been a lot of exchange between people, but in
a level of discussions, not co-operation what comes to the final
work. This is interesting, because the project originally wanted
to emphasize the process, not the final result. If I think of my
own artistic process, it's very difficult to somehow present the
process. Still, the most valuable part of City Breaks has been discussing
with other artists, getting an insight into their way of working,
having discussions about work in process where everyone was open
to comments about their not finished work. So, in a way, we inside
the group had an experience of seeing different artistic processes,
but not to an extent where we would have formed other processes
together and managed to make those processes visible to anyone outside
the group. How that would be possible, I don't know.
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