The Space Within

This project was made in collaboration with Roel Meijs. It was built in the Oksasenkatu 11 gallery in Helsinki, and was exhibited from August 5th through September 5th, 2010. The project was a large installation designed and built based on the dimensions of the gallery space. It was on two floors. Hidden doorways led from one space to the other.

On entering the gallery, visitors were confronted with a large volume of canvas sacks which filled the space.



Negotiating their way between the gallery walls and the volume, they eventually came to an entrance. Climbing a few steps to enter the volume, inside was a narrow corridor leading to a larger attic space.



From the corridor a hidden door leads to a stairwell taking the visitor to the basement. Another door opens onto a corridor and locks shut behind the visitor. The ceiling is low and continues to decrease in height.





At the end of the corridor is a hexagonal room with a dirt floor.



In this room are two hatch doors. One opens onto an oblong compartment large enough for a person to lie down within made of styrofoam insulation.



The other is painted bright white and has a padded white floor with a radiator at the end, of a similar size and shape to the first room.



Objects are placed about the room. On returning to the corridor, visitors must find the hidden door in the corridor wall to exit the interior space. This opens onto another corridor space and to an open door, leading to a stairwell.





This stairwell leads eventually to the back door of the building and opens onto the driveway and inner courtyard of the building.


Statement for "The Space Within":

We have chosen to place our project under the artistic field of environmental art because in our planning of the project we considered the environment of the gallery and all of its possibilities. This environment of the art gallery is what determined for us our direction for creating a work, and also is key to any consideration of the meaning of the piece. It cannot exists in another place and still have the same meaning. This context of location is key. Furthermore, it is our belief that environmental art is a field which extends beyond land or earth art, beyond works in nature, and means for us any art which is created to interact with a specific environment, be it urban, interior or exterior, and as a result its meaning is determined by this interaction.

Our intention for working in this space was to go beyond what is expected of gallery art, to create a work which is designed specifically for this space and which would interact with its given physical dimensions and character. To push the boundaries of the space, and to use the gallery's physical space to its full potential, to create a piece which is not expected and which does not allow for easy reading, nor easy movement within.

Design of the space is intentionally difficult to manoeuvre to create a sense of confusion as well as of curiosity, encouraging exploration, creating a site of confrontation between the person and their expectations of how to move or to be with a space and to rethink spacial conventions. The difficulty of movement within space creates an awareness of the body and of its interactions with surrounding architecture, in order to understand the space through different mechanisms. By so doing a greater attention is given to the ways of interaction and the ways of perceiving and moving through a space. This offers a new awareness of the space and a new understanding of the possibilities inherent in such an architectural space.

The affordance of an environment: signals opportunities and risks that the surroundings supplies or provides to an individual.

Architecture is currently designed to immediately convey to the human user the potentialities for movement the structure supplies. Flow, ease of movement, direction, all of these are offered up at first glance to create a quick understanding of the space and so instruct the human user how the space is to be used. Our installation offers no such simplicity,and rather complicates the normal process of understanding by making the use mysterious to the end, to make real the impossibilities of architecture, beyond the limitations of architecture, impossibilities conceived of in dreams or the imagination which do not follow the framework of functional architecture. It allows for new movements, directions and thoughts within these unusual architectural spaces.

Push/Pull

This installation was made at Ptarmigan (www.ptarmigan.fi) as part of an artist in residence program in January and February 2010.
Push/Pull is an installation which places a visitor in a situation that demands a rethinking of how to interact with the architectural surroundings. Designed to both attract and repel, to allow affordances and deny movements, the architectural space requires new positionings and new directions of movement to explore the space. The project was inspired by the works and writings of Arakawa and Gins, and by the analysis of the senses used for moving through and perceiving space. The angular design was chosen to offer straight lines but no horizon, no ninety degree angle corners, no evidence of what is absolutely vertical or horizontal, in order to throw off the most commonly used methods of placing one's self in relation to architectural surroundings. Low ceiling height and uneven floor force the visitor to bend and stretch in unusual and often uncomfortable ways, slowing one's motions and focusing attention on positioning. The room was built as though flipped onto its side, with the floor on the right-hand wall and the ceiling on the left when entering the space. Lastly, the size of the table, chair and light bulb were chosen to be very small to make the visitor a kind of giant within the space, putting into question self-perception of size or dimension. My intention was to require the visitor to seek new methods for engaging the space. By denying the visitor an easy reference point s/he must use senses beyond vision to find balance and move about. In order to locate one's self inside the space, to be able to answer which way is up or down, what is vertical or horizontal, how big am I, and so on, the visitor must become aware of mechanisms of perception that are often ignored. To reinforce the idea of using new mechanisms to adapt to the surroundings, a diagram of the vestibular system and the other senses required for motion and engaging with one's surroundings was placed on the wall.

Greffe/Graft

This project was completed in Arles, France. I collected materials from old books in second hand shops, and pieces of wood and old screws found from around the town. I made a collage from images collected from the old books, and then glued the collage into a box I built out of the bits of wood. I built a light into the face of the box, along with a peep-hole (french name; judas optique) to see into the box. I then covered the box with cement, and attached it to a hook on this house (the house looked abandoned). To see the collage one has to look through the peep-hole and press the button to turn the light on.
Photos of this project by Virpi Velin.

Artist's Statement

My artistic practice is grounded on a desire to connect people with their immediate surroundings. Through my work I hope to bring about an awareness of the inter-dependency between these surroundings and each person's physical and psychological being.

I am inspired by materials and locations, and this is where all of my projects begin. Whether it be an environmental installation, film or other creation, location and materials determine the shape of the project. It is my interest in different materials and their particular qualities that has led me to experiment with many different artistic media.

My projects rely on a direct experience, an immediate physical response from the viewer. They are not conceptual in the sense of offering a topic to consider, but rather offer an intimate dialogue through sensory perception. They demand active participation, be it in the form of exploring secret passageways and hidden rooms or by taking in a fast, frame by frame experimental film collage.

I believe that the location of a work should be its primary determining factor. Each project I make is site-specific, as the project could not be the same if it were constructed or filmed in a different location. Materials are gathered from either the area surrounding the site of installation or from a location with historical, cultural, or personal importance. This ephemera, the evidence of the original location, are transported and transformed in the construction process and lend their histories to the final creation. The location itself creates a context which frames the project, offering its own history and its present-day situation to the work I have placed within it.

My recent projects have been on the subject of the house. I have built domestic spaces out of materials removed from people's homes. The way I build these spaces is to use very complex geometry, walls and ceilings and floors on angles, making movement through the space very difficult. This is meant to call attention to how the person as body interacts with the space, how different angular combinations create limitations or affordances, open up or close down on the body. I see the elements of the house as a tool to be used in manipulating and affecting a person inside it, as a heuristic device to understand the ways that the house and person interact and affect each other. These projects are a continuation of my interest in the relation between person and surroundings.

The work that I have been doing, and that I wish to continue, is searching for a link to an uncharted psychological world, one that exists within all people in some form. Perhaps a collective unconscious, or the deep origins of our beings, it is a phenomena which I believe connects not only people with their surroundings but also connects all entities, effacing all separations and divisions between the assumed outside and inside, the within and without.

Room 511; Archives

Final MFA project
Constructed from pieces of Helsinki homes, this environmental installation is made up of 5 rooms inside the empty Hackman offices in Helsinki.
For 6 months, I collected walls, ceilings, floors, cupboards and cabinets, and furniture from residents of Helsinki and its suburbs. These pieces of people's homes were reconstructed into a new living space inside Hackman offices. In May, 2007, the space was open to the public.

Selection of short films

This is a collection of clips from three of my short films. The film was manipulated directly, working it by hand with tools, adding objects onto it at times. There were no computers used in the making of these films, except those used to make them into these online clips.

Highrise Project

Stories from people living in highrise apartment buildings in Finland and Canada were collected and recorded as audio tracks. They were then placed inside this 2 meter tall concrete sculpture and played back on different speakers spread out among the windows of the building. The sculpture was exhibited at the Finnish Museum of Architecture in the spring of 2006.