Interview with the 2016 Kirkkopuisto Photo Annual Artist Laurent Chéhère

Here is an evening discussion with the 2016 Kirkkopuisto Photo Annual artist in residency Laurent Chéhère June 20th, 2016. Hosted by Anna Ruth and Juho Jäppinen.

Listen to the interview.

Interview with the 2016 Kirkkopuisto Photo Annual Artist Laurent Chéhère

Listen to the interview.

Here is an evening discussion with the 2016 Kirkkopuisto Photo Annual artist in residency Laurent Chéhère June 20th, 2016. Hosted by Anna Ruth and Juho Jäppinen.

Äkkigalleria's interview with Patrik Qvist

The interview

Äkkigalleria's transcription of the interview with Patrik Qvist

on Wednesday September 23^rd, 2015.

Äkki: This is your first time to Jyväskylä, and although you have been to Finland 4 times this year, you have never been to Central Finland. What are your first impressions of Jyväskylä and Central Finland?

PQvist: It is very hilly. But it is very modern there are very little remains of old architecture that is why I asked you if this place was bombed. 

Äkki: Äkkigalleria has shown about 80 international artists in Jyväskylä but you are our first artist from one of another Nordic Country. What kinds of similarities, differences and possible collaborations do you see possible between the Nordic countries?

PQvist: It’s a very different country and to me it feels very exotic which is good and other than that there are.., latitude possibilities and similarities that would make for a lot of interesting collaboration because you have basically the same biotopes and the same basic sort of nature but as I said before the cultures are quite distinct and maybe to a non-nordic citizen it would seem very much the same but to me Finland is very different from Sweden and visa versa.

Äkki: Could you define some of that difference, is it something you could put your finger on or is it just a feeling ?

PQvist: It has something to do with.., I don’t know if I told you about this performance I did about 2 weeks ago in Vaasa. I walked through the town with a big sculpture, it took me about 4 hours and I am certain had I done that in Sweden or in New York or somewhere else, a lot of people would have come up and asked me what I was doing, or what the hell am I doing or why are you doing this and there would be a lot of people taking pictures in Vaasa nobody said anything and nobody took any pictures. So one of the differences that I find is that on street level it is a very different communication landscape and whoever I have approached and talked to, they have been very nice but it is a question of initiative. I don't know if it is shyness or a sense of letting other people- or minding your own business basically but I find it a bit daunting. I am used to going half way and then have other people meet me half way. I do a lot of performance art in public places and it seems you would need a bigger hammer here.

Äkki (Juho):  Does the performance when (if) nobody takes pictures. I asked one Finnish performance artist-, because now a days when you see a performance, you have 20-30 people taking photos when one artist is doing a performance, and I asked him does the performance happen any more if you don’t have this kind of documentation?

PQvist: It is an interesting question because, I like attention, I am a sucker for it basically. 

On the other hand most of the performances I have recently been done have been out in nature with no audience and no crew and just me.., and I am filming this. And it has been a very rewarding experience, to be doing something when you know no one is going to see this and of course I do document it so I do show it at some later point at a gallery or show or something but you know when you are doing things in an urban context part of it is or should be the possibilities of interaction with the audience and a lot of times that audience will be incidental like passers by people on the street but it is different ways of working I guess. 

Äkki: I was looking through your website and i came across a work Last year the actor/performance artist Shia LaBeouf showed a performance piece entitled “I am sorry” at an art gallery in LA. I am aware of this project because a young Finnish artist Nastja Rönkkö collaborated with LaBeouf for this project. the bigger questions i have is that today, do artists have need to apologize being touched on I am assuming you both are coming from very different places but I couldn’t help make a connection with this work and your work with a similar title “I am so sorry”. Do you think the similarity of titles indicates a larger need that artists have to apologize for the physical, emotional and spiritual state of the world today? 

PQvist:  I am not familiar with the work by Shia Labeouf ’s which i should be I guess but

what is she sorry about?

Äkki: Basically the piece is, he is a hollywood actor who began to do some performance pieces. and basically it was a piece where he sat in a room crying with a paper bag over his head and invited people to come and sit with him. and more about the project i don’t know ..

PQvist: No. I don’t think artists need to apologize. My ”I'm so sorry” is an apology to nature rather than to other people and the apology is very personal on one hand and pretty general on the other. The general part is that I am sorry that I am a human being and that I am partaking in this mess that we see here.  On the other hand, on the personal level ”I am sorry” expresses a sort of inner conflict that since I have been working with environmentally, or art geared towards environmental climate questions I find that I try to communicate these things in my artwork but in my personal life i still contribute to the problem a lot, I am too comfortable and I am too keen to have things work on a practical level to become like a hermit basically and not take airplanes and not drive my car and i think there is some.., when I started the ”I’m so sorry” pieces they bridged a gap  that I sometimes need to bridge when I don’t think art should be instrumental but i think art can be therapeutic and for me it has been a very therapeutic process to make these.

If for nothing else then my apology, once explained, and after going into a bit of detail with an audience it brings about a conversation, about where we are at and where we are at as individuals and how different people feel. Because I think what we have ended up in, is a sort of very emotional landscape when it comes to climate change and it is emotional because it touches on very basic and day to day doings and needs that we have and I find that very interesting and so I thought that the ”I am so sorry” would be a good place to start.  When you are doing something wrong the first step is to apologize, to admit that you are wrong, and the second step is to try to make amends, to set things right, so some of these ”so sorry” pieces have a part two where I perform something more symbolically than practically, but anyway, where we correct the situation of how.

Äkki: On a global lense, if it is question that a lot of people are dealing with right now from different angles right now. Admitting our place in the world, from that perspective.

Äkki (Juho): One environmentalist said that if you want to have nature you must to stay away from it,  so i think the best way to help nature is to live in downtown Stockholm. 

PQvist: I have heard that argument too, its kind of along the same lines that a lot of these eco-modernist talk about: the urban solution, that the best way to save the planet is to gather everyone in the big cities and to leave the country side alone, only to maintain parts of it for food production and then parts of it for recreational use. And I think that is a narrative that ties nicely into the whole modernist project of alienating us farther from nature and making things.. the dialog of us and them, culture versus nature I find that very hard to subscribe to. It frightens me because I think we need to go in the opposite direction. I see this happening in Sweden where local politicians will do their utmost to attract more people to the small towns and villages where people are- the young generation are moving out or going to the big cities.  And at the same time, and parallel to this, you have a government apparatus doing its utmost to gather everyone in the three big cities in Sweden and basically empty the country side. So there are these different forces going on. And yes, leaving nature alone is maybe a good idea but how about coexisting with it you know? 

We need to maybe relearn that. 

Äkki: Do you have any ideas about the future then?

Well I have a friend who is writing a book ”the future is a thing of the past” no- that is my title to it , I think his title is ”remember the future?” anyway. 

I don’t know I think it can go either way. I mean. I started doing this kind of work when I started having kids, that is the first time I started taking a serious interest in the environment. So my impulse was kind of fear based and… part of my offspring and their future and their ability to enjoy or have the same access I would say, to nature that I have but I think we have a good chance of.. I don’t know, a pretty good future if we do something radical now.

I usually say that we have outgrown our right to democracy. We no long deserve to live in a democracy because we have politicians and leaders who are elected for 4 years and even though they care about nature and the environment, they are too geared towards short sighted solutions that will get them through the next term. And so I think maybe, even thought I don’t have a good alternative to democracy, one vision I could conjure up would be a green dictatorship where somebody puts their foot down and says nobody flies, nobody drives a car, everybody has to just make do with what we have because we have enough stuff. The stuff is here. We have enough

refrigerators, spoons, whisks, parts.. to make us last for another 50 - 100 years– if we can deal with recycling and reusing in a way that is not just a sort of a middle class luxury entertainment so… 

Äkki: It seems you have lived and worked in many different cities and countries. What makes a city interesting for your work? or a place, what makes a place interesting for your work?

PQvist:  If it’s got different layers of history or surfaces that speak of different activities. I am interested in fringe areas like harbors and railroad tracks and seam line basically where residential areas becomes seam-lined industrial becomes industrial and then country side, so if a place has that sort of-  what would you call it? Weave? of different activities and different layers of activities than it is pretty much interesting to me. And on the other side of the spectrum I love places that are tremendously monotonous like the desert where there is nothing going on no people and basically only  just a flat horizon line but that is interesting in a different way.

I like cities and I like being outdoors but it needs to have either a complexity or a monotony I think.

So far Jyväskylä is, I mean, to me it is great, I live close to the river i can go to the paper plant.

It is also interesting in places that are- one activity has just left the building and another activity is getting ready to move in it is very fascinating with places that are in the the in-between stage. I guess most artists like that because it means that for a few years if you are lucky, you can move in there, find a cheap studio space, paint on the walls, whatever and then it solidifies into something more official. 

Äkki: You have approximately one week to create a new work for the International Kirkkopuisto Photography Annual here in Jyväskylä. Do you know what you are going to do? How does this kind of intense residency work for your creative process? 

PQvist: Well it’s.. I basically know what I am going to do I pretty much know I found out yesterday I think what it is that i am going to do. It’s good, I mean the short time span is good in a way, having small children I am sure you share this sentiment too, that whenever you have the time, you just get to it, there is less of sitting around staring at the wall thinking but  there is always a deadline for stuff so even if it is four months away I tend to do most of the work last minute anyway so I think it is good in a way. I have been here for what, I was here yesterday and then I came the day before, so I haven’t been been here for 48 hours yet and it feels like a week, it has been very intense.

Äkki: And now some one word answers:

Äkki: Nature 

PQvist: Space

Äkki: Process

PQvist: Walking

Äkki: Message

PQvist: Words

Äkki: Object

PQvist: Manipulate

Äkki: Place

PQvist: Bed

Äkki: Question 

PQvist: Mark 

Äkki: Movement

PQvist: Dance 

Äkki: Photography 

PQvist: Box

Kirkkopuisto Photo Annual with Radio City

 photo: Carolina Cruz Guimarey

This morning Äkkigalleria PR Juho Jäppinen visited with Pertti Perämäki at Radio Jyväskylä for the interview in the following link:

http://www.radiojyvaskyla.fi/uutiset-ja-haastattelut/kirkkopuisto-photo-annual-aukeaa/41/2132

Äkkigalleria's interview with KpPA residency artist Carolina Cruz Guimarey

 photo: Carolina Cruz Guimarey

Äkkigalleria interview with Carolina Cruz Guimarey on Wednesday September 10^th, 2014.

Äkki: This is your first time to Jyväskylä, and to Finland. What are your first impressions of Jyväskylä (and Finland)?

CCG: I feel that Finland is a place to get lost in a forest. That is what I really have loved and after walking between the shadows of the trees find out a lake, quite and silence. Here, nature is everywhere but it is not overwhelmed it is kind. I have felt protected, lost in a forest, alone, trying to be part of the nature that surrounds me. Peaceful. Finland is peaceful. Taika is one of the first words I have already learnt in finish, guess why.

Äkki: Today you experienced the Finnish sauna for the first time. What kind of experience was this for you? What images from this experience have stuck to your mind?

CCG: It was so liberating! I was able to forget about my body and get completely relax, it is not only a physical relaxation but and mental stay of serenity. The most special moment was be alone, swimming, and naked in the lake’s cold water after the sauna. It was a moment of extremely beauty and calm. You can feel part of the nature that surrounds you.

Äkki: The theme of home, the environment created in and by the construction of a house is a re-occurring subject in your work. What is your first memory of Home? Or can you describe when you first grasped the concept of home?

CCG: I think this concept interests me because I don’t really know what it means. Personally, it is a space of emptiness, something I try to understand, and something I have always been looking for. From the point of view of our society the concept “home” involves a lot of complex realities, from people who have lost their houses in Spain because of the economical crisis to people who are looking for a new homeland beyond the borders of their countries, some of them risking their own lives, some because of war conflicts. So, is home a house, a city, a country, or just a feeling? I don’t know. But in some kind of way we assume  “home” as a part of our identity and our memory. Maybe it is just a dream, a state of mind.

Äkki: You are a multidisciplinary artist, which means that you work with many tools to create images and installations. Photography is only one of these tools. Could you replace photography in your work?

CCG:

When I choose photography to develop a project it is because this project works better this way, I am not looking for the value of the image itself. I’m not a photographer strictly thinking about what that means, I just use my camera when I need it to tell something, I don’t catch images around me, I create those images, I provoke them. Nowadays, It’s easier to improvise in front of the camera, to let you go, almost by instinct, mostly with digital technology.  My photo projects are often related to actions, usually in the form of portraits accompanied by same kind of performance where I play some role in a defined space. It’s like the result of a secret performance, some mystery that involves the space or some objects. I have some ideas, some feelings, then I chose the composition, I search for a kind of light or a special place and I let things happen. I only could do that with photography. I guess some people do that with drawings…I use photography to built my images.

Äkki: In an interview you made with Laatikkomo a few months ago you talked about photography being like a door into another dimension: “a door to a timeless space that gives you the freedom to build new identities”. Are you also building yourself a new identity? Or because you often use yourself in your images, are you building an alter ego?

CCG: Not, exactly. I use my own image because it is practical; I am always with myself so. And that let me improvise much more. But I don’t think I building myself a new identity or create and alter ego. When I appear in my images, it is not me, it is a woman who is there. Usually you cannot see my face, there is nothing that tells you about me, it is a woman, could be you. The images come from me, from my concerns, my feelings, my wonders, but then they become another thing, they are not about me anymore.

Äkki: Some of your series includes found images, or other people’s family portraits, what is your interest in other peoples’ photographs? What do they give to your series?

CCG: Found photographs have a great influence in my artwork. I have been collected this images since a long time. I like the mystery that they have, this is the “door to a timeless space”, they talk about others and at the same time they talk about us. This photos capture personal special moments but I could be our lives, ours grandmother’s life. That is fascinating, we are all the same. We are here for a short time and then we left and we all go throw similar experiences, love, joy, lost, fear, dead. Besides, I have use found photos in lot of my artworks, mostly to talk about women, women reality and history.

Äkki: You seem to go on a lot of artist residencies: just finished a residency in a small town outside of Paris and now you are in a smallish middle sized town in Finland. What importance does a residency have on an artist, and what is the importance of the artist to the community of residence?

CCG: Art residences are for me essential. The periods I have spent in art residencies has let me grow as a person and help me to expand my view as an artist. Also, art residencies give me the possibility of being absolutely focus in my artwork, far away from home, I have a clear goal, develop a concrete project, take as much as possible from this period of time, usually I went back home with some new projects in mind too. Besides, the new places, the new people, everything is positive. My periods in art residences are like oxygen for me, let me breath. Moreover, I have met the most wonderful people from around the world thanks to this opportunities and I have find out magic places, little towns like Guenalguacil (Malaga, Spain), Uncastillo (Zaragoza, Spain), Vilanova de Cerveira (Portugal), Marnay-sur-Seine (France) and now Jyvaskyla. The community also gets enrich with the artists in residency. Local artists get new international nets and people of the community, mostly in little towns, get really involve in the process of the contemporary art and it becomes part of their lives.

Äkki: What kind of photography (or art) is currently popular in your hometown?

CCG: I don’t really think that the kind of work that young photographers are doing in my hometown are really different from the work of other artist of the same generation that I met in Europe. I guess all of us we are living a similar moment so the things that concern us are similar too.  In Galicia, my region in Spain, there are several young photographers who really have a interesting work: Carla Andrade, Jesús Madriñan, David Catá, Ruth Montiel, Veronica Vicente, just to name some of them, the list could be much more longer. All of them are doing international exhibitions very successfully. Carla Andrade’s work is focus in landscape and nature and in some kind of way also Ruth Montiel’s work. I think this is an international tendency and it is logic. This is an issue that concerns specially our generation. We are re-building our relationship with nature.

Äkki: Where do you go to seek inspiration? (To a place or an image, a book, an action…?)Many projects probably have their own source of inspiration, but is there one source of inspiration that you continually return to?

CCG: Poems, words. Often inspiration comes from them. But also my life, the things that worried me, the things that happen around me. Fears. Wounds. Secrets.

Äkki: And now some one word/short answers:

Äkki: Colour

CCG: Here, green.

Äkki: Process

CCG: Painful.

Äkki: Explanation

CCG: ?

Äkki: Message

CCG: Art

Äkki: Object

CCG: Found objects

Äkki: Home

CCG: Home (less)

Äkki: Question

CCG: Life

Äkki: Light

CCG: Shadow

Äkki: Shadows

CCG: Photography

Äkki: Time

CCG: End, Fin(land).

Äkki: Movement

CCG: Travel

Äkki: Photography

CCG: Taika

Äkki18 Interview with Maria Teeri & Janne Nabb (English version)

a spectator views part of the installation by Janne Nabb and Maria Teeri

Äkkigalleria interview with Maria Teeri and Janne Nabb on Sunday April 7^th, 2013.

Welcome to the 6^th Äkkigalleria residency in Jyväskylä!

You work in a lot with space and different kinds of space, what kind of space is Jyväskylä?

JN: Straight streets and curved lakeside roads, quite dusty this time of year, and there is a whole lot less snow here than what we expected (there is more in Helsinki).

MT: Many people have stopped to look in the gallery window, to see what is happing in the space, so Jyväskyläläinens seem to be interested in changes along the street.

Äkki: You will be spending the next five days creating a new body of work in a space you just discovered yesterday. Is this an intimidating way to work?

JN: It is!

MT: Yesterday was the day of enthusiasm, and today it’s a bit more distressing.

JN: Last summer we did a similar project at the Mänttä Contemporary Art Exhibition, so this way of working is somewhat familiar.

MT: At Mänttä the material was already there and abundant, but here we have to look for all our material.  So that also brings in a lot new, interesting elements.

Äkki: What do you think of the space? How do you anticipate it will influence the work you make here?

MT: The space is quite dominant.

JN: When we heard that the space was really small, we thought it would be easy to fill, but when we started to create in the space we realized that the size of the space doesn’t really matter, and so small and big spaces each demand a specific kind of approach, and there is pretty much always a lot of work to be done. 

MT: The space is quite slick, and there aren’t any easy, prehensile surfaces. It doesn’t have any distinct attributes such as you can find in industrial halls and old concrete storage spaces.

JN: The windows had gold lettering tape, the walls were champagne, the floor is this kind of grey, so it offers an interesting world of its own. 

MT: The placement is also interesting. We are situated between a pizzeria and a deputy services office, it’s one block away from the downtown pedestrian zone and yet it is still kind of detached from the centre. 

JN: Like the outskirts of the city; the red light district (laugh)… no, not really.

Äkki: How do you usually begin a project? Is what you are doing here different from how you usually work?

MT: It usually begins with something we find..

JN: ..it might be some physical material or a thought.

MT: In this case the space was more our starting point.

MT: normally the duration of our process is a bit more stretched out, sometimes it kind of goes on and on and on changing into something else, progressing as it goes along.

JN: Here we are maybe diluted because we are in what already is, and we are forced to work faster. But it’s like working with a new palette of colours. 

Äkki: You have established yourselves together as a unit. First of all, everyone always wants to know who does what. How do you work out the rules and regulations of the game?

JN: It is quite case specific. Sometimes it starts with a suggestion, so one of us shares an idea and then it starts from there. We can say things out load and someone always answers.

MT: Of course the answer isn’t always nice to hear: it isn’t the answer we want or expected to hear. Maybe about ten percent of the ideas are developed into projects.

JN: We don’t really have any set rules to the game yet, but that is good because this way the process is constantly in motion and changing continuously.

MT: If one of us gives up on a project, the other one can bring in new perspectives, which help the project move forward.

Äkki: Our residency couple from last year, Camille and Paul, talked a lot about how their communal drawings, and their whole process for that matter was a discussion, an on going process of communication with the other and the larger community. Do you communicate together through your work? Is discussion the focus of your work?

MT: Yes it probably is.

JN: For me, material, along with ideas, participate in discussion.

JN: We also try to use material and thoughts to communicate with a third party; who is the spectator.

MT: But part of the discussion isn’t open to the public. The discussion is really important and their needs to be some kind of interaction it is a central and essential part of our work together.

Äkki: Could you produce work alone? Could you have a show just as Janne Nabb or just as Maria Teeri? (Will you?)

JN: We met in 2004, and we began working together in 2008, so we did work for four years independently.

MT: But even right from the start, we always critiqued and commented on what the other was doing.

JN: We were making the same kind of work, we used the same colour, the same themes, and interests. And we started to think if it might be better to just work together.

MT: But now it isn’t really important who made what, and it’s not our way of working anymore, although we still do make our own things too.

Äkki: What and who are your influences? (People, artists, books, music..) And how are they (or are they) portrayed through your work?

MT: We quote other artists a lot; continuously, newly found and inspirational sources are unlimited.

JN: But if we have to say a name, the magic vanishes.

MT: Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger from ARS 2006 were a great inspiration for us in the beginning because they work together.

JN: Vesa-Pekka Rannikko is another interesting creator, whose work has influenced us along the way.

JN: There are element of influence from a surprising amount of artists, whose work we still hold on to for years and years.

MT: Last summer at Mänttä we discovered a great many artists and artwork. And the exhibition’s idea was wonderful in that respect because it really was inspirational in creating something new. And then there was dOKUMENTA 13 of course…

Äkki: The last phrase in your artist statement is: Working with found material often leads to unconventionalities and barbaric misreading. Can you expand on that statement? Could you give an example of a “barbaric misreading”?

JN: This was something one of our art teachers’ interpretations of our workspace and our way of working.

MT: If you use re-cycled materials, then multiple interpretations and “misunderstanding” are part of the process.

JN: Well fundamentally, we are painters, and painters don’t always have to justify each and every brushstroke they make. But because we work with re-cycled material, and all material has its own history, the viewer might make their own interpretations based on that history. But we are really using the material like paint.

MT: Maybe this is where the idea of barbaric misreading came from.

Äkki: I noticed that branches and sticks are a returning element in your work. Is this by accident or do they represent something more? What role do they play in your work?

JN: You are right, they do. I think they often function in the role of something that holds things up, used as a support for hanging things…

MT: As a rack/stand.

JN: The form of a branch is nice to hold on to when, for example, we are walking through Jyväskylä from our apartment to the gallery. It is a material counterpart…

MT: ... to all the plastic we use.

JN: To balance the fengshui.  But branches are easy to pick up and take along with you.

MT: I also pick them up along the way.

JN: Maybe it is a natural way of connecting with our primitive ancestry.

Äkki: A Finnish language professor just wrote an article in the Helsinki Sanomat newspaper about how we learn language the wrong way; we stress language classes at the wrong age (too late) we are only taught “important” languages such as English, and that instead, there should be more stress on multiple and divers languages at a younger age and in a more social and interactive context. What is your relationship to language?

JN: My father is a Swedish-Finn, but we never spoke Swedish at home. However, I got a lot of information through concrete, hands-on learning: fixing, customising bicycles and other things.  And I learned English through doing.

MT: I have always been more of a literary person. Mathematics and things in systematic order are natural for me. This might have come from my family’s background in classical music. I am not really an “innovator” I like to create things systematically. So, these are different kinds of languages, which offer different ways of observing the world.  

Äkki: What is your earliest memory of colour?

JN: Oh no. It probably would be the turquoise coloured fountain in yard of my childhood home. I dove in and the colour changed as the water turn red. I don’t remember that change of colour, but I remember the turquoise.

MT: I have a lot of colour memories. Maybe one colour memory would be of when I was made to lie in bed for a nap, but I didn’t want to. I remember pressing down on my eyelids and rubbing them; all the colours that appeared in a different and interesting colour-world.

Äkki: And what about your earliest memory of art?

MT: For me it is probably related to music, because my parents were both musicians. But I probably first discovered visual art through illustrations in books.

JN: My father built a lot of things; he made me a Jeep that was powered with a lawn-mower motor, and then there was a raft that we sailed over the river. These represented a feeling of freedom and an experience of something that I now want to do with my art. Something all encompassing.

Äkki: And now some one word/short answers:

Äkki: Colour

MT: Spectrum

JN: Tool

Äkki: Process

MT: Periphery

JN: Procedure

Äkki: Explanation

JN: Around…

MT: …the corner

Äkki: Object

MT: Partner

JN: Quasi-object

Äkki: Material

MT: Paint

JN: Tangible

Äkki: Time

JN: Slowed

MT: Cyclic

Äkki: Word

MT: Game

JN: Re-discovery

Äkki: Sound

JN: Metallic

MT: Black bird

Thank you Janne & Maria!

Interview with Patricia Driscoll

Äkkigalleria interview with Patricia Driscoll on Friday September 14^th, 2012.

Patricia Driscoll during her 2 week residency in Jyväskylä (photo Juho Jäppinen)

Äkki: This is your first time in Jyväskylä, and to Finland, you spent a day in Helsinki before taking the train up to Jyväskylä. What are your first impressions of Jyväskylä (and Finland)?

PDriscoll: I thought it was really smart. Everything was impressive.. and spacious. But it is also quite relaxed, and functional, it is all very high tech.

Flying into Helsinki there are these islands below, and the trees and the sea. And so the first thing you see is nature; islands and sea.

The other thing I found odd was how quiet everyone was. But I like that sort of quietness.

Äkki: Earlier you mentioned that you are not photographing the same things as you usually photograph. What and how do you usually photograph – how is that different from what you are doing here?

PDriscoll: I usually plan my photography, and I pursue a project over two to three years. So my work will revolve around planning it. Here I have to respond to my environment quite spontaneously. Here I am responding to what I see in Jyväskylä and I have to think of how I can fit my ideas into what is happening here. If that is possible.  This is probably a good thing because it makes you change your approach.

Äkki: Some of your work is quite political (A Means to an End). And some of your work appears to be more visually based (abstract landscapes coming from more natural settings). How do you bridge these seemingly different kinds of landscape?

PDriscoll: I was 18 or 19 when apartheid became redundant. During that time everything was political, I was affected by it. In a sense I didn’t want to deal with that at all, I felt I wanted to turn away from it, but it was always there, you can’t get away from it and it influences you in many ways.

And I think the abattoir series is not overtly political.

I think the way we treat animals is political, what we eat is political, but it is not particular to South Africa, it is a general issue. But in doing the work I did find out some interesting stuff about the particular places I went to. And a lot of the apartheid abattoirs are closing down, but they are being replaced, in some cases, by global companies rather than local companies; which is quite disturbing I think, because local is much better. So they are actually bringing in work forces from Ireland or other places and they are now competing with our local guys, which is terrible.

Äkki: What drew you to photograph in the abattoirs (slaughterhouses)? How did you get started on that project?

PDriscoll: I started in Cape Town. My friend and I did a project together, we were interested in where meat comes from. So we went to a supermarket and bought some beef but it’s all neatly packaged and we thought we would do a story on where it comes from. We went to the Maitland abattoir and we actually came across this amazing phenomenon called the Judas Goat, and that is really what we based our story upon, this goat that lives in the abattoir and leads the sheep into the slaughterhouse. So that is how it all started really, with the Judas Goat. But they don’t have Judas Goats any more; it has become more mechanized now.

Now this particular Judas Goat that we photographed, that abattoir closed down (another example of an apartheid abattoir) and it went to a petting farm. You kind of feel sorry for the goat but also it’s quite unsettling to think of all these children, stroking this goat, who don’t know what the goat has been doing.

I think the way we treat animals really reflects on how we treat each other, and I think we should think more about that. People don't think about it, I mean you can’t think about it otherwise you can’t eat meat. But it is pretty horrific, and on such a large scale. I mean I am not against eating meat, at all, but I think the scale of it is sort of scary.  The mechanization of it and the economics.

Äkki: Do you think having lived through and out of Apartheid in South Africa, has affected your work as a photographer?

PDriscoll: It’s difficult to see how, objectively, what could have affected me, but it’s definitely affected me. It just affects the way you see things. It’s a very difficult subject, and it is very emotional as well, and it is not easy to describe I guess, and through the TRC (truth and reconciliation commission) it was a highly emotional time for many South Africans, and I still think it is incredibly difficult.

Äkki: In Helsinki this year, all of the first year photography students are women. Thirty years ago the photography scene was dominated by men, as it is today in South Africa. Do you think there could be this kind of turn of the tables in South Africa? How do you see the future of women photographers in South Africa?

PDriscoll: I don’t think it matters too much, I mean there are a lot of really great photographers who are women, who are doing very interesting work. I think it is a difficult field in which to be a professional, I mean if you want to be an artist. But I think there is a lot of scope for female photographers.

I went to Rhodes University for a while and a lot of the students there were women, and I don’t know many girls in my class who have done well in photography. Maybe you have to be a little bit aggressive to do photography as a woman, maybe a little bit more aggressive than normal, I’m not sure. I don’t know.

I think there are more men photographers at the moment but there are quite a few females too.  

Äkki: What is your earliest memory of light?

PDriscoll: I think it was making daisy chains. As a primary school girl I would sit and make daisy chains with my friends, in the sun, I think that's when I really noticed light, spring and summer.

Äkki: And what about your earliest memory of art?

PDriscoll: that is quite a difficult one, I don’t really know how to answer that because art can be so many different things. Art can just be an experience or –, it doesn’t necessarily mean a picture or a visual. So I guess for me an experience: my first experience of art I guess, my first experience of fear would probably sum that up, but a fear that was exciting at the same time, so probably riding a horse, galloping for the first time, down a slope or something like that, would be that experience for what I feel like art can be. The sort of feeling of fear or anticipation, but with enjoyment.

Äkki: And now some one word/short answers:

Äkki: Colour

PDriscoll: Grey

Äkki: Process

PDriscoll: Time

Äkki: Explanation

PDriscoll: Infinity

Äkki: Message

PDriscoll: Return

Äkki: Object

PDriscoll: Subject

Äkki: Place

PDriscoll: Home

Äkki: Time

PDriscoll: Space

Äkki: Light

PDriscoll: Dark

Äkki: Movement

PDriscoll: Repeat

Äkki: Art

PDriscoll: Life

Äkki16 - Taiteilijapuheenvuoro, Patricia Driscoll

Etelä-afrikkalainen valokuvaaja Patricia Driscoll esittelee omaa työskentelyään ja luo katsauksen etelä-afrikkalaiseen nykyvalokuvaan.
Tilaisuus järjestetään Äkkigallerian ja Luovan valokuvauksen keskuksen toimesta, ja se pidetään Galleria Ratamolla Jyväskylässä.

Ke 19.09. klo 18
Galleria Ratamo (vanha veturitalli) Jyväskylä