The last two interviews are combined into one file, and unfortunately we were limited by time and couldn't keep going. Love Enqvist is a Stockholm-based artist who was coming to Talinn to lead the Diggers and Dreamers workshop, and was willing to come to Riga a bit early to participate in this project. Our conversation began from his work researching intentional communities, and began with a discussion about utopianism and communities in general before getting into further flung topics. Jonas Büchel was a very pleasant addition to the day's activities - the head of the Urban Institute Riga, he was recommended by the Linnalabor crew back in Tallinn and he proved to be an amazingly insightful and energetic guest who I hope to collaborate with more in the future.

The Little Dipper part 4: Love Enqvist and Jonas Büchel

Love Enqvist is an artist based in Stockholm. His book Diggers and Dreamers - Intentional Communities in a New Age, draws upon a myriad of utopian visions which are expressed through architecture, communities and personal reflections. What sets these intentional communities apart from other utopian dreams of a society, free from private property and from commercial exchange either of goods or of labor is that they survived into the present, seemingly against historical odds.

Jonas Büchel is a  Riga, Latvia based free social planner, community worker, mediator and supervisor; designer and consultant for regional and urban development projects with specific foci on remote communities as well as highly dense populated urban neighbourhoods. Passionate supporter of cvic education and member of the "Network of European Civic Education" (nece). Co-founder of the Urban Institute in Riga and lecturer at the University of Latvia, Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences.

I found Miga's interview to be one of the more difficult elements of the day. To be honest, I'm intimidated by his intelligence, and his thoughtful, careful way of speaking should be a lesson to me. I don't know Miga well but he'll be coming to Ptarmigan Tallinn in January and February 2013 on residency, where we'll be working together on our (Il)legal Aesthetics programme. This conversation was actually pretty wild - we got into the future of humanity, culture and technology, feelings of inspiration, searching for epiphanies, and other big questions. Again, apologies for the recording quality -- though generally Carlos did a great job - it was just a noisy room and I decided not to wear a close mic myself, so this is really my fault.

The Little Dipper part 3: Mindaugas Gapševičius

Mindaugas Gapševičius (b. 1974) – artistic pseudonym mi_ga – lives and works in Berlin and Vilnius. He is one of the most active artists in the field of new media, who works within the international art scene. He was among the initiators of the first Lithuanian new media art platform on the net http://www.o-o.lt. Mindaugas Gapševičius was an active participant of the international new media art networks, which stimulated the formation of networks between Western countries and Baltic States in the last decade of the 20 c. 

The work of Mindaugas Gapševičius is to be associated with net art, software and interactive user interface. The artist conceptualizes the flow of digital information, analyzes its inner logic and modes of application. In his works Mindaugas Gapševičius often links virtual and physical space. He engages deeply into social themes and takes up critical position towards contemporary neo-liberal tendencies.

Mindaugas Gapševičius is also actively involved into collective work, initiating interdisciplinary events and creative laboratories which include net art, open-code strategies, audiovisual artistic practices and visual art. 

This was maybe my favourite conversation of the programme, as I felt Maija and I started to tap into something personal, universal, and honest. Unfortunately the fidelity takes a hit as the crowd became a bit busier and the background noise makes this a bit difficult to hear.

The Little Dipper part 2: Maija Rudovska

Maija Rudovska is a curator, researcher, and art historian based in Riga. She has completed Curatorlab postgraduate studies at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. Currently she is working on her PhD thesis at the Art Academy of Latvia. In both academic and curatorial work she is interested in such topics as post-Soviet space, hybridity, peripheries, ideological spaces, etc. She has previously curated/co-curated such projects as Regard: Subversive Actions in Normative Space (Moderna Museet, Sockholm, 2010), Hardijs Ledins (1955-2004) –Zeitgeist and the Atmosphere of a Place (Riga Art Space, Riga, 2009), Candy Bomber – Young Latvian Painting (The Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, 2007/2008), etc.

 

I belong to a new group of curators and artists called Blind Carbon Copy (BCC), and we recently held our first event, Curators Go to the Bar, at the KIM? contemporary art space in Riga, Latvia.

My contribution to this event was hosting a 3-hour talk show, interviewing other artists and creatives in attendance. This is a test run of the Constellations project that Ptarmigan will be producing in March 2013 at Ylioppilasteatteri, Helsinki. Constellations will be a 120-hour non-stop talk show, attempting to open dialogues with various creative practictioners in a public, participatory form. The idea is to merge the intensity of durational performance with something that is direct, accessible, and of value to a larger audience.

The conversations in Riga only went for 3 hours and was meant as somewhat of a test run for Constellations; hence, the name The Little Dipper. All five guests were recorded by Carlos Vasquez so I'll be posting the recordings here for your enjoyment. I was getting over the flu so I unfortunately am coughing throughout; also, I learned that I am not very good at being a talk show host (yet). 

The Little Dipper part 1: Introduction and Lars Cuzner

I begin by explaining a bit about the intention behind talking to people in public, and then bring up Lars. I don't really stop talking much though but Lars does get a few words in.

Lars Cuzner is an artist, based in Oslo. He is interested in the various possible tensions between radical thought and action. In 2010 for one year Lars Cuzner offered fully confidential, one-to-one conversations at UKS art space, Oslo, where six participants signed up for conversations once a week for the full year. Through this project he explored the limits of private conversations and also tested the boundaries of the institutional critique and ability to report on similar art events, when the outcome of those events is secret. At the moment Lars is researching the Neue Rechte movement and a set of feelings which form the nationalist or the ‘tolerant Scandinavian’ image. At the same time, he is involved in a Christian sect where he is learning how to preach. 

Topics include: the sustainability of ideas, the Scandinavian social contract, making people break up with their partners, money money money, the relative privilege of Scandinavia and subsequent sense of superiority, working in the project-based culture economy, quitting entirely.

I'm still dazed from all of the awesomeness last week, beginning out of the La-Bas 'Concept of Performance' biennale in Helsinki, which ran from 25-29 April. I already posted about the DIS/Orientations workshop I co-led on Sunday, which was really the beginning of an unforgettable week - amazing people, brilliant performances, and a real feeling like we were trying some new ideas here.

After the workshop was a lovely post-festival comedown, all set on Harakka, where lots of the bizarre and wonderful people I had spent the week with enjoyed a sauna and campfire on the back of the island. Returning to Tallinn seemed impossible mentally as well as physically, but there was a pretty intense gauntlet of activities waiting here.

A few months ago, when I realised that a plethora of creative forces were aligning in Tallinn during the first week of May, I thought to organise a mini-festival around it all. I drafted up a  plan for Unknown Feathers: A Festival of participation in the experimental arts before realising that I was starting to overdo it. I have such a tendency to expand things and overload what would be already a busy week; call it 'festival bloat' perhaps, but it's a real problem, and I didn't need to pack the week even more. As it was too late to seek any sort of financial assistance, I wisely shelved the idea of Unknown Feathers for a later date and just focused on making the already-scheduled events happen.

Yesterday, John Grzinich, Sari TM Kivinen and myself led a workshop called DIS/Orientations on Harakka Island, Helsinki. This was part of the La-Bas 'Concept of Performance' Biennale, a 5-day investigation of performance and sound art. This was our first shot at trying something extremely experimental and improvisational on the theme of orientation and disorientation. For a few hours, the ten of us explored various exercises that were performative in nature, at least enough to justify it's inclusion in the festival. In terms of orientation we looked at re-mapping - exploring our surroundings by superimposing the map of an entirely different place - and intuition towards compass points. Disorientation was achieved via sense blocking (using blindfolds, earplugs, and bungee cords), textual games (by modifying each others biographies as an introduction) and simple performative scores: "Find a problem, and instead of solving it, enlarge it." The purpose, if there must be one, was to massage the unintentional serendipities that may come out of failures, misinterpretations and mistakes. 

Last month, Ptarmigan went to Supermarket, the artist-run art fair in Stockholm. Thanks to the KulturKontakt Nord Mobility Programme for enabling this to happen - Sari Kivinen, Andra Aaloe, Lewis McGuffie and myself all attended, which was 4/5 of the Ptarmigan staffers and in a way, our first collective project as collaborating artists (outside of the regular administration of Ptarmigan).

As Ptarmigan is emphatically not a gallery, nor did Tiib have anything for us to exhibit, we treated our exhibition booth as a mini-version of Ptarmigan itself. We constructed a theoretical replica of ourselves, dividing the booth into Finland and Estonia, with a small Baltic Sea in the centre. Across the centre we painted a blackboard (a reference of course to the blackboards in Ptarmigan Tallinn), providing an ongoing slate for us to write things, announce activities, and experiment. Throughout the 3 days (and the opening night on Thursday), we held an ongoing series of performances, actions, and activities, encouraging the 6000 attendees of the fair to participate as much as possible.

This was a bit mad, but indicative of what we do; projects rooted in the ephemeral, with a focus on inclusivity and participation, and a reinvention of what constitutes cultural production. Of course, lots of what we did at Supermarket was ludicrous and bizarre, as much of the programme consisted of improvised, impromptu actions:  'Lewis eats a Sandwich' and 'John stands in a bucket' being particularly dull points.

Some might ask why we even bothered going to an art fair when we are not a gallery and had nothing to sell or even really present. I believe that Supermarket is a great opportunity to meet others working in similar fields; sharing ideas and resources is important; and the reach of audience here is invaluable in attracting new people to Ptarmigan. We're always looking for new, worthwhile projects to attempt.

We met a lot of great people and had a lot of fun engaging others in our activities, which were sometimes extremely universal (such as the numerous games of mini-table tennis and paper American football) and some significantly more esoteric. 

We had a few proper performances throughout the weekend too, such as Sari's Textual Opera/Rations, where she actively filled sheets of A4 paper with texts constructed, overheard, misheard and reinvented. Sari's performed this before in several environments but at Supermarket she encouraged others to contribute; as the weekend progressed, pages slowly filled the walls.

Our former resident Ola Ståhl stopped by on Friday to do a reading of a textual piece called 'Black Box', and Helsinki friend Marja Viitahuhta re-performed her 'Spotlight' performance in our booth, attracting an entirely different audience than who attended when it was part of the official Supermarket programme.

Beyond this, we had our own improvisations, often marked on the chalkboard with arbitrary times to signify their beginning and ends. We played games, invented some new ones, talked with lots of people, and did a lot of completely ridiculous stuff. "Toss notes over the wall to the booth on the other side".  "Build a city out of paper". For an hour on Saturday, we swapped places with the ZET Foundation of Amsterdam, where we manned each other's booths in a game of impersonation. On Sunday we performed "Cling-wrap a visiting artist" with Edwina Goldstone (representing GalleriaKONE, Hämeenlinna). And in probably our most popular activity, we had an 'open haircut lab' where we invited strangers to cut our hair and offered to cut anyone else's hair. I now have a lovely but strange haircut that was the composite efforts of 6 different people, finished by an 11-year old.

Overall, the weekend was amazingly fun, and exhausting. There's more photos below, or you can check out the small Flickr set which has an overview of it all.

 

 

It's really, really cold here right now. Here being Tallinn, Estonia, where as I write it's currently -22 C (-7.6 F) and it "feels like" -33 C (-27.4 F) with the wind chill. I'm sitting here in Slothrop's trying to stay alive, for the feeble electric heating can't keep up with the brutality of an Estonian winter. Thank you, medieval architecture!

But that's okay, because February is going to be a crazy busy month with activities going on all around the Baltic sea - in Tallinn, Helsinki, and Stockholm.

Supermarket 2012

17-19 Feb - Stockholm! Both sides of Ptarmigan are attending Supermarket Art Fair 2012 in Stockholm. We are supported in part by the Kulturkontakt Nord mobility programme. At Supermarket, we will be running various "mini-events" throughout the weekend, all from our booth on the 5th floor of the Swedish Kulturhuset. These events haven't been completely mapped out yet, but they will include performances by friends of ours in Sweden (former Ptarmigan resident Ola Ståhl, and Julia Bondesson who also performed at our Invisible Prom event last April) and our own projects.  I'm going to try out a small demonstrative "workshop" on how to make your own hot sauce, and Sari will perform as well. I'm also hoping to have some public discussions about the issues that affect artist-run spaces, like a small roundtable chat. [Ptarmigan profile on Supermarket site]

Workshops and other participatory events

• Sunday 5 Feb - Svamp Tallinn.  Even though it's Super Bowl Sunday, come by Ptarmigan Tallinn at 14:30 and bring something to make sound with. We'll hopefully get a Helsinki Svamp happening this month too. [link]
• Friday 24 Feb - Fake it Til You Make It, February edition.  FITYMI is Justin Tyler Tate's monthly workgroup where participants show up without knowing what they will make. Last month everyone created cutout-style animations, and the month before we made inflatable sculptures. [link]
• Saturday 25 Feb - 'Fast and Raw' intermediate sushi workshop.  Justin also leads a regular workshop at Ptarmigan on sushi-making, which also includes knife-sharpening. Sign up at the Ptarmigan site.  [link]
• Monday 27 Feb - Fermented foods club, February meeting. I just made some natto which I will share with everyone (I made a lot) - if anyone can stomach it. I also got some tempeh spores so if I have time (unlikely), then I might try making that.  [link]
• Tuesday 28 Feb - Symposium, the Eesti Humanities association's regular symposium series, resumes activity. Programme TBA.

Performances, concerts  and exhibitions

• How ta tawk & dans rite - Ptarmigans Helsinki and Tallinn both are producing an interactive media/dance performance piece by Joey Chua Poh Yi, Rhys Turner, Anna Rouhu, and Guadalupe López.  The events have already begun in Helsinki and next week we give it a go at Ptarmigan Tallinn. There's only space for 15 audience members per performance; though it's free, we ask that you register through our website for which performance you would like to attend. All of the individual performances are set as separate events, so go to www.ptarmigan.ee and pick the one you want.
• Saturday 18 Feb - Ö-E-R orchestra, As Artistas Plasticos, Re:partisan. At Kodu Baar, in Tallinn, we're having a mixed show of music/sound meeting dance and performance. Featuring artists from Helsinki, performing in Tallinn. You know, that's the way it's supposed to work... [link]
• Thurdsay 1 March - Lewis McGuffie, Ptarmigan's Director of Creative Hemispheres, will open an exhibition at our gallery space in Tallinn, Tiib. [link]

Talks, presentations, screenings

• Monday 6 Feb - Clip Kino comes back to Tallinn with Viktor Lillemäe presenting a selection of his favourite American propaganda films from the 1950's.  This is the sequel to the Clip Kino he curated last May. Wow, it's been ages since we did a Clip Kino. [link]
• Wednesday 8 Feb - Luciana Ohira & Sergio Bonilha present "transimmanence" + Jane Hughes presents ¨Imagining Other Worlds¨.  This is a Labyrinths and Rings performance/presentation by two Brasilian artists and former Ptarmigan artist Jane Hughes, in Helsinki.  At XL Art Space. [link]
• Tuesday 21 Feb - As William "Bilwa" Costa and Martín Lanz Landázuri will do a 'Labyrinths and Rings' in Tallinn, presenting their Resonance project and screening a performance from The Kitchen NYC last December. [link]
• Wednesday 29 Feb - Leap day! I'm going to run a Liminal Images night, though I haven't worked out the programme yet, and it might be guest-curated.

Other events

• Monday 13 Feb - Slothrop's Books is going to have a belated opening party from 19:00 - 21:00. We'll have free wine, some musical entertainment probably, and a festive atmosphere. [link]
• Thursday 23 Feb - I'm going to do the DJ night at Kodu Baar that I meant to do monthly, but haven't actually managed to. I'll play vinyl in various forms: krautrock, prog, art-rock, jazz, psych, and other strange pulses. Kodu Baar is at Vaimu 1 in Old Town and I'll probably play from 21:00 til about 1 or 2 AM depending on the crowd. Lewis will make a really ridiculous and cryptic poster. We're thinking about trying to make one in the shape of a snowflake.

If you're in Tallinn, please stop by Slothrop's on Müürivahe 19.  You'll find a large selection of secondhand books in English - literature, history, art, politics, essays, criticism -- the works.  Slothrop's is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 18, Eastern European Time.  Soon we'll hopefully have a (carefully-curated) selection of independent publications and analogue musics for your shopping enjoyment.

Triple Canopy is opening the new space at 155 Freeman in Greenpoint, and is celebrating in the most insane way possible - by scheduling a marathon public reading of Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans.  

I can't make it over, of course, but my own copy has been sitting unread for years on my shelf, as I tote it around from move to move .... so I will be starting it myself, in parallel, and if anyone in Tallinn wants to meet up and do a shadow-reading this weekend, give me a call.

More information on the Triple Canopy announcement page!
 

Dispatches from a website I do a piss-poor job of keeping up-to-date:

•  I've been based in or around Tallinn for one year now.  Ptarmigan I can say has been going well; it's been an amazing thing and it's more momentum than inertia here.  We've had too much going on to fully talk about here, as we've had something like 80 events since April, but there's lots in the works for 2012, the Year of Our Culture Hangover.
• Helsinki Ptarmigan as well is bubbling with activity, thanks to the efforts of Sari TM Kivinen, Ptarmigan's Director/Janitor.  We managed a lot, I think, despite having no physical space throughout the year, and there are some great new projects bubbling up.
• I'm thinking about getting back into recording, working on the followup to the Boat Trip LP which I have about half-recorded, but has been dormant for a few months.  

More to come, in detail.

I'm going to perform solo/live for the first time in ages, as Oakwhistle again.  It's at the Soodevahe festival in Tallinn on the 17th of this month.  Expect something along the vibe of the Boat Trip LP only maybe sloppier - but (un)focused around hesitation, delicacy, and misguided stabs at beauty.

Refactored from last night's dream.  I'm putting this idea out there - for free!

Our hero: a hunky, famous American TV reporter.  Not a behind-the-desk anchor, necessarily, but an "in the field" guy.  He's fearless, witty, and I'm thinking best played by Jon Hamm.  But despite his fame, wealth and success, our hero is sad.  He's lonely.  He's tried supermodels, politicians, actresses, and atheletes, but no one is right for him.  It's even starting to affect his work - his nightly reports, delivered from the frontlines of horrible war-torn places and the inner sanctums of heretofore-untouchable public figures - have been infused with an innate sorrow.

Then, time travel is invented! It's neither easy nor cheap (being controlled, of course, by the potentially sinister company, Big Chronos), and it must follow strict I, Robot-style rules to prevent time-chaos like in every other time travel film.  But due to our hero's fame and talents, he begins to innovate the field of time-journalism.  Maybe he's not the first, but he's the best; but by excelling in this, he has even less time to find Mrs. Right.

For whatever reason he goes back to the 19th century or so - I'm thinking the time of Andrew Jackson -- to work on a story.  And it's there he falls in love with a woman from the past - one who is not necessarily drop-dead gorgeous but satisfies his soul.  I'm thinking Rebecca Hall for this.  And of course, this violates a crucial rule of time-travel.

And from here, we can go in several directions, but all of them are bleak.  Screenwriters, take your pick!

1. Absolute emotional tragedy -- these two people love each other but cannot really be together because of, perhaps --
   • The time-journalism technology is actually only some sort of hologram/simulation, so our hero cannot actually touch or interact in the flesh, which renders their lovemaking a vaguely awkward bit of frustrated thrusting, bashing into walls and closet doors because of closed eyes, trying to break through the temporal-tactile barrier, etc. where our plot takes us to, possibly --
     • in some horrible accident, these frantic Ghost-like attempts to physically connect lead to violent impairment, from the battering and bruising, to the point of death even; or --
     • in some Groundhog Day-like bit of movie magic, these characters are able to transcend the limitations of the non-physical, and our hero actually reaches a corporeal state in the past, whereas they consummate their relationship (and, to preserve the tragic twist, if the screenwriter desires, they are both horribly disappointed by the sex [he perhaps because he is expecting more, and she is conforming to the mid-19th century ideas of intercourse; her disappointment comes because he's just not a very good lay] and furthermore the hero's transformation into past-occupying flesh and blood renders it impossible for him to ever return to our present day, at which point he realises that he's actually very much a shallow vapid celebrity fuckwit and he misses his iPad and spends his remaining life in the 1830's trying to invent the IP address; or --
     • In an even more twisted take on the non-tactile relationship concept, one inspired by dark body horror like Cronenberg et al, the heroine could fall into a state of psychosis and begin to create surrogate bodies to replace the hero's physical state.  This could get into kidnapping and even murder, and the hero would go along with this, desperate to please her, thus raising some tired issues of time-travel ethics as well as creating many disturbing scenes of Rebecca Hall trying to mount a chloroformed hobo while the spirit-apparition of Jon Hamm stares in manic frustration;
   • Or, this isn't the case, and the time-journalist is perfectly capable of touching, feeling and fucking as much as anyone else.  So instead of focusing on the physical relationship, a more PG-13 oriented screenwriter could instead twist the emotional knife by addressing the false promise of 150-year-old love.  Our hero, again, this has to be Jon Hamm, so desperate for something that modern romance can't offer him, falls in love with Rebecca Hall or whomever, and commits fully to a serious relationship, let's say also forsaking the ability to return to the present (which also makes it easy, plot-wise).  But as the film goes on, he quickly discoveres that being in a relationship with a woman born a century before your parents isn't so easy; once the infatuation wears off, the everyday reality sets in and both characters find it difficult to relate to one another.  She cannot understand his job as she cannot even fathom the concept of television; he, likewise, has difficulty adjusting to a world without as much technology -- and, let's hold true to the idea that the guy is a bit of a fuckwit - he starts to stray a bit from their commitment, first indulging in a little high society sexual hijinks but then eventually descending into the nebulous depths of brothels and other dark areas.  And remember, safe sex isn't really on the radar here.  And so, this plays out as a horrible dung heap of misery for both parties. 
2. Or instead -- total sci-fi madness!  Cause, let's face it, we've already got time-travel in here, so we can take on a bit of the La jetée approach and implode the future world or something like that.  Let's say he has the ability to bring her back, and he convinces her that she desperately needs to come back to the future and exist in a world of electronics, plastics and Twitter, so they do this; at which point tragedy can strike again, perhaps because --
3. • Our heroine, or at least we can say "female lead", being an adult woman from a time with far different airborne bacteria, sanitation standards, and other disease-spheres -- she instantly contracts polio, scarlet fever, or some other all-but-eradicated disease that is probably on every surface of our contemporary, inoculated/vaccinated existence.  If she doesn't just straight-up die, which would drive our hero to utter madness, then she will at least suffer in some extremely depraved way and our hero will find his investment in their love-based relationship under strain, where from here you can factor in any of the options from pathway 1 above; or --
   • In classic time-travel style, hero is unaware that heroine is somehow a necessary step in the creation of his own birthline, so he somehow wipes out his own existence; or --
   • Of course, building logarithmically on the previous option, their disruption of the time-travel rules (which of course are very much strictly enforced by Big Chronos, for obvious reasons, which would also add a thrilling suspense/action sequence in the middle as they must find ways to sneak her to the future, which could be slightly more Dystopian than our actual present [though I do think the emphasis should be still on electronics, plastics and Twitter - market capitalist democracy at its fullest, of course] and involve fights, chases, bribes and/or trapeezes) not only wipes out the hero's own existence but actually alters the world entirely, perhaps for the better, but most likely for the worst; or --
   • Maybe the violation of Big Chronos's time-travel rules will actually lead to the implosion of the entire world in some sort of negative reality inversion!

Regardless of which forking path is taken, the moral remains that the pursuit of ones dreams is ultimately selfish and only inflicts pain and suffering in others, whether that other is the woman herself (who I can't seem to picture as anything but a victim in most of these scenarios), the entire human race, or at the very least the TV network that employed the hero to go back and interview Andrew Jackson, or whatever they trusted him to do before he frittered away his time chasing Second Great Awakening Tail.  Of course, I mean this moral to only be applicable to super-rich beautiful celebrity-type people; a subtext (surely to be inserted by a deft screenwriter) would be that regulars and normals should pursue their dreams without hesitation! 

I've entered the world of 'published author' with my essay 'Everything is Tentative and Possible', which describes the experience of co-founding Ptarmigan in Helsinki from 2009 until the opening of the Tallinn space.  It's published by the lovely Mount Analogue press/curatorial platform in Stockholm, and is part of a book that deals with self-organised, non-profit art initiatives with regards to the ak28 collective (now defunct). I'm not completely sure where to get it, but you could try contacting Mount Analogue.

Lots has happened since I last remembered to post here; the opening of Ptarmigan Tallinn, I guess, is the biggest thing.  I've had a few small things of my own - the release of a new Lied Music/Vernon and Burns LP, a workshop/seminar here and there - and I'm going to try to be more diligent about posting these things.

Which reminds me - Sunday, 12 June 2011 at the SHuSH event in Helsinki, I'm going to lead a short seminar/discussion group titled 'art, collaboration and pedagogy' through the Public School Helsinki in collaboration with SHuSH, Ptarmigan and lots more.  More info will be on the SHuSH page.  

 

It's hard to avoid getting emotional when cleaning out the project space that I've dedicated the last year and half of my life to, arguably the most seriously I've ever dedicated myself to anything.  And I keep telling myself - it's not over, it's not the end - it's just changing, evolving, developing, and reinventing itself.  

But a project space is at its core, just that, a 'space' - a term probably overused in arts and culture, to the point where it becomes devoid of meaning.  But that's ultimately all I could use to describe it, because whenever anyone called it anything else -- venue for experimental music, art gallery (ha!), art space (taidetila), or even just culture space --  those terms felt too restrictive.  At its core, Ptarmigan was just a space (tila) - 150 square metres in a exciting, developing (yet still off-the-beaten path) neighborhood of Helsinki - but a space that filled some sort of void, at least to many people.  So when that space is abandoned, it's hard to avoid shedding a tear.   

 Tonight's not been fun, and I'm not even close to being finished (but I'm taking this opportunity to write here and procrastinate somewhat). All of this evening's mundane acts -- sweeping the floor of my personal studio for one last time; taking down the projector ceiling-mount and getting fiberglass drop-ceiling shards in my hands; filling yet another box with keepables and writing the always-redunant "MISC. STUFF" on it in Sharpie -- feel like some eulogy of action.  

Action was the point of Ptarmigan, I guess.   Our logo, at least on our website, privileged the fleecy feet of this wonderful Northern bird (a name we chose basically at random, though the hilariousness of Finns pronouncing it PUH-tarmigan, as Finnish has no silent letters, is never-ending).  Andrew Paterson asked me once why we used the feet, and I said 'Because we do things, not just talk about them.'  Although, that was arrogant nonsense I made up on the spot - there was no executive decision to decide such a philosophy (and wings would have been a better metaphor anyway).

When you have an arena, there's no limit to the amount of shenanigans you can cram into it. Two years ago, I couldn't have even imagined all of the wonderful things we managed to do here.  Rather than blabber on about it here, you can look at our event archive.  Our annual report, which I wrote to ape the corporate style, actually makes me proud; the people who have supported this space and put their energy and efforts into it have been the most amazing thing of all.  

And now, it's a time to celebrate.  We?re not really closing; we're technically expanding, with a  satellite location opening in Tallinn, Estonia in the next few months.  Ptarmigan in Helsinki, due to financial issues, is going to exist as a mobile arts centre at least temporarily; it will cease to be a permanent address and become a floating idea, and a residency-centre-without-a-centre.  But hopefully not for long.

I'm going to be writing much more detailed thoughts about the Ptarmigan experience elsewhere, soon, so I'll save this for  my cleaning-related emotions.  I've spend an enormous number of hours between these walls, and felt for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, like I was contributing to something.  It's a bit different than moving out of a flat or graduating from a school, but since the projects will (hopefully) persevere, tonight is really just an exercise of pure drudgery. 

Thanks to everyone who has been part of Ptarmigan - volunteers, performers, artists, and audience.  I could name names but it's really Tara Pattenden, Ptarmigan's co-founder and Creative Director who deserves the most credit.  I know we won't be the only Helsinkians that will miss this physical space, but to quote the Photon Band, "the future's only just a second away."

 

Two projects I have worked on have recently launched, and I meant to post them here sooner!

 
East of Borneo is "a collaborative investigation of contemporary art", based out of CalArts and led by Thomas Lawson.  The locus is Los Angeles and Southern California, and it blends curated articles and content with user-uploaded material.  I have worked heavily on the development of this website this summer and autumn, and will continue to be involved with it.  So far there's some great articles on Roger Corman, John Baldessari, Asco, and more, so please check it out.   www.eastofborneo.org


 
I also joined the development team of Triple Canopy, an ongoing curatorial platform, magazine and online project space.  I've loved what TC has done in such a short time; I was happy to help implement the brilliant re-design, which launched last week with issue #10.  Caleb Waldorf and Adam Florin are responsible for the striking, yet amazingly functional visual design.  Issue 10 is rolling out now, and will have a piece by Steve Rowell that I'm really looking forward to.  At the moment there's work by Matt Mullican, Julia Sherman, and others.  www.canopycanopycanopy.com

Next month I will be coordinating a workshop entitled Miscellaneous expertise: performance, unlearning stories and public speech at the MoKS Kunsti ja Sotsiaalpraktika Keskus AVAMAA sympsium in Mooste, Estonia.  This is a collaboration with my good friend Giles Bailey, and the workshop will take place over five days with the dissemination on the sixth.

We proposed Miscellaneous expertise as an experiment using the workshop format; we hope to explore some of the structural components of performance through a patchwork aesthetic, with a concentration on “found” materials, chance, and non-linear constructions.  One potential subtitle was “Performance for non-performers AND non-performance for performers”, though that's a bit too constrictive and I think "unlearning" is a better term to use.

The outcome of the workshop will be a panel discussion that dissects the nature of performance, which of course will itself be a performance, which of course will not be.  If you remember my post about last year’s Mutopia workshop @ AVAMAA, then you’ll know I valued the MoKS approach to creative practice, a flame that will hopefully burn through this.  

Details about the workshop (how to attend, as well as info on the other workshops and projects occurring during the AVAMAA week [Natalia Borissova’s workshop looks amazing, and I wish there was some way to clone myself and do both]) are available on the MoKS website.  If you’re thinking of participating in Miscellaneous expertise, feel free to drop me a line or comment here.  See you in Estonia!

I'm stuck on this boat again -- that's not a metaphor -- but it was my own (stupid) personal choice to take the Helsinki to Rostock ferry.  I hate flying, I love the environment, etc. etc and it would be a fun way to go to Berlin, right?  But then I impulsively ended up driving back from the UK two weeks ago, so I took this very same boat (though in the other direction, from Rostock to Helsinki) and discovered it to be a 29 hour plate of boredom -- starving boredom, really, as Tallink doesn't understand that a vegetarian might not want to pay 29€ for the dinner buffet just to eat salad and bread.  But yes, I'm back here, sitting in this shitty ferry bar listening to 'Baker Street' over and over and sipping crappy Finnish beer. I no longer have Bill Simmons' mammoth basketball book to amuse myself with, but I'm better prepared for food, having brought my own sandwiches.

Anyway, the reason I am posting this is to alert any potential readers to 'There is nothing less passive than the act of fleeing...', which is a 13-day seminar in Berlin organised by The Public School.  I'm only catching the last few days, but greatly looking forward to it.  Overlapping with this is a series of programmes presented by Triple Canopy -- so needless to say, I'll be busy. Additionally, it's a chance to formally make the connection from the Public School Helsinki (though I think Kari Y-A is the only other person likely to show up from Hki) and also to get more involved with Triple Canopy, as this will be the first time I'll actually have met most of these people in person since I formally joined the team.  

The first of the three 'There is nothing less passive...' days I'll catch is happening in Teufelsberg listening station, a pretty unforgettable place that has been etched into my ears since I visited it a few years ago.  It's going to be an amazing place to discuss Claire Fontaine's essay with a bunch of strangers!  But Caleb Waldorf, my old partner in Intro to Pterodactyl (a musical group that recorded what is still probably my favourite recording I ever did, still unreleased at large), is no stranger, and he was one of the core organisers of these events -- so seeing him will be great.

As for now, the sea is calm (and boring) and 'Baker Street' just came on again, and this Lapin Kulta was "only" 4€, so I'm happy!  I have Alexander Theroux's Darconville's Cat to occupy my mind (as well as the Public School readings).  See you guys in Berlin!

(75% of Lost Lake, live in Newcastle: L-R Mark Vernon, Luke Fowler, me)

Last month I ended up back in Glasgow for a week to work with Luke Fowler in our Lied Music project, though this time we have formally merged it with Vernon and Burns, using the name Lost Lake.  Mark Vernon and Barry Burns, with whom we recorded the 2006 LP Lied Music vs. Boy-Band Tax Returns, are two of the most like-minded, complementary soundies we've ever worked with;; while we've recorded together heaps, we have never performed before as a 4-piece.

The two live dates (Newcastle and Glasgow) didn't go quite as planned; due to a family emergency, Barry had to drop out rat the last minute.  Also, we were hoping to have our new LP available, but mastering and pressing delays meant we were empty-handed on the merch table (though Luke has a slew of new releases on his Shadazz label, and Vernon and Burns have a new LP on Gagarin). Suddenly thrust into trio mode, unprepared, the Newcastle date was a bit jittery, though it was worth it to experience the lovely Star & Shadow Cinema, an inspiringly beautiful all-volunteer cinema and performance space.

The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde is a stunning work that achieves the history it intended to write while also providing stimulating inspiration about sound and approaches to creating it.  Editor David W. Bernstein presents a series of articles that detail the history, occasionally repeating information but allowing a pluralistic set of viewpoints to emerge instead of a monohistory.  The second half of the book is comprised of interviews, first with the primary actors of the Center (Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Bill Maginnis, Morton Subotnick and Tony Martin) and then with other figures who were also involved (Terry Riley, Ann Halprin, Don Buchla, Stewart Brand, Stuart Dempster).
 
 
(l-r: Ramon Sender, Michael Callahan, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros (seated))

I think I found this particularly inspiring because I read this at a time when I've felt rather oversaturated with experimental music, and a bit unsure about how to continue my own experimentation in the field.  I'm about to embark on a stint with Lied Music/Vernon and Burns for the first time in ages, which makes me think a lot about the aesthetics of tape (which I haven't worked with since I left the UK -- I don't even own a working reel-to-reel at the moment).
 

As mentioned in the previous post, Part Oy has offered Helsinki Public School a shipping container to use for classes + events to be housed at the new Kalasatama development.
 


(full-size image)


There will be 9 containers arranged about halfway up the western side of the harbour (where #4 is marked on the map).  Besides us, there will be Dodo, two theatre groups, Kuvataideakatamia, Suomen Merimieskirkko and possibly some others.  The opening event will be on 12.6, Helsingin Päivä.
 

Summer is almost here, and summer will (almost certainly) bring us a large empty shipping container, "permanently" landlocked in the Kalasatama harbour.  This is part of an initiative between the city and Part which will be an ongoing 25-year project to revitalise Kalasatama.  We're looking forward to using the container as a classroom for most Public School events this summer, and I'm also curious to see what sort of community we end up with down there, as other organisations (Dodo and Kuvataideakatemia, for starters) will also have their own containers.

Last weekend Ptarmigan hosted back-to-back Public School classes.  Friday brought the second meeting of Drawing, aka Dinosaur Drawing or Drawing Marathon, faciliated by Cathérine Kuebel and Sarah Alden.  This time the class was extended to be 6 PM til 9 PM, though most people petered out before 5 AM.
 
 

Once again, it is possible to immerse oneself into the magical synthesis of language, people and artifice that is the David Simon city-fiction.  What worried me, before seeing the 80 minute pilot of Treme, is that Simon would stray from the “write what you know” rule — it’s inarguable that he is a master of all things Baltimore, but tackling post-Katrina New Orleans?
 

I have never been to New Orleans myself, so I can’t even guess at its accuracy.  Simon has already defended his factual errors and makes a pretty good case for the liberties he and co-writer Eric Overmyer have taken.  It only took me a few minutes into the episode - probably at the sight of Wendell Pierce raising his trombone to his lips - before I realised that I didn’t care about how realistic the city’s portrayal might be.  

Ptarmigan was funded by The Nordic Baltic Mobility Programme for Culture administrated by the Nordic Culture Point!  We will be able to offer three 2-month residencies in 2010 to residents of the Nordic and Baltic countries (outside of Finland).


In true Ptarmigan fashion, we are interested in people who do similar things to what we do.  So while we are looking for artists and cultural producers, we are particularly interested in people who have a strong emphasis on community interaction, workshops, skills exchanges, and event-driven dissemination.


For more information, or to apply, please see our call for submissions.  And spread the word!  Applications are due in just over a month and we hope to make decisions in early June.

The Public School Helsinki has been getting a bit of coverage lately.  Here's two recent articles:
 

• Voima [Finnish language]
• Ny Tid [Swedish language]

Any Helsinki people who are interested in getting involved -- please do!  At the moment the committee is open to anyone and you can sign up via the CoActivate project.

I will end this post with this amusing photo of Tero and I from the Voima article.