We are happy to be part of the opening show of the new Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng -museum, which is located in the former French Pavilion of 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Among 52 artists we show there the 4-channel complaints choirs installation.
Finland’s national public service broadcasting company YLE shows our movies I Love My Job and People in White Monday 15th September 11.45pm. In some countries they can be viewed afterwards at YLE areena (I Love My Job: Finnish and Swedish language, Finnish subtitles, People in White: Dutch language, Finnish subtitles)
Photo by Lars Gieskes
Photo by Connie Mealing
Welcome to the ending event of Investment Zone -project in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 24th September 2014, 6pm!
Presentations, food, drinks, live music and a party! Open stage for the first street piano of Gelsenkirchen!
Investment Zone – a half a year Reality Game and a participatory art project in Gelsenkirchen – is reaching the end! In April a group of volunteers in Gelsenkirchen received a piece of land for half a year. They have met every 2 weeks, and each time received 50 eur each to invest to the land. The same process has happened simultaneously in Bangalore, India. Come and see the results – and enjoy the atmosphere of the transformed area!
Location: Gewerbepark am Schalker Verein, Europastrasse, 45879 Gelsenkirchen
The project continues still in Bangalore. You can follow the game at www.investmentzone.info
Due to the successful reception of the exhibition – the closing date of this group exhibition is extended until 9 November in CAAC, Sevilla. We show there our video work The Making of Utopia.
Complaints Choir installation travels to Tokyo within the touring Living as Form -exhibition (nomadic version) by Creative Times. It will be shown at 3331 Arts Chiyoda 15 – 28 November 2014.
Our project concept “Avatar” was chosen to Nordisc Panorama´s special program Hackathon. It is a platform where experts of different field gather to brainstorm and develop different aspects of an existing concept. Read about Avatar and Hackathon here.
We are glad to be “The Media Artists of the Month” withing the series of M2HZ web tv. Four interview episodes can be followed here
We are also happy to invite you in the following events in August 2014:
9th August 12-2pm, Helsinki, Flow Festival´s Flow Talks – organised by FRAME. The theme of this talk session is participatory art.
25th August 6pm: The Brioni Re-Mixes by YKON at Gallery MUU, Helsinki
29th August at Tikanoja Art Museum, Vaasa, Finland: opening of SJÄLÖ 9 -exhibition. There we show People in White
30th August at Wysing Arts Centre, Time-Space: Future -event. There FOAM presents the archive of one-off dub plate records – each of them having a sound work of commissioned artists – including Tellervo Kalleinen.
The complaints choirs of Berlin and Dresden received surprisingly much attention of German media. They even made it into the main evening news (ZDF heute). Culture channel Arte portrait the Dresden choir and Spiegel Online the Berlin choir.
BRAND Eins, an economic newspaper in Germany that I read from time to time, made an extended interview with us. The interviewer was Bernhard Bartsch from weltreporter.de; he later joined the Berlin Complaints Choir.
BRAND EINS – Lamento, ergo sum
There was as well an article in the last remaining newspaper of Gelsenkirchen, the WAZ, about investmentzone.
We are happy for being granted the AVEK Award 2012. AVEK Award is the main prize of media art in Finland, and it is given once a year for an artist / artist group. AVEK is The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture in Finland. If you are interested, have a look to the jury´s statement below.
AVEK media art award 2012 / Jury’s statement
The AVEK award 2012 will be granted to the artist couple Tellervo Kalleinen (born in 1975 in Lohja) and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen (born in 1971 in Dresden).
Their productions combine media and social art with performance art, into pieces that move between everyday life, utopia and fantasy. One of the most central themes of their production work is the treatment and unwinding of the tension between an individual and their community. The production method of the couple is one of participation: Their art pieces are created in cooperation with various diverse communities and collectives. Quite often, the production process channels the negative experiences of the participants into positive energy through the use of improvisation and play.
The most renowned art piece by the Kalleinen couple is the Complaints Choir project, which, after first touring Birmingham (2005), Helsinki and Saint Petersburg, has been organised in almost one hundred cities, on every continent. In a Complaint Choir, a group of citizens compile together injustices, which are then composed into a choir piece that will be performed forcefully in the middle of the city. The popularity of Complaints Choir came as a surprise to its creators: The choir piece performed in Birmingham, “I want my money back, which was shared on YouTube, and the demand for organising such choir pieces grew rapidly. As befits community art, the creators published the concept to be freely used by all those interested, and now, DIY complaints choirs are being organised all over the world.
The “Personal is political” motto seems to be a good description for the projects by the Kalleinen couple, but, at the same time, they are moving towards the opposite direction by looking for personal interpretations for traditionally political forms. For example, in the Puhekaraoke (Speech karaoke) project (2011) by The Speech Karaoke Action Group, political speeches are visualised on a video and recited by the participants. This extreme individualism of political actions is also represented by micronations. The Summit of Micronations at the Amorph! festival in 2003 was, in fact, where the cooperation between Kalleinen and Kochta first started, as they curated the summit together. The YKON artist collective, specialised in utopic thinking, was also launched in connection with the summit. Kalleinen and Kochta are founding members of the collective. In addition to the micronation theme, YKON’s work includes participating future games, in which the artists imagine alternative realities.
In their movie production, Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kallinen combine the methods of fiction and documentation with a participating method of production. I love my job (2012) is a satire on working life, filled with dark humour. The participants of the project were requested to direct short films about their actual work experience nightmares – and to write an imaginary ending for the story. People in White (2011), produced in Netherlands, compiles the experiences of patients in a psychiatric hospital into a document. The patients themselves act both as the patients and their caretakers, which paints a shocking image of the micro level power relations in a welfare society.
These productions depict the extraordinary skill of their creators to build trust with their participants and create a frame in which a participator can let go, unburden and share their most painful personal experiences. The entire production by this couple could be called a “social media”, in the true sense of the word – they are about creating empowering, collective experiences, as well as the related ethical responsibility.
The pair is currently in the middle of a very active phase and their art pieces are touring the world. In Finland, Puhekaraoke (Speech Karaoke) and News Transformation Agency by the YKON collective were recently seen during the Helsinki Festival. In October 2012, the production Archipelago Science Fiction will have its premiere. It has been written in cooperation with people from Turku Archipelago and its theme is the future of the archipelago 100 years from now.
Minna Tarkka
Chairman of the jury