BIFI STUDIO & EI NIIN YKSINKERTAISTEN PUUTARHA
5.-29.12.2019
gallery open
wed-fri 12-18
sat-sun 11-16
JOHANNES VARTOLA & EERO YLI-VAKKURI:
BIFI STUDIO
Trees are bound to signifcant aesthetic, economical, scientific and spiritual meanings. They hold information regarding the past and as such are expected to solve imminent challenges regarding the future of our environment. Vartola and Yli-Vakkuri have built specific bifi equipment ( biological fidelity) that offer the possibility to quiet down and listen to wood in contact with various materials. Different wooden products, blades and tools work as the cartridges of the turntable. The audience has access to a collection of familiar wood genres including: blind wood, burning wood, cultivated wood, panel, park wood, wood waste, veneer, barks, surface processed wood and green wood.
LAURI LINNA:
GARDEN OF THE NOT SO SIMPLES: KEYBOARD FOR PLANTS
Through out history a good amount of technology has been developed to support plant life: starting from simple irrigation systems of the ancient world to computer controlled green houses of the present day. In many of these systems the plants’ role is to passively produce desired things – be it food or beauty. In this exhibition the Mimosa pudica plants can now control some of the events happening around them through the Keyboard for Plants. The keyboard is a set of sensors that work the same way as pushing buttons: a button is pushed and something happens.
In order to understand better how the system works it is important to know that plants move, but usually very slowly. As the plant moves its leaf on top of a button, an electronic system turns on either a sounds or electrical equipment. The equipment and sounds are planned so that they suit the senses of the plants.
It is unclear can the plant understand the connection between its movement and the change in the space. But it is clear from previous tests that some buttons are pressed more often than others. So there might be a preference.
Garden of the Not So Simples is Linna’s studio. It consists of an allotment garden and a studio space. Linna shares the garden and studio with approx. 50 different plant species, excluding all the nameless weeds. It is difficult to count the number of individual plants. The name of the studio is a version of the Orto Botanico di Padova in Padua, Italy, sometimes translated as Garden of the Simples. Even though the name refers to simple medicinal plants, the name also resonates the tradition of thinking that plants are simple beings.
About artists:
Eero Yli-Vakkuri (b.1981) is a design oriented performance artist, who works primarily in public spaces. In the past he made annoying street interventions which made people uncomfortable, presently he is making a study of contemporary equestrian culture and advancing sustainable design through campaigns, workshops and artistic presentations. He prefers to work in groups and to develop interdisciplinary collaborations with specialists in different fields. From 2015 onwards he has been focusing on sounds in an effort to understand how they build communities.
Johannes Vartolas (b.1985) artistic work is centered around issues in philosophy of human – nature relationships and politics of site and place. Vartola focuses on experimentality, sound, performances, installations, audience collaboration and documentaristic approaches
Lauri Linna is a Helsinki based artist. He works with plants, gardening, moving image, sound and electronics. Since 2014 he has been studying carrot – human relationship in his project PORK KANA CAR ROT. Other fields of interest are plant behavior and intelligence, plant-machine relationship and plant related technology. Linna is a Master of Arts from Aalto University’s Visual Culture and Contemporary Art (ViCCA) program.