FRAMEWORK Issue 10 June´09
Framework: The Finnish Art Review
– a bi-annual magazine.
Rescue Plan
In the cover image the sculptor, performance artist and cattle keeper Miina Äkkijyrkkä guides her cattle through the forest. Her personal conflict with authorities merges together with the uncertain destiny of the endangered native cattle breed of which there are only a few members left. Her experiences have caused personal uncertainty and helplessness in a situation where she literally has to ask: Where can we go?
Similarly, the prospects concerning the future of the global society merge together with the ongoing financial crisis, the fastening climate change and its impact on the global environment. Even if the consequences of the current developments are still unknown and unfurling, they can already prove that science or technological development do not alone lead to real development and welfare – on the contrary, the course of events may take quite an opposite direction. If the ’world balance’ can only depend on economic growth, how do we rescue the home for the human race?
Keeping the demise of neoliberal ideology in mind, the contributors in Locating have been asked to sketch out alternative starting points for today’s economic, political and aesthetic practices and draft outlines for alternative models. Among writers are Chuck Dyke, Michel Bauwens, David Elliott, Miina Äkkijyrkkä, Ásmundur Ásmundsson, Antoanetta Ivanova, Kim Levin, Elena Sorkina & Oliver Ressler, Morten Goll & Joachim Hamou & Tone Olaf Nielsen, and Marita Muukkonen & HeHe.
The magazine provides a wider context for Jussi Kivi’s Fire & Rescue Museum at Finnish Pavilion in 53rd Venice Biennale. In Focus Sven Spieker and Jonni Roos examine this artistic case study which has its origin in the artist’s long-standing passionate interest in everything that relates to firefighting. The collection was brought out of confinement and transformed to communicate new meanings after the artist’s accidental encounter with an underground nuclear bomb shelter constructed by the Soviet army in eastern Estonia. Artefacts of heroism are mirrored against the Soviet-time propagandist information boards and posters that give instructions on civil defence and firefighting procedures before and after a nuclear fallout. Childhood adoration for rescuers turns out to be a thin dream when it is faced with the threat of massive destruction.
The Finnish artists reviewed in Features are: Jan-Erik Andersson, Sasha Huber, Antti Laitinen, and Jani Ruscica. Their projects presented have been transgressing established boundaries that guide and control current conditions of artistic production.
The End of Something.. 