Visual Poetry Event

Sunday 22 April 2012 at TR1, Tampere, Finland
 http://tr1.tampere.fi/mariam-kretschmer-2-9-%E2%80%93-20-9-2011-galleria-nottbeck-tampere/ 

13.00 - 14.00 Curators' tour on the exhibition: Karri and I talking about the works in the exhibition and its links with the Text Festival.
 14.00 - 15. 00 A panel discussion about visual art/text with me, Karri, and some of the artists in the show, questions and answers.
 15.00 - 16.00 Artists performing  - Karri Kokko, Satu Kaikkonen, Marko Niemi, & Mia Toivio.

Back from Finland

A great week in Tampere.

The Tragedy of Althusserianism started badly - so badly in fact that within a couple of days of arriving and struggling hopelessly, I seriously considered giving up the writing break and flying home early. I found an internet connection and started costing up flights. Then returned to my computer, and as if the threat of stopping turned on a tap, 19 sections of the poem poured forth.

"ichnologic years after inserting one mental
state into another, the space between but
the excuses as color-naming systems
deviate from the predict of universal forces would
predict"

I was very pleased to see Karri Kokko again and to meet Satu Kaikkonen. I gave Satu a copy of Reykjavik and she gave me 3 fabulous hand-made books (one of which featured the namepoem pictured here) and a couple of visual poems (which are now both on the wall in the apartment).

(Picture:Karri and Satu)

We had lunch together, and agreed their participation in the Text Festival, and then visited Tampere Art Museum, Tampere Contemporary Art Museum and the Sara Hilden Museum. Added to two shows I saw at TR1 and it felt like a cultured week. I had great meetings with Toimi Jaatinen and Taina Myllyharju, both social and establishing future projects. Taina was a great host throughout the week.

The next fruit of the Tampere partnership is the opening of the Moomin Valley exhibition at Bury Art Gallery on 23 October.

Back to Finland

It's been an intense few weeks as the Text Festival moved towards having some sort of shape, so I haven't had time to blog. The first wave of the programme will be officially announced in the next few days - there'll be more to follow. Meanwhile I am returning to my favourite (so far) place in Finland - Tampere.

Primarily I am seeing purdah to write "The Tragedy of Althusserianism", which assuming I finish it, will come out on ifpthenq in November. But I am looking forward to seeing Karri Korro again and meeting Satu Kaikkonen for the first time. The first thing I'll do on arrival is attend an exhibition opening at TR1
http://www.tampere.fi/tr1/english.htm
Through the week I'll also be meeting various local curators to talk about future projects. I am not sure I will have internet access.

Tampere

Tuire arrives at Ikko where we were staying.
http://www.ilkko.fi/eng/indexeng.html

Tuire did a remarkable job looking after our party, translating and sorting everything out with endless energy.

Older people from Bury and Tampere dancing together

Lunch with Karri Korro, who drove up from Helsinki

Project evaluation:

and finally:
Home and Barney with his Moomin brought from the Moomin Valley Museum
http://inter9.tampere.fi/muumilaakso/index.php?lang=en

Back to Finland

From tomorrow, I am back in my favourite Finnish city, Tampere. Cultural mobility is the buzz phrase in most debates about globalisation, but usually this refers to artist mobility. My take on it is broader, including communities themselves. Bury had previously taken a group of older people to Stuttgart who were learning to write plays. I was presenting this experience to a European Museums seminar in Bertinoro, Italy after which the Finnish delegation approached me to do a similar project with them. So here we are. The group we are taking are older people who are participating in a dance project led by Ruth Tyson-Jones. The programme includes dance workshops, meeting Finnish older people to exchange experience, seeing museums, etc, etc. Personally, I'm looking forward to the Sara Hilden Art Museum opening on Friday http://www.tampere.fi/english/sarahilden/
Saunas will be ubiquitious; but I draw the line at jumping into lakes - that degree of closeness to nature verges on psychosis.

I'll also be meeting Karri Kokko the poet-organiser of the Vispo Residency back in July. We'll be looking at Finnish involvement in the Language Moment. I've been too busy on it to say here much about progress with it. It has been and continues to be an intense piece of work. Whether it comes off or not, I guess that just this phase has tripled the size of my network - and at last time of counting I had nearly 100 artists confirmed from 23 countries.

vispo workshop as seen by josefin

Proud father, Karri Korro, who organised the Saari poetry workshop in Finland, sent the link to his 14 year old daughter Josefin Strandell's photo record of the event:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38224264@N05/sets/72157621922664234/

Helsinki

A couple of days now in Helsinki. Sue and I went to Kiasma http://www.kiasma.fi/index.php?L=1&id=2028&FL=1 – certainly unusual spaces featuring a couple of shows: Tracing Tracks and (Un)Naturally. The former sounded uncannily serendipitous given my interests and was worth seeing in the main though overall a little variable. The Smudge and Barcode sections of the show were strongest; in the first, Riiko Sakkinen’s wall of politically charged cartoon-advertisement was a good piece, though the simplest element a framed sheet paper with a hand-written list of “My Favourite Banks” was the most powerful. http://www.riikosakkinen.com/. In the Barcode section, Juha Van Ingen’s ‘ecuador’ http://www.juhavaningen.com/pages/ecuador.html dominated the space. The Imprint section was curatorially a little bit muddy. Three great slashed canvases by Lucio Fontana stood out and a short video work called ‘Foam’ by Adel Abidin from Iraq http://www.adelabidin.com/

The (Un)Naturally show investigated male representations and the ambiguities about maleness – not much noteworthy in it, except for one piece, which although relatively innocent, featured a pre-pubescent girl with a puppy so raised the question as to whether the show would have been previewed by the Police in the UK.

We found Helsinki market the highpoint of the city, http://www.wanhakauppahalli.com/index.html
the quality of being there and the subsequent food purchases demanding lots of picnicking. Other than that, while I know friends who eulogise about it, the most I can say about the City is I don’t hate it.

Saari

Back in Helsinki from Saari. Unfortunately I forgot the camera lead so I can’t up load any photos, but Geof Huth has been blogging extensively what it is like. I arrived on Thursday and went virtually straight into my talk. I mainly surveyed the last two Text Festivals and compared text works that I had seen at the Basel Art Fair shows and the disappointing ICA show. I also responded to the question that has been bouncing around the workshop (according to the blogs) which is “What is the difference between a vispo and a graphic designer?” it seems to me that this is the wrong question, instead I asked “What is the difference between a vispo and a visual artist?” Generally it was felt that the answer to both questions is the same – poets don’t get paid. Christian Bök’s line was most interesting - that the reason why poetry can’t compete in artistic status is economic – the price of failure in poetry is so low as opposed to the 'capital investment' of say visual arts. In addition, unlike most other artforms, it isn’t possible for poetry to support the infrastructure of auxiliary business, ie there isn’t enough money in it to allow agents, gallerists, publishers, etc, to make profit from its re-sale. However, the distinction between the two questions is actually one of self-esteem. There are obvious stylistic and technical similarities between some vispo and some graphic design practice but implicit in the relation to graphics is the lack of connection between vispo and visual art. This is the vispo problem.

After my talk, Leevi Lehto talked (see Geof’s blog) and we had a dinner of fabulous Finnish smoked salmon with potatos, vegetables and a salad expertly dressed by Mr. Bök. The rest of the evening was great conversation and beer. All being well, Christian will be doing a project in the next Text Festival.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bok/