Naisen Päivä
(Project in the artist in residence program Raumars 2001)
Rauma, Finland.
Naisen Päivä
(multiple screens of different sizes, sound, loop, 2001)
Mythic patterns, Tangible patterns
(performance and collaboration with lace making community, 2001)
Taideo Museo, Rauma, Finland
Naisen Päivät is a daily summer ritual of washing carpets on the formerly constructed wooden platforms in the sea.
The wooden platforms, with metal barrels, are built along the coast of Finland and have been used over hundreds of years for washing clothes. In the summer, when the days are long and the sun barely goes down, women gather with carpets and rugs and scrub them clean with pine soap and seawater. The sounds of scrubbing and their cheerful talk mingle with sounds of boats, birds, waves... and a lively scene appears.
This research brings my work close to the practice of contemporary visual anthropology, which deals with all visible cultural aspects and visualizes them. Especially in this branch of anthropology has been an increasing involvement in recent decades with disciplines outside their own field, such as cultural studies, film theory and architectural theory. At the same time, artists move with increasing ease to many countries in this era of globalization, and reflect on the social and cultural reality, which they find there.
My research is on the interaction between the practice of experimental film and ethnographic film. Both practices are termed "experimental ethnology 'by the American film expert Catherine Russell. This term relates to: "... dismantling the universalist impulse of realist aesthetics into a clash of voices, cultures, bodies, and languages."
Catherine Russell, Experimental Ethnography – the work of film in the age of video, Durham en Londen 1999, p. xvii