The outcomes of the Year of the Snake can now be viewed in my solo show at Muu gallery 3–25 May 2014 and in the group exhibition Vesikuvia [Water images] organised by Harakka ry 30 May – 19 June 2014. A taste of what is to come you can have from a miniature video Year of the Snake –Swinging (mini).
 
What do we see in the image? The movement of the swing catches attention and the swinger, someone like us, will perhaps awake our interest. The assemblage of a swing, a tree, a scarf and a swinger can be looked at as an homage to the swing, a small machine that enables a piece of wood and two plastic ropes tied to the branch of a tree to enable movement. What about the tree? A small aspen provided the setting and support for a swing, and showed in its foliage the shifting seasons and weather, without receiving credit for this enforced contribution. This type of hierarchical and utilitarian approach is illustrative of our relationship to vegetation. It also shows, however, in a very literal sense, our complete dependence on plants.
 
During the year of the snake, beginning with the Chinese New Year on February 10 in 2013, I fastened a small blue swing into an aspen that grows on the western shore of Harakka Island, next to the remains of the stone base of an old sauna. More or less once a week, I videoed myself swinging, wearing a light blue scarf, while keeping the position of the camera on a tripod and the framing of the image as constant as possible. On the same occasions I also sat next to the stub of another aspen that once grew nearby ¬– it used to be possible to fasten a hammock between them – looking out at sea with my back to the camera. And in another image I sat on a small pile of rocks looking at the expanding Helsinki harbour on the opposite shore. Thus I tried to produce “souvenirs” of what the landscape looked like during this year on the northern shore of the Finnish Bay.
 
“Year of the Snake Swinging” is the last part in a series of twelve one-year projects performed for the camera on the same island, exploring the question how to perform landscape today. The series, which I began in 2002, is based on the Chinese calendar and its cycle of twelve years, with each year named after a specific animal. This way of working is based on the traditions of performance art, video art and environmental art, moving in the borderland between them. Each year I have chosen a new perspective on the landscape, a new aspect of the environment and a new kind of relationship between my body and the place.
 
This year I focused on the movement of a small swing, a manmade element added to the landscape. Although a swing can be an impressive sculptural element, as in the works of Monica Sand, for instance, this swing is on a child’s scale. The aspen on the shore is small of stature as well. It carried without problems, however, the weight of all visitors. I experimented with sharing the experience of swinging and changing the performer in the image, by inviting colleagues from the island as well as temporary visitors to swing for a while. These performances I documented on video and in a tri-lingual blog, adding a still image from each performance, either of the visitor or of myself, to each blog note. Sharing an activity like swinging, I chose in order to end the series, with its focus on showing the passing of time, on a more light-hearted note. I took the swing with me on my travels, too, and tied it to trees growing on various shores.

Faro Maspalomas is a classic tourist resort on the south coast of Gran Canaria, next to the phantasmagoric dunes which spread out between Maspalomas and Playa del Inglés. I visited the place for the first time in 2007, during Christmas time, while staying in Puerto Rico further on the coast, and searching for interesting environments to perform for camera. The dunes at Maspalomas were an ideal place to work in, at least compared to the environment around Puerto Rico, and I spent a few days with my camera on the dunes. – This visit, six years later, happened coincidentally; I booked a trip to Gran Canaria without knowing where I would end, wanting to escape the renovation going on in my house. And so it happened that I now stay much closer to those same dunes.
 
On my first visit, during the year of the pig, I had with me the grey woollen scarf, which I used in all images during that year, and the grey pebbles in between the dunes in some places corresponded to its colour. Back then I used my customary technique; with the camera on tripod, I chose the framing of the image and the site where I tried to place myself, turned on the camera and walked into the landscape, stayed for a while, returned and turned off the camera. While editing I usually remove the movement in the beginning and at the end. At that time, while I was looking at the material I realised that the movement away from and back towards the camera really showed the proportions of the dunes. Thus I edited two versions of the work, one with stillness only, and another one with the movement included. In the exhibition on Harakka Island called Year of the Pig I showed them both, first the static one with the silent figure sitting immobile among the dunes, and then the real-time version, where the construction of the images was made apparent by the action of going and returning. Later I even wrote an article comparing these two approaches in terms of reflexivity. An English version is included in the collection Performing Landscape – Notes on site-specific work and artistic research in 2011, in chapter 9.2. “Notes in Sand – Landscape, Movement and the Moving Image” (pp. 254-264) and it is available online, here.
 
Today I am in Maspalomas again, without a scarf, and with no pressure to create any images. Or rather, with the pressure of creating some other kind of images. And I do have a scarf with me, although an ordinary one. I thought about it on the plane and realized that I could use a dark blue skirt and a thin dark blue silk scarf as my costume if I would like to experiment with something. And I actually did. The experience was rather confusing, though. I thought the dark blue might make a good contrast to the yellow dunes, and it did. But the long dress and the scarf whirling in the wind also made the image absurdly romantic, gothic and pathetic. I experimented with walking into the landscape and disappearing behind the dunes, but it looked rather awkward. Then I tried climbing up the steep slopes, and stopped midway when the effort was too much for me, and then just stood there, with my feet in the sand. This felt somehow meaningful, watching the sand slowly glide down the slope as a result of my movements and letting the wind do the job of moving my skirt and scarf. It felt dramatic, since it took some effort to remain immobile on the slope. Unfortunately the images did not look very interesting or beautiful. A small dark figure among the dunes was nice as an idea, but not so fascinating as an image. For the effort and movement to have some impact the camera should have been much closer. But then again the landscape would disappear into the background. At the moment I do not know what to do, but I will make a few more trials. Right now I am much more interested in the pieces of rubbish thrown in among the bushes or in the sand. As always I do first and think afterwards, or perhaps it is more fair to say that I let my unconscious self do the thinking.
 
Images from the video Sitting in Sand (2008) See video work
 

 

 

 
Some details from my attempts today:
 

 

 
A few words the following day: I think I succeeded in making some possibly usable images today, here…
 

 

Witches’ Brooms are peculiar outgrowths caused by the fungus Taphrina Betulina that grow on some birch trees.  One such specimen I worked with on several occasions during the years 2006 to 2008, wearing it on my back as something resembling weird wings in performances for camera as well as live. At the moment I am writing an article for the new online journal Ruukku – Studies in Artistic Research about the specific materiality of this kind of entity. I was inspired to reconsider these works after reading the book Plant-thinking by Michael Marder (2013), where he analyses the way western philosophers have understood the special characteristics of plant life and proposes notions like vegetal democracy.  With all his admiration and respect for the dispersed and divisible, participatory existence of vegetation, he in a strange way  forgets the crucial role  plants play  through their photosynthesis in producing conditions for all forms of life on this planet. Plants are the real creators of our world.
 
The Witches’ Broom is not a plant though,  but the result of a plant disease, that resembles  and exaggerates the forms of ordinary twigs. And it does not engage in photosynthesis; even when alive, growing on a birch tree, the twigs of the outgrowth remain without leaves. Thus this entity is a form of parasite, living on the tree and of the tree, but somehow indistinguishable from it, causing a decorative deformation on it. Now, hanging on my wall, or lying on a table, as in the image,  this tussock produced by the fungus and the birch in collaboration, as it were,  has a strange materiality. I guess it is no longer alive, or perhaps it is alive in the same way as a piece of wood is.  Despite the capacity of some plants to start growing from a branch, I would not expect a birch tree growing out of that heap of twigs. But is the fungus still alive? Could it move over to another birch and start growing there?
 
While performing with the Witches’ Broom and fastening it on my back with rubber band, I never thought of it as a living thing, any more than I would consider a branch of a tree living, although strictly speaking it probably is alive. But in an other sense this entity had a life of its own, since it became a decorative deformation on me instead of on the birch, albeit temporarily. While performing with it I could take turns with it, sometimes carrying it on my back, sometimes leaving it on a podium alone, with small earphones spreading out. Through them you could hear a one-minute long spell or  incantation,  whispered in Finnish, Swedish and English, spoken by me, a description of the knotty lump, but somehow also as if the heap of sticks could speak for itself.
 
What interests me with these works is not only the specific materiality of the Witches’ Broom  combined with the materiality of digital video or recorded sound, and not merely the idea of working with an element of the landscape, a detail, a representative of the environment, but also the idea of variation as a method. I created new combinations of these elements in  performances and installations, and also made new performances for camera with the Witches’ Broom to use in new versions of the work.
 
But now I am writing about the work here, instead of working on the article I am supposed to be writing!  Perhaps this is enough, so I  willonly add two images, video stills, to illustrate these variations. The first one was made for the live performance in the  Amorph! festival in Helsinki 2006 and the second was made for for a durational performance at Esitystaidehalli (performance kunsthalle) in 2008.