Toteutin kahdeksan ”kävelyteosta” erilaisissa ympäristöissä, Suomessa, Puolassa, Indonesiassa ja Yhdysvalloissa. Myös suhde kävelemiseen ja ympäristöön oli toisistaan poikkeava. Teokset kokoavana projektina julkaisen ne tai niiden dokumentaation kirjassa nimeltä “Käynti”. Pääasiallisesti materiaali on tekstiä ja joitakin yksittäisiä piirroksia tai valokuvia. Lähtökohta on näin tekstuaalisessa tulkinnassa ja muistiontyyppisessä dokumentaatiossa.

Lisää projekteista!

Kirjan painosmäärä 300kpl
Koko: 16,5 x 20 cm
121 sivua.
ISBN: 978-952-5858-02-0

Kirja on myynnissä hintaan 15€+postikulut.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Toteutin kahdeksan ”kävelyteosta” erilaisissa ympäristöissä, Suomessa, Puolassa, Indonesiassa ja Yhdysvalloissa. Myös suhde kävelemiseen ja ympäristöön oli toisistaan poikkeava. Teokset kokoavana projektina julkaisen ne tai niiden dokumentaation kirjassa nimeltä “Käynti”. Pääasiallisesti materiaali on tekstiä ja joitakin yksittäisiä piirroksia tai valokuvia. Lähtökohta on näin  tekstuaalisessa tulkinnassa ja muistiontyyppisessä dokumentaatiossa.

Lisää projekteista!

Kirjan painosmäärä 300kpl
Koko: 16,5 x 20 cm
121 sivua.
ISBN: 978-952-5858-02-0

Kirja on myynnissä hintaan 15€+postikulut.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

X-OP/Tomar/4.5.2010
Schizoanalysis
In schizoanalytic performance practice encounter glitches, ruptures and frustrations – inconsistencies.

Inconsistency: Form of innovation, and event, singular event. But also a catastrophe,
also a suicide, resistance to repetition. For psychoanalysts, a joke, surprise, lapsus. But
glitch is different, it is not predictable, it does not create homeostasis. But inconsistency
for Howell requires a repetition, a machinic repetition – but inconsistency may turn
into a refrain as well.

Speech-act
J.L. Austin’s theory of speech act functions as a basis for a linguistic performance theory. Speech act is a performative. There are illocutionary acts utterances such as “I do” in wedding ceremony. Then there are perlocutionary utterances that use force, in a Foucauldian sense. My question arises from this, the move from Foucauldian disciplinary society to control society, from order words to a-signifying commands and triggers; from humanist subject to a-humanic compositions. Where is resistance, then?

A-signifying semiotics
There are no clear, signifying messages, but commands that either enter or block. They are nonrepresentational and affectual. Yet without a meaning, there are real transformations in reality. For instance, the effects of stock-market transactions or a mobile-phone bombs. A-signifying part-signs bring together material without meaning. It is a trigger without a meaning, a plug-in or thickening. It is a refrain of performatives, also a glitch and a leakage. In a rigid macro level organization, in a traditional way, I would search for meaning, performatives in a humanist sense. A search for revealing something. In a micro political sense, there are commands, triggers, plug-in at works. Shortly, affects. I will recombine machinic and non-human aspects. Guattari and Deleuze write about Kafka, as a minoritarian.

“Minor literature is the gaze from outside, the gaze of somebody who observes the ritual without knowing the code, and thus understands its a-signifying nature.” Not to become official and officially understood – neither underground nor avant-garde. This is not at all related to identity, identity being something territorial – at least in some sense. Yet becoming minor is something essentially related to the subjectivation in process in the cognitarian, precarious working conditions. An very much in the art, as well.

Affects
Being sticky, and non-shareable. Emotions being something I possess, affect is something that will take over me, or stuck in me, but not with explicit meaning. In performance art, these would be non-shareable affectuations, not yet meaningful performance, yet connected into a swarm-behaviour such as stock market: affectual, yet very real consequences. Thus affects are very much at work in the building of a negative swarm, and in the very negative individuation leading to identities, such as fascistic nationalism or apathic psychopathologies. Affect is like a plugin or a part-signs.

Refrains
What is a refrain, or ritornello, it is a child singing in the night of his fear of the dark, trying to control the events, which are too quickly going out of hands. It is too quick proliferation of cosmos and chaos, the incorporeal universe. Refrains are also what each individual, each group, each nations equips themselves. It is repetition that is in the process of becoming fixed automatism. It is what we build identity upon. “through the refrain the process of subjectivation is realized”.

Schizoanalytic practice
In this practice I intend to trace the refrains, capitalist automatisms. Not to transgress, but to try some recombinations. But where am I, between the cables, ether, thoughts, affects and all? Schizoanalytic practice is a singular machine, singular psychogenesis as a background. Not universality, universal or archaic humanism.

Machines
Marx writes in Grundrisse, in the “Fragment on machines” that how human beings become merely supervising machines. How “General intellect is absorbed into capital, into machines” Eventually human abilities will be subsumed. What else is a machine? It is a refrain, ritornello of performatives. There are constant refrains and automatisms between the conscious organisms and other, non-human and technological machines, with abstract machines, and with semiotic constellations as well. This machinery builds a process of “subject”.

Resistance
In historical reading, every order has a historical reflection of the politics it represents, it is part of the device. It reflects the control society, semiocapital, infosphere, as well. In this way of rather structural thinking, public is stratified, not smooth. There is a struggle with hegemony and opposition. Yet, there is no discussion, no clear signals – or there are mixed signals in the cognitive capitalism. Too much information. In some antagonistic thinking there is still a base too much on identity and subjectivity, sensible and progressive subjectivity. This is all true, of course, but from the viewpoint of processual subjectivization, machinic subjectivity, identitarian subjectivity leads into fight for space and territory, a dialectical space. In my point of view, here, there are not identities, but an event of subjectivation. Which is exactly the milieu of capitalist subsumption. And what is an event? What are the conditions to make process of subjectivation and event possible?

“Events are produced in chaos, in chaotic multiplicity, but only under conditions, that a sort of screen” (Deleuze, “The Fold”, 76)

Chaos
being a sum of all possibilities. The question could be putted also:

“under what conditions does the objective world allow a subjective production of novelty, that is, a creation?”(Ibid.)

A micro political resistance is not based on identitarian subject, roots, self or ideals. It is neither a practice of being minority, strengthening of it. It is, as DG about Kafka, a look from outside, not knowing the code, not in opposition, not underground, not revealing something, truth, etc. This resistance is a mutaction, production without a stance or position, machinic and organic together. Language of art does not produce meaning, consensus and there after an action in the public. It is not a progressive process. But in comparison, what is a wave in the stadium? A swarm, cloud, mû. Is performance action something similar, singular action in public, can it form a collective articulation in this manner? And why in comparison to stadium an art event can be highly stratified, encoded and rigid? On the other hand, what is a value of a swarm without praxis, swarm without aim, but praxis of minoritarian deterritorialization, tracing of singular flight plans? When does an artistic practice turn from chaos and refrains to automatisms? If the composition or “soup” is made from organic, semiotic, electronics, chemistry, thoughts, emotions, affects, desires, electrons, where is the resistance? Resistance for automatisms? Is there a compassionate from machinic subjectivities in noosphere, for instance?

Exit
Esc(ape). Pathic or apathic escape, depression, panic, suicide. Or full compassion, transformation, and body without organs? This possibility of escape is in the core of subjectivity: already in Marx, workers leaving east coast to west. Exit is a swarm-factor, affectual event. How is a collectivity then possible? How should we perceive collectivity then, not as a hierarchical, historical unity, but unstable? In this process of subjectivation a schizoanalysis works as a plan of the plans (metamodelization): to trace singular flight plans, starting from the middle, with BWO – intensity yet without a meaning, but full of memory. There is not cure (therapeia), and no healing, no utopia, no enlightenment. It is a plan, how to exist in every singular situation, but moreover how to gain more autonomy, keeping in mind the arbitrary and machinic nature of subjectivity. This is not neo-liberal territorialinism based on firm subjectivity and identity. Only careers have an end.
Schizoanalytic practice is a compassionate mapping of glitches and flows divert and mutate the milieu, experiment with body temperature 37,5°C. It might be Dadaist without avant-garde, errorist, affective compassion, no wave, Kafka, Burroughs… This is the machine of partial-objects. These fragments are at play in the schizoanalysis, in the unfolding of subjectivities, subjective void. Schizoanalytic practice is a singular machine, singular psychogenesis as a background. Not universality, universal or archaic humanism. A process of mutant subjectivation, where no ontological “real” exists.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

This clip is documentation of the first attempt in public, in Perfo-event in Telakka, Tampere, 16th of March, 2010.

Here is a short presentation about the subject, that I gave in X-OP meeting in Polytechic of Tomar in Portugal, 3rd of May, 2010.

And video documentation of second schizoanalytic practice in “Teatro”-bar in Tomar, in 4th of May, 2010.

Go first to your old plant and watch carefully the watercourse made by the rain. By now the rain must have carried the seeds far away. Watch the crevices made by the runoff, and from them determine the direction of the flow. Then find the plant that is growing at the farthest point from your plant. All the devil’s weed plants that are growing in between are yours. Later…you can extend the size of your territory by following the watercourse from each point along the way.
— Deleuze & Guattari, “Thousand Plateaus”, p.12.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Promenadigalleria, Hyvinkää

www.kommarikeko.com

Näyttelyprojekti käsittelee kauppakeskushanketta Hyvinkään keskustassa – ja sen aiheuttamia tuntemuksia.  Pyrin analysoimaan “kauppakeskustumisen” uusliberaalia liikettä yleensä. Näyttely tapahtuu Promenadigalleriassa, Hyvinkäällä.

Uusliberaalin kapitalismin ajatusmaailmaan kuuluu olettamus siitä, että ihmiset tapaavat, luovat kontakteja ja ovat toistensa kanssa aktiivisessa kanssakäymisessä tehdessään ostoksia kauppakeskuksessa. Kauppakeskus halutaan nähdä torin tai antiikin agoran tapaisena kohtaamisen tilana. Kaupat myyvät ihmisille hulinoita, markkinoita, hullutteluja ja riehoja. Ihmiselle myydään tilaa, jossa hän voi olla aidosti vapaa ja jopa kuluttaa eettisesti, kuin korvaten muun sosiaalisen toiminnan. Kuitenkin, kauppakeskus ei ole julkista tilaa, eikä siellä voida kokoontua vaikkapa pääsiäis- tai uudenvuodenyönä.

Kun puhumme Sellosta, Prismasta, Kampista tai Omenasta, puhumme kielellä, joka on merkityksellistetty hyvin rajattuun toimintaan – ja hyvin rajattuun kaupankäyntiin. Kauppakeskusten putiikit ovat enimmäkseen franchise-liikkeitä ja kuuluvat johonkin ketjuun. Ei ole kovinkaan oletettavaa, että voisin hankkia hyvän ja näkyvän tilan, jossa alkaisin myydä vaikkapa vasemmistohenkisiä, vastarintaan yllyttäviä lehtiä, kirjoja, t-paitoja tai alkaa pitämään  Marx-lukupiiriä. Tämä onnistuisi vain, jos voin saada vuokrani maksettua, mutta sopisiko tällainen yritys edes kauppakeskuksen Ideologiaan?

Tämä näyttely ei ole “KeKo” keskustakortteli-hanketta vastaan, eikä se ole agitaatio. Se on kuvaus tuntemuksista, jotka uusliberaali kaupunkisuunnittelu tuottaa. Puhun siis affekteista, tunteita edeltävistä aistimuksista, jotka eivät sanallistu, mutta vaikuttavat vaistojen kaltaisesti ihmisen toimintaan. Näyttely tuo esiin melankoliaa ja depressiota, jota neoliberaali politiikka aiheuttaa: voimattomuutta, kyynisyyttä ja passiivista aggressiota.

On sanottu, että vastakkainasettelun aika on ohi.  Näyttäisi kuitenkin siltä, että poliittisen toiminnan vesittyessä, tämä konflikti on siirtynyt ihmisen sisälle: prekaarin ihmisen sieluun. Sieluun, joka ei kurota kohti transendenttia taivasta, vaan sieluun, joka on sosiaalinen, yhdistävä, maallinen tekijä. Sielu on konfliktin kenttä, jossa melankolia ja masennus ovat vastarinnan orastavaa ilmausta.

Näyttelyn avajaiset perjantaina 12.3. klo 18-20
Esitys ja työpaja lauantaina ja sunnuntaina 27.-28.3

Yhteydenotot:

Promenadigalleria
Vaiveronkatu 10
05900 Hyvinkää
puh (019) 419 841 tai (050) 461 9871
ti-pe klo 10-18, la klo 10-15, su klo 13-18

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Workshop with Franco “Bifo” Berardi

The 4th seminar series of the Guattari Master Class. Reading groups and seminars.
Thursdays between March 11 to April 1.
From 14-18 at Aalto University School of Economics.
It is possible to join also virtually.

Workshop with Berardi on

April 6 to 7 and April 21 to 24.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

I am working as a visual and performance artist. Aside from that I am doing my doctoral studies in the Theatre Academy in Helsinki, in the program of Performance art and theory.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

The Schizoanalysis of performance – rupture of subjectivization in cognitive capitalism.

1 Immanenssi ja todellinen – bare life and collaboration (Soul) (Goat Island)
2 Subjectivization and Osmotic (copoietic) Performance – collective subjecitivation. (Lygia Clark)
3 Työ, the new performer  and creative self (Joseph Beuys)
4 Obstructions and rules – silmukka variaatioita ja OuLiPo of performance
5 Schizoanalytic metamodelization of performance
6 Repetition, fold, ritornello. Howell and Deleuze
7 Evil eye and fascinance – for the performing subject
8 Affect of the event – Depression economy – 2nd artistic project with Karolina Kucia.
9 Analysis of the older performances of mine
10 Precarious affects – 3rd work, an event and nonlinear seminar
11 Conclusions

I attempt to research the possibility of collaboration and organization of temporary collectives, the collective subjectivization is my research point. In the following chapters I will go through some point that will connect the precarious, cognitive labor and performing arts, or arts in general, as it happens in the contemporary situation – in fact the difference between life and art has converged, but differently than in the modernist paradigm. My research point has been the works and practice of Félix Guattari, and namely ”metamodelization” and schizoanalysis of performance art, and contemporary life in general.

There will be three artistic works, and some other side projects as well, but they are included in some way in the three main works.

First one, Loop variations was presented in Muu gallery, in March 2008. Second and third ones have bit overlapping schedule.

Depression economy will be a project with Karolina Kucia. This will take place in several contexts, so it will rather a development of a “toolbox” for working in different social environments. Tentative plans are in Amsterdam, in Poznan (or Katowice area) in Poland, in Helsinki and in Sao Paolo in Brazil. At the moment this is in the concept developing process. Plans for one or several attempts would be for spring or summer 2011.

Working title “Soft subversions” is a seminar without a seminar. A call for specific artists, researchers or personalities that have been working on the issue of softness in a subversive side. It will be a created environment for a collaborative events to take place. The topic is affect. Each participant proposes a way or method to present his/hers research. I will select people that I consider could have an significant input for the process. There is a plan to work with light and sound designer with this subject. This will happen in summer 2011 or autum 2011.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

This is a first version of this text, which is in progress.

(Topics: subjectivity, post-fordist condition, joy, trauma and a-signifying processes.)

AA: Micropolitical level

1. Production of subjectivity
2. Affect ability
3. Relationship to copoiesis, to context of art world. The strategizing of art markets.

Introduction

My starting point on the research of the production of subjectivity is how it is done in the context of post-fordism, in fine-arts and in culture in general. I am researching subjectivization as affectivity and through the processes of joy, sorrow an a-signification. For the general ability of being affected has become part of the production in the cultural capitalism in general. In a way, performance art and labour have converged with each other. I am using a concept of copoiesis, which is developed by psychoanalyst and artist Bracha Ettinger. For her copoiesis is not to be used as a method, model or strategy, but we may find some expressive support for it. For this reason, Ettinger rather talks about art-making, rather than art as a prospect of clearly defined objects or acts. In my interpretation copoiesis is being attached with the general ability to become affected, or general intellect – and therefore it is one of the interests to utilize with the cultural or cognitive capitalism.

The social aspect of processual subjectivization

One starting point to think about the relationship between the performer and audience (in a stage of in general on the cultural capitalist work environment) comes to me from Ettinger, and how she perceives a foetus in the womb. She defines the womb being a resonating chamber, where an unborn child is never alone, but from the level of micro-organism she resonate with the world. The world for a developing embryo or for and adult is a network of affects, where the clearly-defined subject is never existing, but instead one is constantly becoming: becoming-animal, -cosmos, -woman, -black, and so on. In the process of becoming my point is not to claim it as a lack of subjectivity, rather that the processuality is something different than shift from one identity to another. Another point is that, there is nothing more unnatural than some preconceived idea of naturalness; a natural nature, human or eventually a natural identity. My focus is based on that the subjectivization is a social event, something preceding the development of an individual, which creates a context where for instance in a performance situation builds up a temporary collectivity and a social subjectivization. Nevertheless, the social subjectivization will lead into individuation: a position or a reflection of the collective subjectivization. This thinking of processual and a-signifying subjectivization I see based on potentiality and a human ability in relation to actuality. I would claim it to be found somewhere in the thinking of Ettinger as well, in what way the social or matrixical subjectivization is developed into individuation? There is an option that a subject is frozen under the gaze of fascinum, the evil eye, which will be part of a process of paranoid or cynical subjectivity. The other option is where the collective subjectivization supports individuation with compassionate, transforming gaze, with fascinance in a way, which the matrixical jointness is not being lost.

«When self-exploitation acquires a central role in the process of valorisation, the production of subjectivity becomes a terrain of the central conflict» says Andre Gorz and defines the relationship between the cognitive capitalism and the general intellect. The general abilities of human being have become part of the production of value, and have also become part of the project of so called relational aesthetics in contemporary art. Now, relations, which work through affectivity, are more valuable than traditional power or hierarchical relations. Nevertheless, the foremost is the production of subjectivity, without any other capitalistic production is not possible, as Deleuze and Guattari write. The production of subjectivity is bone marrow of capitalism. Production of subjectivity is also the part of collective and matrixical copoiesis.

I would like to define performance or an event of being as a production or a process of production, part of the larger discourse of subjectivity production. This process of subjectivization is different than some «progressive» discourses of subjectivity, for instance the subjectivization of avant-garde. A discourse, which aims towards more, differentiated or enlightened subjectivity, but also more estranged as well. One may call it a «bourgeois» subjectivity. Neither do I intend to create an emancipatory process or some neo-liberal research-project of «creative self». These projects have a desire to combine the general potentiality with the more traditional forms of production of surplus value. In the field of contemporary art, these projects carry around themselves some kind of an aura of «pseudo-criticism» towards market economy, but they operate only in the levels of communication and representation. Eventually the goal of these projects is to make profit on general human potentiality and affectivity – on the proxy of positivism.

As an example of bourgeois subjectivity, Peter Sloterdijk has written about the subjectivity of Dadaism. Here a subjectivity attempt to create a rupture with the world – in a similar manner as a cynical subjectivity of cognitive worker would do it: ”Weimar art cynics train themselves to play masters of the situation, while the situation in fact is one in which things have gotten out of control and sovereignty is no longer possible [...] they impudently place their poses against the equally overwhelming and mediocre destiny of the period: cynically allowing themselves to be swept along — Hey we’re alive! The modernization of unhappy consciousness.”

Later, Sloterdijk is interpreting Heidegger’s idea of «Everyman», the connection with social of him, and the rift he has created. This rift becomes the component of paranoid subjectivity, which can be defined as ‘scopic’, where a subject is only taking part in the world with observations and representations.

Osmotic boundaries

In my research project on performance studies and theory, my subject is not to search for an over-coding collectivity to signify all singularities. The most important in the process of collective subjectivization is in what relation is it with the singular subjectivization. Becoming-animal or –woman does not mean that one should resemble, sound or act in some certain way as such; it is not about mimetic behaviour, but the emphasis is on the becoming, in the affective process. Collective subjectivization is temporary and at the same time becoming, at the same time of singularity being present. Singular processes of subjectivization are resonating with each other within the collective process, in a similar way as a foetus in the becoming-mother’s womb in the example of Ettinger. Subjectivity is a fold or a pleat. A collective process of subjectivization of an event or experimentation is has a similar nature of a fold. It has no permanence except on the very elementary level. So that the process of temporary collective subjectivization would not reterritorialize – for instance after the workshop, experiment, or witnessing an act of performance – into mere meaningful memories, but would continue thickening within the singular subjectivity, there is a necessity of singular present in the process of collective subjectivization. Thus, the process should not «iron out the wrinkles». Neither the process should not concentrate on the production of a personalized individual. Often in the context of pedagogy of fine arts the subjectivity is understood as a process of a personalized individual, which is supported by the social structure. In my point of view, this leads to inevitable conflict between the collective subjectivization and a personalized individual. Therefore the balance should not be on the pure individuals but on the process of individuation and singular subjectivities, because an individual clearly defines its contours and aims, while a singularity I consider as being part of the social production of subjectivization. A processual and collective subjectivization is synthetic and relentlessly produced.

How to remain open to the world, when a resonating and coming subjectivity already exists in the world? In my approach a collective subjectivization is diverged from the collective desire to find a lost community, to establish a tribal bonfire and to imagine the world not existing behind our backs. Based on the resonating matrixical a collective subjectivity cannot be defined from one point of view, without the other. Desire for archaic communities is an obstruction and against becoming, it erases the singular subjectivization, as well. In this way we might create pseudo-tribes and hierarchical gangs, but not becoming packs. Becoming-animal does not mean that one would become a single wolf, mouse or lap-dog, but becoming a singular pack and multiplicity. A singular subjectivity of a collective subjectivization is already many. In contrast an individualized artist may not bear within himself anything but phantasms of bestial families.

Fusion is not inevitable, when a subjectivization can exist with boundaries, if the singular contours function osmotically, smooth and permeable, yet intensive. Ettinger, again has an affective example of matrixical, where the bipolar communication can become osmotic in a similar way as it existed in the a-signifying level between becoming-mother and foetus in the womb.

Paranoid tight-rope walker

A different process than the one of fordist subjectivity is going on in the post-fordist capitalistic society. If the urban modernist subjectivity was defined as paranoid and cynical, as Sloterdijk among others has analyzed, then in the context of post-fordism, subjectivity might be defined with matrixical copoiesis, as well – yet not archaic, but singular. Yet, this might not be anything non-existent in the fordist 19th and 20th century context, but rather something latent throughout the existence of modern subjectivity. Still, like Ettinger shows, Freud for instance would never give a chance for a matrixical concept to exist. In contrast to the avant-garde paradigm, processual copoiesis does not attempt to give an emancipatory, transgressive or enlightening impact on the world. On the terminology of Lacan, the nature of modern, paranoid subject is scopic, where subject functions within imaginary and representations: ”The libidinal cathexis heightens the images that have become perceptions, transforming them into hallucinations” A world is being transformed into a hostile place, against which the subjectivity must protect itself with representations and individualization. There is the spectre of an evil eye tracing the limitation of a paranoid subjectivity. He is like a tight-rope walker, and for him the fascinum function as an incentive and a judge, as well – yet, the evil eye is draped behind the screen, as Lacan writes. Contrary to fascinum, the matrixical subjectivization is haptic, transformative, sensitive, a-signifying and processual.

The transport-station of art-making

An example: I was instructing a workshop in a small village Maçao in Portugal, where a group of twenty participants, students from Portugal, Estonia and Finland took part. During the workshop I initiated an exercise, where I asked each student to pick up a line from balls of thread lying on the floor. After that we were moving around in the space, until everyone was entangled with each other more or less. Following this, we tried to move out from the space as a «assemblage» of this kind. After some effort we were able to get out, where we dismantled the threads from our bodies. A suggestion of untying the tangled knot was aroused, so proposed it that it should be done. But the actual proposal was given from the group members themselves. This part of the process lasted more than two hours, in comparison that it took 15 minutes to make this snarled knot. I have been analysing this process in the way, that first the singular movements create a complex, existential expression. A group will define itself a form, and later disentangles itself collectively. The knot is processualy being opened, which will be enunciated; it will express the collective articulation. Enunciation will have a form of expression and is collectively being dismantled. The singular forms are appearing from the collective process, and the opening of the knot brings up the appearance of singular subjectivization within the collective process of subjectivization. So, they co-exist.

To analyze this project and other performative events, I have been using the concept metamodelization from Félix Guattari. He writes: «‘Schizoanalysis, I repeat, is not an alternative modelling. It is metamodeling’ (Guattari, 1996: 133). It is ‘a discipline of reading other systems of modelling, not as a general model, but as instrument for deciphering modelling systems in various domains, or in other words, as a meta-model’ (Guattari, 1989: 27). ‘Schizoanalysis does not… choose one way of modelling to the exclusion of another’ (Guattari, 1995: 60-61). ‘What distinguishes metamodeling from modelling is the way it uses terms to develop possible openings onto the virtual and onto creative processuality’ (Guattari, 1995: 31). Metamodeling produces, creates, and finds new paths. In trying to follow this model, I have tried to differentiate how, in action, workshop or performance the interpretation of an action – could be phantasm, as well – is locating itself in the actual, and becoming signified. But, could there be some existential refrains to support the articulation, without such clear signifying process? This is yet a question for me, which I will not go into now.

Brazilian artist Lygia Clark(1920-1988), whose works have been posthumously defined as the predecessor of relational aesthetics, worked from 60′s on, until her death in 1988 with the forms of collective enunciations. She often used very ordinary materials such as plastic, fabrics, paper and thread to create kind of costumes for couples or groups: assemblages as such. In this way she manipulated or altered the social, subjective and corporeal perceptions and this way the structures as well. Her works, in my opinion are an excellent example of an «transport-station of trauma», and idea of art-making created by Ettinger. Moreover, that in Clarks works the emphasis is in the art-making, and not on the production of artefacts. Clark was living and teaching in Paris as well, and she was very much influenced for her practice in visiting the Clinique of La Borde, which was directed by Guattari.

Clark often used to define her works and processes with words like ‘vomiting’, ‘anthropophagic drool’ or ‘bichos’, animals. Then, how to work with such concepts that does not transfer easily in the representation; these vomitings and flows of collective subjectivization. So that they would not be located under the signifier, which according to Guattari’s idea of metamodelization would mean that potential matter would have a signified form of an expression: «this one here, means this…», and so on. In this way the self-image of a subject would become at stake, and the process would become a process of individualities, at cost of diminishing process of singular subjectivization. Through signification there is also a possibility to be stuck with the need of community in the way of three possible forms of state: the state of heroes, state within the walls of the city and the pastoral state that has build the walls of the city inside the subjectivity, who is wandering in the desert.

Nevertheless, without enunciation, Clark’s experimentation would remain in the level of strange experiences, and her work would become just «engineering of experiences» as she noted herself. «At the very moment when the artist digests the object, he is digested by society, which has already found him a title and a bureaucratic function: he will be the future engineer of leisure, an activity that has no effect whatsoever on the equilibrium of social structures. »

In this way these engineers or ‘groomers’ of experience will create expression without minor articulation, if minor can be understood, as Deleuze and Guattari wrote about Kafka, who wrote in German, but was Czech in nationality, thus writing in minor German language. Thus, these groomed experiences, might become localized expression, but not minor expression, but in search of legitimate signification.

The corporate state of art-making

In my research I will try to analyze some different forms of collective subjectivization in the area of performance art or in general performative events. For instance, one form opposing the practice of Lygia Clark could be the workshops of performance artist Marina Abramovic, where the participant locates him or herself in very hierarchical, submitted and «cloistered» relationship to the instructor herself. More similar to Clark, but in the area of live art practice one might think of the devising practices of Wooster Group, Goat Island and Forced Entertainment. Also the relationship with audience is in extremely important role in these examples. In the one-minute sculptures of Erwin Wurm, the affective agency is the viewer herself, and she can do variation according to simple instructions of the artist. In Finland, among other attempts, the similar singular-collective practices one might think of the practice of Toisissa Tiloissa-group. My question in the research is, how does these different models relate to the collective, audience, singularity and performer?

The collective subjectivization in art should be seen as an dispositif, or as a device as Brian Holmes writes, in which ”The consisting of a human assemblage results from the flow of desire, involving a multiplication of the self, indeed a kind of a delirium in relation to other, to language, to images and to things [...] Cognitive capitalism, characterized by the rise of an intellectual or ”immaterial” labour based on cooperation and open resource-sharing, but also by its contrary: the commodification of enclosure of knowledge in the form of intellectual property, which is then deployed as a source of rent. [...] Urgent need for an articulation of aesthetics and thinking – the need for and intellectualized art, or what might be called ”cognitive creativity”.

This urgent need for articulation is the form, how the enunciations of collective subjectivization in the field of fine-arts and cultural production are transferred immediately from the sphere of a-signifying and singularity to significant interpretations and legitimate relationships. This has been the case for the works of Lygia Clark, as well. Her works are now exhibited in museum context as objects and in the best occasions with a demonstration, but representation has replaced the affective aspect of her works.

The relationship with audience or «user» of art could be expressed with words of marketing guru Peter Drucke with some alterations: ”There is only one valid definition of business [art] purpose: to create customer [audience].” In this way, audience is nothing but a particular, individualized and specialized audience, nevertheless how heterogeneous it might be. This general performance creates individuals. Performance is a general mode of strategic management , and in cultural context the production follows the strategies of cognitive capitalism, in exchange. They are producing subjectivity and individual’s relationship to collective subjectivity as well. Anyhow, I would insist to keep the concentration on the production side, and not on the discourse of «passive consumers».

A collective subjectivity as matrixical is between singular subjectivization instead. But, it is also one possible material for the production of value in the cognitive capitalism, for instance to be used in some works of relational aesthetics.

If an artist or similar agency, functions only in the macro political level, as an activist artist, these works, however critical they might be, are in this respect part of the capitalistic production. It works merely on the level of representations, and in this pursuing a model of capitalistic production – in fact the fordist model. Retournement of signs does not influence the collective process of subjectivization; it does not amplify the affective ability, but increases cynicism instead and in this way push forwards the agency of capitalistic value production. In this form, art is functioning, as Guattari says «[the]’overcoding’ of experience. What Guattari designates with this word is the establishment of abstract models of collective behaviour, and the use of these models as guidelines for the creation – or if you prefer, the ’coding’ – of real environments, which are expressly made to condition our thinking, our affects, our interactions.»

Yet, some examples from the combination of affective artistic practices and activism could be for instance CIRCA (The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army). CIRCA, utilized the affective aspect as a form of resistance in demonstrations, in a similar way as The Yes Men in the corporate context. Artur Zmijewski’s video «Them», which was based on a workshop he did for «Four very different groups were involved in the workshop project: a group of female Radio Maryja listeners, members of the far-right All-Polish Youth group, members of a left-wing organisation and a group of young Polish Jews. Sarzynski describes the project: “Each group is given the task of creating something that expresses their ideological orientation. The older ladies paint a church, the members of the All-Polish Youth draw the sword of the Polish kings with a national flag, the Jews a card with ‘Poland’ written on it in Hebrew, the leftists the word ‘Freedom’… The initial atmosphere of tolerance becomes increasingly aggressive. The participant’s start cutting up each other’s T-shirts and end up setting the ‘works of the enemy’ on fire… The final scene shows an image of destruction in the aftermath of the meeting.»

In my opinion these are examples, where contemporary art functions with some elements of activism or vice versa, where activism utilizes some affective aspects of art-making.

Mikropolitical affect

On her article about Lygia Clark, Suely Rolnik has brought up the level of micropolitical, where sensitivity and affectivity is in the centre. Tuning with the aesthetical affectivity creates a matrixical relationship within art-making, a relationship with a collective trauma and the a-signifying nature of that – a Brazilian military junta in the context of Clark. A connection with trauma is created with the support of matrixical fascinance, which is connected with the com-passionate. Com-passionate is what is co-affective, but not «grooming», in Ettinger’s examples com-passionate is the analyst, who is affected by herself in transference – without direct signification. In art, with Clark as well as in the works of Ettinger, the works go further than signified experiences, but into the sphere of affective micropolitics.

Based on my own experiences from the workshops that I have held, and tried to process affectivity, a-signified does not become conscious, but the affectivity functions as an intensity: it connects with potentiality and power. The general ability of human being, potentiality as a collective subjectivity is connected with the affective agency. The need for archaic or sacral group-formations emerges as well, and there is an aspect of the instructor – or someone else – becoming a demiurge, while the group creates a collective consciousness. However, to maintain the singular subjectivities, there should be a process, where there is a way from the a-signifying back to conscious – even, if this would mean that the process is in danger of becoming fully analyzed and signified. In my opinion, this is one way to avoid the creation of tribes and demiurges – however, there are another ways, for sure. Microsocial is jointed with the cognition of macro-level, but in my opinion to utilize the meta-modelisation of Guattari, is essential. ”He sketched diagrams showing how people on a given existential territory come to mobilize the rhythmic consciousness of poetic, artistic, visual or affective fragments – the refrains of what he called ’universes of reference (or of value)’ – in order to deterritorialize themselves, so as to leave the familiar territory behind and engage themselves in new articulations. These would take the form of energetic flows, involving economic, libidinal, and technological components (flows of money, signifiers, sexual desires, machines, architectures, etc.). He explained how these machinic flows are continually transformed by contact with the abstract phyla of various symbolic codes, including formalized juridical, scientific, philosophical and artistic knowledge. The point was to suggest how a group could act to metamorph itself, to escape from the overcoding that tries to fix it in one position, and to produce new figures, forms, constellation – in short, original material and cultural configuration that are inseparable from collective statements. This is what Guattari calls an agencement collectif d’enonciation – the phrase which I have translated as ’an articulation of collective speech.’/ writes Brian Holmes.

Enunciation of art-working subjectivities

Performance-art, art and art-making as a collective subjectivization in situations here described, require existential support for the enunciation: the immaterial of potentiality to be enunciated. This is the appearance of collective expression of affectivity – it is the object of utilization as well, where the potentiality of affectivity is becoming actual. Enunciation requires existential support, which, in my opinion should not become immediately signified and actual.(liite )

These forms of enunciation are part of the copoiesis without a strategy, but bringing forth potentiality, still. In this process the enunciated are the social expression of becoming, in which the social subjectivization is being transformed into individuation. It will not freeze under the spell of evil eye and become paranoid subjectivity, but the transformative process of individuation is resonating in matrixical fascinance.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

EDUCATION
2007- Theatre Academy, post-graduate studies, Performance-art and Theory program, Helsinki
1999-2000 Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1995-96 PWSSP, Poznan Art Academy, Poland
1991-95 Lahti Art Institute, Finland
1989-90 Hyvinkää Art School, Finland

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2008 Katariina-gallery, Helsinki
MUU-gallery, Helsinki
2004 Hyvinkää Art Museum, Hyvinkää, Finland
Rajatila gallery, Tampere, Finland
2001 Exedra gallery, Hilversum, The Netherlands
2000 European Zen Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1999 Kluuvi gallery, Helsinki

CURATED EXHIBITIONS
2008 Hyvinkää Artist Union, 50-years, Hyvinkään Art Museum; Cable Factory, Helsinki
ART FAIR, MUU gallery, Cable Factory, Helsinki
2007 TAJU07, Hyvinkää Artist Union and Art Museum
2006 TAJU06, Hyvinkää Artist Union and Art Museum
2001, 1991 Young Artists, Kunsthall, Helsinki
2000, 1999 Rijksakademie annual exhibition, Amsterdam
1998 Finnish Artists’ Association’s 103rd annual exhibition, Kerava Art Museum
1997 Smart Show 97, MUU ry, Stockolm-Helsinki
1996 Artgenda 96, Copenhagen

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2007 Fertilism, Kukkia-group, Rantakasarmi gallery, Suomenlinna
2005 MoKS residency project
2004 aHuman, MUU gallery, Helsinki
2001 SWARM, Cemeti gallery, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Ruang Rupa, Jakarta, Indonesia
1998 Rajatila gallery, Tampere
1995 Final-exam show, Lahti Art Institute, Cable Factory, Helsinki

KUKKIA-GROUP PERFORMANCES
2008 MUU gallery, Helsinki
2007 Live-Art festival, Theatre Academy
Taju07, Hyvinkää Art Museum
Rantakasarmi gallery, Suomenlinna, Helsinki
2006 PAIR1 festival, Lahti
Kajaani Theatre Symposium
Revolution-seminar, Tutkijaliitto, Helsinki
Maa-tila gallery, Helsinki
Là-Bas festival, Helsinki
Fluxee-club, Turku
2005 Kajaani Theatre Symposium
Anti-festival, Kuopio
Pimeä festival, Helsinki
Wäinö Aaltonen Museum, Turku
Y-gallery, Tartto, Estonia
Là-Bas festival, Helsinki
2004 Hyvinkää Art Museum
Rajatila gallery, Tampere
PostsovkhoZ4, MoKS, Mooste, Estonia

SOLO OR OTHER PERFORMANCES
2008 Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio, Rome
Lá-Bas, Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki
Poetry and Machine –event, Turku Poetry Week
Katariina gallery, Helsinki
Taidehalli, Helsinki
MUU-gallery, Helsinki
Art Contact, HIAP Studio, Helsinki
2004 Rajatila gallery, Tampere
PostsovkhoZ4, MoKS, Mooste, Estonia
2001 Amorph!01, (w/ Mark and John Bain), Helsinki
Outline gallery, (w/ Mark Bain) Amsterdam
2000 Utrecht, Tilburg, Rotterdam (w/ Mark Bain)
Rijksakademie, Amsterdam
1999 Rijksakademie, Amsterdam
1997 MuuTen, Theatre Museum, Helsinki
1996 Teraz gallery, Szczecin, Poland
1995 Oslo One-Night-Stand, Oslo
Amorph!95, Tampere

HOUKKA-BROTHERS THEATRE PERFORMANCES
“Children, Birds, Flowers”
2007 BIT, Bergen, Norway
Korjaamo, Helsinki
2006 Helsinki Festival
Lainsuojattomat festival, Pori
Baltoscandal festival, Rakvere, Viro
“Wanderer”
2005 Soiree Nomades, Paris
Net festival, Moscow
Homo Novus festival, Riga, Latvia
Kunsten Festival des Arts, Brussels
2004 Baltoscandal festival, Rakvere, Viro
2003 Helsinki Festival
Kajaani Poetry Week

RESIDENCIES
2008 Circolo Scandinavo, Rome, Italy
SÍM, Reykjavik, Iceland
Villa Karo, Grand Popo, Benin
2006 Cité des Arts, Paris
2002, 03 Kökarkultur, Åland

WORKS ON VIDEO
2007 Plum Blossoms – mountain, video installation
2006 Plum Blossoms – first branch
2005 Gaki gaki
2004 V, video installation
Kopronomia
2001 Krakatau – discussion with a stone
2000 Everydayness, video instalation
1998 Yet Unknown

VIDEO SHOWS
2008 View08, AV-ARKKI, Helsinki
2007 View07, AV-ARKKI, Helsinki
2006 Why Perform, FUSK, Trondheim, Norway
View06, Korjaamo, Helsinki
2003 Kettupäivät, Tampere
2002 View, AV-arkki, Helsinki
Amorph98 –performance art festival, Suomenlinna

CURATORIAL WORKS
2009 Wonder-event, curating a series of performance videos, Helsinki
2005 SEISAUS, sound and performance event, Taju05 summer exhibition, Hyvinkää
2004 aHuman exhibition MUU gallery, Helsinki
2003 Taju03 summer exhibition, Hyvinkää
1998 Amorph!98 internationnal performance art festival, Helsinki

SEMINARS AND LECTURES
2008 Fascinance and fascinum, ”Power: Dynamics, Forms of Consequences”-seminaari, Tampere
2007 Contemporary art and buddhism, Taju07-exhibition, Hyvinkää Art museum
Performance analysis: schizoanalysis, Minifestival, Theatre Academy, Helsinki
Ecosophy and performance art, La-bas performance-festival, seminar, Helsinki
2006 Cell level rcvolutions, Kajaani theatre event, Generaattori, Kajaani
2005 Responsibility of an artist –seminar, Atheneum, Helsinki

TEACHING RESPONSIBILITIES
2008 AVAMAA-workshop, MoKS, Mooste, Estonia
2005 – 2009 Art Academy, Helsinki
The Art School Maa, Helsinki
Theatre Academy, Helsinki
2002 – 2007 Turku Art Academy, Turku
2006 Kiasma contemporary art museum, workshop and guide
2004 Generaattori, Kajaani
The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, performance art department, USA
2002 – 2004 Orivesi Institute
2002 Tampere Polytechnics, Fine Arts department.
2001 Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
1998 – 2003 Lahti Art Institute
1997 Turku Art School

PUBLICATIONS
2008 SIRP-art magazine, Estonia
2007 – 2008 Taide-magazine, columnist
1999 – 2000 Taide-magazine

MEMBERSHIPS
1993- MUU ry
1995- Finnish Artists’ Union
2001- AV-Arkki
2002- Hyvinkää Artists’ Union
2007-2008 General Intellect co-operative

WORKS IN COLLECTIONS
Hyvinkää Art Museum, Hyvinkää, Finland
Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam
City of Helsinki, Rikhardinkatu library, Artists’ books
Private collections

GRANTS AND PRIZES
2009 Publishin grant for Kukkia-group
Three year Grant, Art Council of Finland
2008 Uudenmaa Art Council
Finnish Cultural Foundation for Kukkia-group
Art council of Finland, project grant
Alfred Kordelin foundation
2007 VISEK
AVEK
2006 Arts council of Finland, media department
Arts council of Finland, multimedia department
AVEK
VISEK
2005 Kordelin foundation
Sleipnir travel grant
2004 AVEK
2004 Foundation for environmental arts
2004 City of Hyvinkää
2004 Arts council of Finland, publishing grant
2001, 2004 Arts council of Finland, travel grant
2001 Fonds for Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam
2000, 2003 Paulo Foundation
1999, 2000 Finnish Cultural Foundation
1999, 2000 Oskar Öflund Foundation
1999, 2000 Arts council of Finland, residence grant
1998, 1999, 2001 Arts council of Finland, project grant
1996, 1997 City of Helsinki
1996, 2000, 2003 VISEK
1995 CIMO
1995 Lahti Art Institute

Curriculum.pdf

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post