Taiteilijoiden perjantai muistio


One of the Artists: This morning One of the Artists and I decided to make a poster, so that we somehow would stand out in the town center. I was personally worried that we look like some random people that stop people for a conversation, so together we decided to make a poster that has the town symbol of Outokumpu and the statue symbol of Magnitogorsk ‘’the first tent’’. The Outokumpu symbol looks like the female symbol but actually it is just a combination, for example, the symbol of copper and then a town close to Kuusijärvi to emphasise the presence of pine trees in the area. 

 

One of the Artists: This morning we made a poster. One of the Artists drew it, with the significant municipal (and recognizable) signs of Outokumpu and Magnitogorsk. For Magnitogorsk there was a drawing of the first tent sculpture, called Pervaya Palatka, or Palatka Pervyh Stroitelei Magnitki (translated from Russian as the tent of the first builders of Magnitka). Palatka was built in 1966 and symbolized the challenging housing conditions that the first workers of the Magnitogorsk factory lived in. 

 

One of the Artists: The second sign was the Outokumpu symbol, which I am personally not familiar with at all, besides that it reminds me of a female symbol, which is slightly weird. We wrote “Magnitogorsk - Outokumpu” in both English/Finnish and Russian below the images. The idea was to engage with whoever we encounter in our three working languages to tell our fiction-ish story about the Labor and Tenderness Union, or in One of the Artists’s version, Rest Union.

 

One of the Artists: the poster turned out really nice. We went to Kino Marita to warm up a little before the intervention. Breathing, talking about our pre-written fictional narratives and meditating with movement. 

 

One of the Artists: We had slightly different versions of the same story, the details of the stories were documented in our notebooks and will be attached as separate documents. We reserved one hour for the actual event and we got to Kino Marita about one hour in advance. First, One of the Artists suggested a practice where we rolled on the floor of the stage and told parts of the story in Finnish, Russian and English, speaking on top of each other sometimes, yawning, not paying attention to the linearity of the narrative. 

 

One of the Artists: Then One of the Artists led a badass guided meditation focusing on the fluidity of our bones and their rolling on the stage floor. After that we still rested, One of the Artists took a 15 min nap on the stage while One of the Artists did something inside her phone. We left the theater around 12pm and set to walk up the main street toward the S-Market. 

 

One of the Artists: One of the Artists suggested that we hold the poster in a specific manner, meaning we both are holding it and walking with it together slowly. One of the Artists said that it was important for her to disrupt the flow of the town time with the slowness. 

 

One of the Artists: We took the poster and the papers. We wanted the town people to draw a fictional (or imaginary) pathway from Outokumpu to Magnitogorsk after we told them our fictional story. 

 

One of the Artists: On the way we asked a few people if they had time to speak but no one was up for it. We saw a group of dancers going from the dance school who also said that they were in a hurry. It was quite cold, different from the days before, and rather cloudy. We stopped at the S-Market and stood in front of the windows with the poster. People from the store drove by and looked at us from a distance. Every time we would ask someone, they would say they did not have time. We asked several older people and a group of youngsters. We mostly engaged with people in Finnish, One of the Artists asked “Onko sulla aikaa juttelemaan?” The responses we got, “unfortunately not”, “I am busy”, “I have to go”. It was curious how everyone, including the elderly was so occupied with something in such a small place as Outokumpu. 

 

One of the Artists: We started walking with the poster from Kino Marita up the hill toward the mine area. Personally, for me this act of walking and not engaging with people was something I needed duration with. I felt that this is where the fictioning started to happen. People, bypassers, people in cars, all ages were looking at us and the poster. Probably wondering if this was some sort of political protest or demonstration (since the election is soon here too). Still, when they read and saw the symbols Outokumpu and Magnitogorsk it probably did not make sense as a protest or demonstration. Or maybe someone viewed this as some sort of discussion I am not aware of? Our poster did not have any political symbols or colours… at least not the ones I am aware of. It was black and gold. Written in Finnish and Russian. Outokumpu-Magnitogorsk. 

 

One of the Artists suggested that we would still walk up the hill further toward the mine. We did that. On the way we discussed that, it is likely that we looked like political or environmental activists, with the hand-made large poster, or maybe having Russian written there, made people more cautious. We met a group of dance students who we met a few days before. They were also in a hurry but we were able to ask for a few minutes from them. We split the group in two: One of the Artists spoke in Finnish and One of the Artists did in English. One of the Artists told a story about their grandpa who was injured and then started the group of workers who found intimate touch with industrial machines. Interestingly, the students nodded and when One of the Artists asked one if they heard anything about this, they said that they thought so. In the end we asked them to draw the schematic map of the Outokumpu - Magnitogorsk connection. They asked why, and we explained that we collected the documentation of the story that we told. 

 

One of the Artists: We stopped in front of S-market - many people walked by and saw the poster but when we asked if we could talk they said ‘’I'm too busy’’ or ‘’I am in a hurry’’ or ‘’there is no time’’. I think we were there in the middle of some other event trying to have an unsure cause and it made some people puzzled. One person asked ‘’what are you selling?’’ and I said ‘’nothing, but can we talk for a short while’’ then they said ‘’no, I have no time’’. 

 

One of the Artists: After we met an older man on the bicycle, he stopped and One of the Artists spoke to him in Finnish telling the story. Once again, the fictional part of the story was so subtle and the narrative itself was so mundane that the man seemed to believe it. Later we tried to engage with a few more people and were able to speak to one younger person but they looked uneasy in the conversation and at some point left. We met Markku and One of the Artists shared their version of the story in English. 

 

One of the Artists: We walked toward the mine and engaged with some dance students, later with a person who lived in Outokumpu all their life, with a younger person who had just moved here, with Markku, and by the Cafe with some people smoking cigarettes. 

 

One of the Artists: We told those whom we met on our path that the Magnitogorsk and Outokumpu connection story was documented somewhere. People thought that fiction was true. 

 

I started to think about this gesture. Are we lying? Are we telling a false history? But is there an authentic past? From here my question went forward from the actual event to the ‘’doing’’ so what does all this activity do? This energy that I felt was strong. Connecting these two remote locations with each other by a gesture of fictioning them - bringing attention to a still existing mine town in Russia and connecting it with Outokumpu where the mine has brought wealth to the town that the residents now live off. At this stage I recall One of the Artists started to speak about the way nationalism can operate rhetorically. ‘’Claiming something that happened in the past you were not involved with and taking pride in that, then using it in the present to create hostility to strangers’’.

 

One of the Artists: We went to the cafe and attempted to start the convo with youngish masculine-looking tattooed guys. One of them said they knew about Magnitogorsk but then once their female friend joined they disengaged from the conversation. We rolled the poster away, got into the cafe, ordered tea and coffee, looked out of the window, there was a market with flowers and perhaps, some veggies across, in the parking lot. Then the time was up and we finished the intervention. 

 

One of the Artists: I started to wonder if this could happen in Outokumpu, when the memory of the mine workers fade out as the generations who worked in the actual mine start to disappear? And yet the mine stays only in the form of a ‘’symbol’’. 

 

And at the same time I ask what is happening in Magnitogorsk, Russia right now? How are the living conditions there? How about the work conditions? What does it do to bring these two places, out of which I am more intimate with one, into a dialogue in a performative way?



Dear Suvi, Rakas Suvi

 

I am writing to you after a long time of silence. Communicating through a letter is a form of speaking and I have been quiet for quite a while now exploring ways of connection that are not bound to languages. I remember that last time when we saw each other 19 years ago we walked through a forest which was full of liquid. The trees’ skins were too tight for them already in the late spring and they were ready to explode, to burst into the summertime, to expand in all directions. 

 

I still keep your three shirts that you had on that day, the fragrances were heavy and the shirts soaked in the spring aroma. You checked the tags on the shirts to know which places of the world the bodies labored in to produce it. We looked at it together that day and read the names of the places out loud in that forest: Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ukraine. You wanted to invite all the bodies that worked to make them to gather here under these fragrant bursting trees and get some rest from work. You said that you would massage their hands with flower oils until the hands were soft and supple again. 

 

When you left Outokumpu, you left those shirts, remember? You said that it would do better here than in the city, they could get more air here, the fabric would stay soft in this fresh small town air. Well, I made a quilt from these shirts, a nice and colorfill one, so many guests used it as an afternoon nap’s blanket when they visited. I hope you will too one day. 

 

Näetkös, se on niin kummallista, että etäisyys joidenkin paikkojen välillä kasvoi samalla kuin etäisyys toisten paikkojen välillä lyhenee. Meillä on pian neljäs työn ja hellyyden symposium Outokumpu Oy:n ja Magnitogorskin Rauta ja metalli työntekijöiden välillä. He matkustavat tänne joka puolelta maailmaa lepäämään puiden alle. Juuri kuten sinä ajattelit sinä päivänä. 

Tiedätkös, se on ollut haastava ja kaunis prosessi tuoda yhteen kaikki työläiset ja katsoa heitä, kun he opettavat toisiaan välittämään hengityksellä ja kosketuksella.

 

Last time, during the third Labor and Tenderness Symposium exactly under those birch trees near the old mine some workers were developing a new labor rights legislation that would give them more freedom to form alliances with machines, rocks and other humans. I hope that this is opening new ways of living together and enjoying life. I wish to tell you all this in person while we take a walk. 

 

Mutta Helsinki vain siirtyy kauemmas ja kauemmas meistä ja kukaan ei tule sieltä enää tänne. Rakas, muistatko miten lähellä Helsinki ennen oli, vain muutaman tunnin päästä, mutta nyt kestää kuukausia ellei vuosia päästä sinne - tilat ja etäisyydet ovat minulle mysteeri nykyään. Silti, ajalla ei ole tänä päivänä niin paljon merkitystä ja olen varma, että sinä saat tämän kirjeen. Joko vuonna 2040 tai 2021, tai joskus siltä väliltä. 

 

But Helsinki has been getting further and further away from us and no people come from there anymore. Dear, you remember how close Helsinki was at first, just a few hours away, but now it takes months if not years to get there - spaces and distances have become a mystery to me. Still, the time does not matter so much these days and I am sure you will get this letter, whether in 2040 or 2021, or sometime in between. 

 

Here is a small birch tree twig, it will bloom if you care for it with water. 

Tässä pieni koivunoksa, se kukkii jos pidät siitä huolta kastellen. 

 

With love, Rakkaudella

 

Dash