Energy Scavengers
07 JUNE 2024 - 19 JUNE 2024
Opening event 6.6 at Lou 18 - 20
Performance 6.6 20.30 by
Death by Landscape at Vapaan Taiteen Tila, Vilhonvuorenkuja 15
Artists: Camille Auer, Eeva Juuti, Janne Punkari, Mio PuttonenCurators: Sara Blosseville & Remi Vesala
That’s it
I want a more brilliant sun and purer stars
I shake myself in a movement of images
of neritic memories of possibilities
in suspension, of larval tendencies,
of obscure becomings;
habits grow a liquid slime
of trailing algae - badly,
flowers burst.
Floc
We dig in, we dig in
like in a music
- Aimé Césaire, Miraculous Weapons (1946)
It’s the longest day of the year.
Sun is God. God is Sun. We’re her desperate devotees. We scavenge energy: the heat, the light, whatever keeps us going. Anything that moves is a source of energy to be harvested – like the electromagnetic vibrations of a flickering moth’s wings. There’s no waste of energy, but endless harnessing of its treasures; high on the light, we turn towards our star like flowerheads.
The sunlight is the only added value to our planet from outer space, making all matter a memory of light. We dial our time with the sun’s calendar and revolve around its cycles. Is there a history of anything without the light?
Pitch black darkness is a memory inaccessible to many. Our perception of darkness is twitched by screens, street lights, data centers, shopping malls, commercial greenhouses. Light is also a political project. The neverending brightness allows laboring 24/7. Our planet competes with the sun.
The four artists of the exhibition come together in an ensemble of radiation translations, light box bugs, solar punk research, and prayers to energy gods. Their works explore light; its shapes and features both visible and invisible to the human eye, metaphysics, blindspots and holes, bursts of energy, different bodies and the sun’s status of a pop mystic, a mysterious character. The gallery is turned into a multivitamin juicebox to be swallowed up empty in one gulp; bursts of excess energy to be absorbed here-and-now.
The exhibition culminates in the summer solstice, which lands on the 20th of June.
Death by Landscape
Live Performance at 20.30
Free Entrance
Death by Landscape is a duo formed by Joni Judén and Victor Gogly. Their music is a blend of drone, ambient, blues and metal, with an importance given to improvisation, which is the root of their practice, both in the studio and live. Their sound could be described as a soundtrack for ecosystems and their alteration by industrial activity, in search of new sonic rituals.
Camille Auer is a trans-disciplinary artist and writer. Her art practice has always been theory driven, but instead of illustrating existing theories, she uses forms ranging from sound, moving image, performance and text-based installations to contribute to theoretical discourse as modes of thinking in their own right. A common theme in her diverse body of work is the othering of trans and nonhuman bodies, such as herself or queer birds.
Eeva Juuti considers questions of being and presence, and how light can transmit or transcend information. Juuti works with collage and sculpture. Juuti has studied in Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and she will receive her master’s degree in autumn 2024 from Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki. Her works have been exhibited in Amsterdam and Helsinki.
Mio Puttonen is a visual artist interested in bringing chimeras to life on different kinds of surfaces: copper plates, small paper scraps, and lately also skin. He’s inspired by comics, cartoons, fantasy worlds and different textures found in nature. Mio is interested in the intuitive process of drawing and the ephemeral nature of a pencil. He approaches his characters and the worlds they inhabit with a bittersweet humor and tenderness: they’re all a little bit weird, a little bit sad, and always looking for everyday wonders.
Janne Punkari's work is based on photography and photographic thinking. His works usually take the form of an installation or a publication. In addition to photographs, he also uses moving images, sound and various objects and materials such as coffee cans, fabric and cardboard.
Sara Blosseville is a visual artist living in the woods of Vantaa, in Finland. Her craft covers sculpture, mixed-media installations, textile art and publishing, with interests in folkore and mind-to-hands translation processes. Together with Victor Gogly they run the curatorial project Light-harvesting Complex and the fanzine press Fétiche.
Remi Vesala is a freelance curator. Their work centers queer narratives and research on trans and speculative ecologies, among other things. They are the founder of Lou.