Project
Aily Nash and Jaakko Pallasvuo – Screening and Talk
Jaakko Pallasvuo, Filter, 2017, still from a video
Kiasma Seminar room
August 25, 2017, 4–6PM, Free entry
As part of her MOBIUS Fellowship at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, New York-based curator Aily Nash, in collaboration with artist Jaakko Pallasvuo, will present three moving image works that connect to forms, intentions and ideas in Pallasvuo's latest video, Filter (2017). Filter is preoccupied with nostalgia, cultural and historical debt, and the mechanisms and institutions of filmmaking, and formally investigates the essay format. The work sprung from a wish to make an analogue essay film, but it ended up being shot mostly on an iPad app simulating 8mm film grain, laughing nervously at itself.
"The ‘essay’ signifies ‘an attempt.’ [...] Risk is inherent in any trial or attempt, and hence the essayist 'goes under cover', we might say, in various guises of fictionality.” – Denise Gigante
Along with Jaakko Pallasvuo's Filter, the program of the screening includes Mary Helena Clark's The Dragon is the Frame (2014), James N. Kienitz Wilkins's Indefinite Pitch (2016) and Steve Reinke's Joke (Version One) (1991). All of which, through their own approaches to the essay mode, illustrate a formal awareness of what it means to produce images today. The Dragon is the Frame is described by Clark as an “experimental detective film,” while the narrator of Indefinite Pitch carries traces of the hard-boiled protagonists of 1940s Film Noir. Joke (Version One) unfolds as a mystery of mistaken identity and death. Maybe these works could be categorized as essay films, and maybe essay films are whodunits where the murderer is never caught.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with Pallasvuo and Nash.
The event is organized in collaboration with the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York's MOBIUS Fellowship Program. The transatlantic program enables collaboration and projects for visual arts professionals and organizations. Aily Nash's MOBIUS partner in Helsinki is Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.
Jaakko Pallasvuo, Filter, 2017, still from a video.
Jaakko Pallasvuo, Filter, 2017, still from a video.
Aily Nash is a curator based in New York. She is co-curator of Projections, the New York Film Festival’s artists’ film and video section, and a Biennial advisor and co-curator of the film program for the 2017 Whitney Biennial. In August 2017 Nash takes part to the MOBIUS Fellowship Program by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York. Her host organization in Helsinki is Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.
Jaakko Pallasvuo (b. 1987) is an internet-based artist working in Helsinki and Berlin. He has studied at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Pallasvuo’s semi-autobiographical video essays revolve around how identities are constructed and performed in networked media environments. Pallasvuo is one of the artists in Kiasma’s current ARS17 exhibition, on view until January 14, 2018.
Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art
The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma has firmly established its position in the heart of Helsinki, thanks to both its thought-provoking repertoire and its fascinating architecture. Kiasma’s repertoire includes exhibitions presenting Finnish and international contemporary art, collection displays, performances in the Kiasma Theatre, workshops, seminars and lectures. Kiasma presents and collects the very latest contemporary art.
Mobius Fellowship Program
MOBIUS is a fellowship program for visual arts, museum and archive professionals based in New York, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Finland. The program enables transatlantic mobility and collaborative practices and supports long-lasting professional relationships.