Blending the anxiety of contemporary life with queer tragedy.
We’ve asked Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo to present some of his recent moving image works alongside a selection of videos that speak to the ideas and sensibilities in his work. He proposed a shining black hole of a programme with films by Sadie Benning, Sohrab Hura and Basma Al Sharif.
Jaakko Pallasvuo has a gift for rendering the anxiety of contemporary life with complicated sincerity. He blends art-world satire and queer tragedy with a cosmic sensibility that can ruminate on ecological deep time and crack absurdist jokes on the same page. — Saelan Twerdy
PROGRAMME
YOU ARE THE SUN, Jaakko Pallasvuo, 2017, 33 min, FI
The footage gains the lucidity of a drug trip. Allure, desire, and repulsion comingle: he’s unwatchable but you can’t look away. The love that is too bright to stare into, too hot to touch. “The more you love someone the closer you are to death,” he tells you.
A PLACE CALLED LOVELY, Sadie Benning, 1991, 13 min, US
This film references the types of violence individuals find in life, from actual beatings, accidents and murders, to the more insidious violence of lies, social expectations, and betrayed faith.
THE LOST HEAD AND THE BIRD, Sohrab Hura, 2018, 10 min, IN
A disorientating and absurd world on the fringes of contemporary India where the boundaries between fact and fiction blur, and the undercurrents of caste, sexual, religious, and political violence lurk beneath the surface, erupting in ever more frequent outbursts.
HOLE, Jaakko Pallasvuo, 2019, 7 min, FI
Yeah, every wound is a hole, no matter how shallow. But every roundly shaped thing can be a hole too. Every video is an eye, crying for help. All angst is boredom and laziness.
DEEP SLEEP, Basma Al Sharif, 2014, 13min, GR/MT/PS
A hypnosis-inducing pan-geographic shuttle built on brainwave-generating binaural beats, Deep Sleep takes us on a journey through the sound waves of Gaza to travel between different sights of modern ruin.
in collaboration w/ Loods 12 & Godart Bakkers
As part of ‘We Love You’, a multidisciplinary programme on love beyond the romantic and the self - sep oct nov dec 2019.
