COLLECTIVE MINDSCAPE
2024, Helsinki, Finland
Collective Mindscape combines the mental landscapes of eight cancer patients into one digital open world. When walking through this world, the visitor can discover the participants’ virtual sanctuaries, but also more challenging landscapes reflecting their experiences of living with cancer.
The mindscapes were illustrated by 3D artists Vilma Ratinen and Katariina Kontturi, based on multiple interviews and feedback sessions with the participants. The work was commissioned for the Comprehensive Cancer Center in Helsinki.
You can enter the Collective Mindscape by sitting in front of the work and following the on-screen instructions.
FINAL SCENES FOR DISASTER MOVIES
2023-24, Helsinki, Finland
For the Final Scenes for Disaster Movies, residents of Helsinki were invited to imagine a final scene for an imaginary disaster movie. The only condition set for participants: the scene had to take place at Kansalaistori, a square in the heart of Helsinki. From 105 submissions, we realised scene ideas by Roberto Fusco, Hanna Happo and Anna van der Laan. 100 volunteers acted in the films.
The commissioner of the work, Helsinki Festival, organised a free outdoor screening for 15.000 people in the same square where the movie was filmed. The musical score was performed live by Cleaning Women.
101 FOR ALL
Why do we think like we think? 101 For All put it’s focus on the people hidden inside statistics – and to the stories behind their opinions.
The 100 people in the art piece form a cross-section of the Finnish population in terms of gender, age, region, education, level of income, country of origin and mother tongue. 51 of them are classified as women, 13 isover 70 years old, one is from Asia and one holds a Ph.D.
In 2015 Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen visited them around Finland. The artists interviewed people about their personal relationship with 30 topics that tend to divide opinions. The interviewees tried to pinpoint experiences and influences that play a role on how their opinions were shaped.
The 1900 responses fed into an interactive video-installation. One spectator at a time can choose who to let speak, and on what topic.
ARCHIPELAGO SCIFI shows four possible future scenarios for the Finnish archipelago. Using web questionnaires and face to face interviews we mapped islanders´worst and best case scenarios about the future of the archipelago. In 3 workshops at Utö, Houtskär and Korpo the islanders then produced cinematic ideas portraying bleak or optimistic visions of the archipelago in the year 2111. Four ideas were then realized with more than 100 locals acting in the films. The four scenarios are: paradise for an aging elite, lifestyle immigration, neo-capitalism , outdoor museum. Archipelago Scifi is a collaboration with Swedish film-maker Henrik Andersson.
ARCHIPLEAGO SCIFI : 2012 : film 25min : 4-channel installation
COMPLAINTS CHOIR
(2005-2014)
The COMPLAINTS CHOIR project invites people to sing their complaints out loud together with fellow complainers. We organised the first choir in Birmingham followed by the Complaints Choirs of Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Chicago, Singapore and many more. The documentation of those choirs form a 4-channel video installation. In 2006 the project went “open source” when we published the “9 Easy Step Method to Organize a Complaints Choir” on our website. Since then over 140 DIY complaints choirs have been organised all over the world.
PEOPLE IN WHITE
2011, Haarlem, The Neatherlands
People in White explores the relationship between doctor and patient in mental health care – strictly from a patient’s point of view. In the film, 9 former clients of mental health institutions return to their memories through storytelling and re-enactments.
The script is constructed from direct quotes from extensive interviews conducted with the participants. The participants could decide whether to act in the film or if an actor represents them.
The project was commissioned by the Madness and Arts -festival.
DREAMLAND
DREAMLAND is a film montage containing dramatisations of dreams of local citizens in which the President of Finland makes an appearance. In Spring 2009 we collected 87 dreams from all around Finland. A selection of 21 dreams were then dramatized and filmed. The President was played by four different actors, all other roles were acted by volunteers.
TRACKING DAR ES SALAAM
TRACKIN DAR ES SALAAM is an interactive video installation that allows viewers to follow 11 residents of Dar es Salaam finding their daily paths trough the sprawling city of Dar – from dawn to dusk. The 11 particpants reflect and comment in voice overs upon their views on living in that city, how the city has changed, and how it could be improved. This project was part of “Simulizi Mijini / Urban Narratives” – an academic and artistic exchange between Berlin and Dar es Salaam, focussing on urban heritage, whether tangible (architecture) or intangible (cultural practices at large).
PAPER BAG STORIES
The project was created for Havana Bienial 2018. Nine local citizens – artists, thinkers, economists, journalists, environmentalist – were asked to write a speech about the paper bag. The simple paper bag – made form brown Kraft paper – can be a curious interrogator of histories, politics, economics and, conflicts of a global scale. In Cuba paper bags mean both past and the future: paper bags – or cartuchos as they were called – were an important object of daily live but exchanged with plastic bags after the Soviet Union collapsed.
An edition of 9 paper bags with excerpts of each of the speeches were printed on 100.000 bags. The bags were distributed over the period of the biennial to vegetable markets and small grocery stores around Havana to be given out to people. Thus the artwork was slowly distributed to many households of the city. The full length speeches could be listened at the Havana biennale exhibition.
THE MAKING OF UTOPIA
2006, Australia
THE MAKING OF UTOPIA brought us to four Utopian communities in Australia (Bodhi Farm, Dharmananda, Equilibrium and Moora Moora.) We sent an open letter to the communities inviting them to join a workshop and write a fiction film about themselves. The main questions we posed to the communities were related to the ongoing conflict between utopian vision and communal reality. The workshops resulted in 4 short fiction films written and acted by community members. In several interviews the participants commented on the films that came up in each community. Additional commentary is provided by Bill Metcalf – a leading researcher of Intentional Communities.
THE MAKING OF UTOPIA : 2006 : film 60 min : media installation
IN THE MIDDLE OF A MOVIE
2001-2003, Helsinki, St Petersburg, Hamburg, LA, Seydisfjördur, Tallinn
Tellervo Kalleinen asked people to plan a film scene which takes place in their own home, and to give Tellervo a role in it.
Photo: Jamie Greenberg
PLAY THIS AT MY FUNERAL
2013, Helsinki, Berlin, Stockholm
Music video for Blood Music´s song “Play This At My Funeral” made by Tellervo Kalleinen and Niina Lehtonen Braun. The artists invited people to pose with an instrument, which they wish to be played at their funeral.