November 24, 2012
Artist Residency and Exhibition

Open Studio

On November 24, I presented the Mars Café during the Arteles Creative Centre Open Studios. The name of the show, Vierrat, is a word that means both stranger and guest in Finnish and was very fitting to us as residents and to many of our works. Here is a link to a short video documentation of the show: link

For this show I edited a video to represent a circular cutting through the coffee table, down to the centre of the earth, out the other side and up through space to the surface of Mars. The video includes images from the room, satellite imagery and the textures and colours of the rocks that form the local geology.

The opening wasn’t the right situation to initiate a conversation so I organized this a few days later. The other resident artists, Annabelle’s boyfriend Tom and Teemu and Katru from Arteles joined the discussion. Among the topics discussed were environmental, political and technological developments. We also spoke about how the ways in which we live socially are changing, some failed experiments in communal living and how much we enjoyed and benefited by sharing the cooking as a group. As part of the Café I also learnt how to bake Korvapuustit and Karjalanpiirakka, a traditional Finnish dessert and a bread. This turned out to be a great way learn a little about the culture while encouraging people to come together and share ideas.