RISKIEN PARATIISI nr.1, 2020
My master of art thesis work for Aalto univeristy is 52 page x A4 size (maga/fan)zine. "Paradise of Risks" (as a translation in English goes) is compilation of theoretical articles, interviews, debate, personal reportage, hard critique, utopian visions and 'art' under a theme DEGROWTH, RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND ART/CULTURE - how all these three are interdependent. Only 150 copies printed so far. By sendign me an emails, you may either ask for a pdf to download or order the actual paper version which costs 5€ + postage.
Issue number 2 will be published as soon as I have enough material and funds together.
SEINÄKALENTERI 2018
(WALL CALDENDAR 2018)
"SANANEN TEKIJÄLTÄ...Varhaislapsuudesssani 1970-luvun loppupuolella perheemme valokuvat olivat äitini ja kai isänikin Instamatic-kameroilla otettuja. Instamatic-kameroissa filmi oli kasetin sisällä ja kuvat olivat neliön mallisia, muistaakseni noin 9 cm x 9 cm. Luonnollisestikin kiinnyin noihin kuviin, lukemattomia kertoja niitä katseltuani, ja sen myötä myös itse formaattiin. Nostalgikkona jäin hiukan kaipaamaan sitä. Joskus 2000-luvun taitteessa poimittuani kotoa äitini vanhan kameran aloin kysellä filmiä eri valokuvaliikkeistä milloin missäkin. Joka paikassa vastaus oli ei, "Ei sitä ole ollut enää aikoihin saatavilla." Sitten, ehkä maaliskuussa 2005 loskaisessa Berliinissä kävelin taas sattumanvaraisesti sisään johonkin valokuvausliikkeeseen. Heillä oli jo muutama vuosi takaperin vanhentunutta Instamatic-filmiä alelaarissa ehkä neljä rullaa. Riemastuin ja ostin ne kaikki välittömästi.
Löytyneille erikoisfilmeille piti aika äkkiä keksiä jokin erityinen kuvauskohde tai käyttötapa. Koska ensimmäisenä mieleeni lapsuuteni kuvista jostain syystä tulivat ne joissa oltiin reissussa, ehkä Lapissa tai vain jossakin telttailemassa, päätin käyttää filmit bändimme tulevan kesänYhdysvaltain kiertueella, joka olisi ensimmäinen matkani Pohjois-Amerikan mantereelle. Alunalkaen tietenkin ajattelin ikuistavani filmeille hyvin sommiteltuja erityisiä tilanteita ja ihmisiä. Enimmäkseen kävikin toisin. Saatuani kolme ja puoli vuotta myöhemmin käsiini kuvat, niissä olikin lähinnä tylsiä otoksia arkipäiväisistä tilanteista. Mietin, että miten helvetissä olen tullut ottaneeksi näin paskoja kuvia?! Sitten - näin ainakin toiveajattelin - niistä alkoi muodostumaan kokonaisuus: jopa hiukan dystooppinen kuvasto jossa loputon moottoritie johdattaa aina uusiutuvaan pilvenpiirtäjien maisemaan ja sieltä parkkipaikoille, syrjäkaduille, takapihoille ja jättömaille. Tv:stä ei välity pakokaasu, mureneva infrastruktuuri, väkivaltarikollisuuden läsnäolon tuntu, sivukorvalla kuullut puheet, arkipäivä. Vaihtelun ja toiston välinen dynamiikkakin toimii toisin. Tässä oli jokin alitajuinen ja aprikoiva sarkastinen osadokumentti kokemastani.
Jonne Kauko
Helsingissä, 2x.11. - 2.12.2017"Materiaalit: skannatut instamatic-kuvat ja filmit, mekaanisella kirjotuskoneella kirjoitetut tekstit, kynällä piirretty ruudukko
SELVAGEM(savage)
A booklet, made by me, in a set of booklets called "Metodo" ("method"), published as a part and as some kind of a result of a contemporary art course, by and in Faculdade de las Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto (FBAUP), Portugal, January 2017.The text in the booklet, on the page A:
"We don't know what is out there."
According to the estimates, the number of species that exist on Earth is between 2 and 100 million. The annual extinction rate is between 0.01% and 0,1%, which means that minimum 200 or even 100,000 species go extinct every year. This rate is estimated to be 1,000-10,000 times higher than natural ex- tinction rate. The human species is almost entirely responsable for this. *
The "out there" is the nature and we, as a humankind are ex- tensively killing life that we don't even know existing. This combination of our capability for committing actions that affect things that we don't know or understand is presumably leading us to several serious crisises. Biodiversity crisis is a direct result of extinctions, largely resulting from human-made climate change.
Our societies and environment(s) are under an influence of an intense
urbanization. Statistically speaking, by 2050 64% of people in "the
developing world", and 86% in "the developed world" will be living in
cities. As cities are not natural, but human made, constructed and
controlled environments, how this enlargening and deepening mental and
physical distance to nature is going to affect our relationship towards
it, when both the land and our mindset submits to the influences?
Will
we any longer be capable of understanding, appreciating nature and
relating to it? And most importantly (!), will we be able to let the
nature be nature, and not to evaluate it by the norms of our controlled
societies? If we become afraid of wild animals with "a fear towards the
unknown" **, instead of their behaviour what we could (or used to!)
know, we have taken a step towards exclusion. First an exclusion from
urban areas, then exclusion from "the nature" as well. Opposed to cities
historically being the stranger in nature, nature is now becoming the
stranger, the outsider (both in land space and mindset).
The more we
follow the logic of control - the understood and the favored can exist, the
others are in risk to be destroyed - nature and any social phenomenons
in a western society are in a similar position. Therefore the concept of
right to exist becomes increasingly crucial to both. When something
doesn't have a recognition, and it would not 'fit in', the best status
for it might be "not understood but accepted as an outsider". And since
this idea is in a (logical!) fundamental conflict with the essence of
control, and thus can not be included in the palette, we simply have to
be against a full control in order to defend nature alongside with all
other things that we don't understand, yet or ever!
In the process of
urbanization, the acceptance of the non-un- derstood offers us an
aspect towards certain urban spaces, which could be beneficial for a
healthier relationship with other forms of existence. Abandoned urban
places, these wild,
free, chaotic, uncontrolled lands, also called
"wastelands" (i.e. not productive?), are much closer to nature than
parks for in- stance. Parks are places designed, constructed and
maintained (controlled) by the organized human society. Our perception
of the urban wild lands can indeed mirror our view towards the existence
in general.
There are many minority groups with even fresh
scientific knowledge and a growing comprehension of not understand- ing.
But the western mainstream society at large has another course. We are
in an accelerated, ever-increasing, any-reaching process of destroying
and losing organic things - living and "non-living" - that do not have a
role in the narrowing palette of "the important". In many fields of
life we force ourselves to have for every thing a clear, rational
explanation and a justi- fication built on productivity. If that is not
being found and correctly articulated, the "thing" is doomed to die.
There is less and less room for "the outside".
But this outside is
the very essence of nature. New life forms and functions which have been
"outsiders" to us are con- tinuously being discovered . Paradoxically,
even the organ in ourselves, which enables the creation and development
of all these ideas, the human brain, is largely an unknown, non-un-
derstood thing, an outsider to us.
If we destroy "the outsider", the
uncontrolled, the free and the chaotic, we cause an extinction of
understanding, and finally, little by little, area by area -
physically/metaphorically - an extinction of life. We might be entering a
fatal, western philo- sophical vortex.
How to avoid sinking in
there? In this extreme process of increasing control and images
overruling reality, we must be more careful and conscious than ever
before. Biodiversity or any organisms can not survive through narrowing
them into (image) representations. The outside is beyond. Nature and
life have to be taken as such, understood or not.
We must let the wild be.
Jonne Kauko Porto, Portugal, January 2017
*
"Unlike the mass extinction events of geological history, the current
extinction challenge is one for which a single species - ours - appears
to be almost wholly responsible."www.panda. org
** In September 2016 Norway annouced a plan to kill 47 in- dividuals of it's only 68 wild living wolves.