New Holland Island International Film Debut Festival Education Programme. The Latest Generation of the Finnish Artists' Moving Image: Lecture and Film Screening

November 2

On November 2, Tytti Rantanen, programme coordinator from AV-arkki, the Centre for Finnish Media Art will present a lecture and a screening on the latest generation of the Finnish artists’ moving image. Jari Kallio (Fruits of the Loom) and Alisa Javits (Glitter Dreams) will answer the audience's questions.

AV-arkki is a non-profit artists’ association. It was founded in 1989 and now has over 250 Finnish or Finland-based artists as its members. AV-arkki’s main purpose is to distribute Finnish media art to festivals, events, museums and galleries within Finland and internationally. Av-arkki also has a digital distribution archive and an online archive open to curators, researchers, teachers, critics and artists.

With the support of the Finnish Institute in St. Petersburg.

16:00

Lecture by AV-arkki programme coordinator Tytti Rantanen: New Shoots in the Electric Forest

Finnish video art had a slow start in the early 1980s. Today’s young artists however work creatively with a wide range of styles, themes, and genres within the diversity of the moving image. Their works are more and more often born digital — and international. Their tone ranges from contemporary criticism to new sincerity.

In her lecture, Tytti Rantanen will give an insight how the latest turns in Finnish Artists’ Moving Image relate to the tradition of the art form — but also pave way towards new directions and concerns and broader contexts.

Tytti Rantanen has worked as a programme coordinator for AV-arkki, the Centre for Finnish Media Art, since 2016. In addition to her day job, she studies the narrative of documentary filmmakers in the Dangers of Narrative project at the University of Tampere. Rantanen is also one of the editors-in-chief of the Tampere-based, philosophical quarterly niin & näin, and she has been in charge of the magazine’s film column since 2013. Rantanen’s writings have been published in AVEK magazine, Filmihullu, Lähikuva, Nuori Voima and Tuli & Savu, among others. In addition to everything else, she is currently finishing her doctoral thesis on the French radical film and literature of the 1960s and 1970s.

The lecture is in English with consecutive translation into Russian.

Free admission. Limited number of seats. Please register in advance (link in Russian).

19:00

The latest generation of the Finnish artists’ moving image screening

AV-arkki programme coordinator Tytti Rantanen and artists Alisa Javits (Glitter Dreams) and Jari Kallio (Fruits of the Loom) will take part in the discussion after the screening.

The screening starts with Crush by Reija Meriläinen (AVEK award for Media Art 2019). Meriläinen made her video in collaboration with a YouTube hit Hydraulic Press Channel. Jaakko Pallasvuo’s, Antti Jussila’s & Jari Kallio’s Fruits of the Loom (IFFR 2019) and Jenni Luhta’s Help Me exorcise political ghosts of the future passed. Azar Saiyar’s Monument of Distance is also a contemplation of the cultural history, but in a personal and affective level. Elli Vuorinen’s Still Lives (Milano FF 2019; Nordisk Panorama 2019) is a multi-lingual animation on globally shared modern day pressures acted out by ancient artefacts. The flowing images of Alisa Javits’s Glitter Dreams leads us towards the lightness of trying and daring, the lightness of shining particles. Artor Jesus Inkerö’s Swole is part of a larger documentary project where the artist commits to an intensive and transformative gym and diet regimen — all the while immersing oneself in the vocabulary and thinking of the bodybuilding community. Hinni Huttunen’s Sleeveless / Fearless is an empowered response to fatphobia and the stereotypical ideals of beauty, and a stoic adoration of the slowly moving flesh.

Reija Meriläinen: Crush, 2017, 4:44
Jaakko Pallasvuo & MSL: Fruits of the Loom, 2019, 27:27
Jenni Luhta: Help me, 2018, 05:00
Azar Saiyar: Monument of Distance, 2018, 07:00
Elli Vuorinen: Still Lives 2019, 06:02
Alisa Javits: Glitter Dreams, 2018, 05:43
Artor Jesus Inkerö: Swole, 2017, 07:00
Hinni Huttunen: Sleevless/Fearless, 2015, 02:04

Alisa Javits works in Helsinki with video and installation. She graduated 2013 from Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. In her work she mixes photographic and filmic working methods. The main theme of the work is the contradiction between the inner and the outer in people.

Jari Kallio is one half of the performance-based artist duo MSL’s. This duo, founded in 2008, focuses on collaborations in various forms. Recurring themes in their work are compulsions, rituals, gender, sexuality and isolation. Bridge over Troubled Water (2016) and Fruits of the Loom (2019) were made in collaboration with artist Jaakko Pallasvuo.

Tytti Rantanen has worked as a programme coordinator for AV-arkki, the Centre for Finnish Media Art, since 2016. In addition to her day job, she studies the narrative of documentary filmmakers in the Dangers of Narrative project at the University of Tampere. Rantanen is also one of the editors-in-chief of the Tampere-based, philosophical quarterly niin & näin, and she has been in charge of the magazine’s film column since 2013. Rantanen’s writings have been published in AVEK magazine, Filmihullu, Lähikuva, Nuori Voima and Tuli & Savu, among others. In addition to everything else, she is currently finishing her doctoral thesis on the French radical film and literature of the 1960s and 1970s.

Films are screened in the original language with Russian subtitles.

Free admission. Limited number of seats. Please register in advance (link in Russian).

The events will be held as part of the New Holland Island International Debut Film Festival Education Programme. The aim of the programme is to introduce the key European filmmakers and their creative methods as well as films by up and coming cinematographers and most current trends in contemporary cinema.

The New Holland Island International Debut Film Festival is a platform for daring cinema, whose aim is to open new horizons and challenge the established formats of filmmaking. The festival is part of the New Holland Island: Cultural Urbanization project and will take place in St. Petersburg.