Skip to content →

Platform r.f. Posts

Avaruuslakana 24.7-7.8.2008

Published 24/07/2008 by Platform

Wolf von Kries

 

Berlin-based artist Wolf von Kries’ public installation and the accompanying exhibition at Platform are derived from his immediate surroundings in Vaasa, namely the old soap and candle factory and the nearby forests. Using the raw materials at hand, he formed sculptures that seem to resemble surreal landscape models or islands. Made of chemicals, wax and lichen they are all results of a research about defining or claiming territory: a floating island made of wax that defies all notions of location, crystal gardens growing in sodium silicate, a chemical which Goethe believed to be the missing link between matter and life, and finally lichen which was one of the first organisms to survive on land, growing on bare rocks. These different strategies of defining or claiming space all come together in the flag project, a public installation, in which von Kries converted a silver space emergency blanket into a flag, which is now flying from the 15-meter flag pole in front of the vast empty lot on Sepänkyläntie. The silver sheet containing no symbol or colour only reflects the sunlight and the playing of the wind, neutralizing all notions of identification and territorial claim inherent to conventional flags. This work is also mirrored in the exhibition space itself, where a similar flag, suspended from the ceiling, moves in the stream of air caused by the open doors of the space.

 

Wolf von Kries

 

Comments closed

Platform Runners 14.6.2008

Published 14/06/2008 by Platform

West coast race

Platform took part in the yearly West Coast Race in Ostrobothnia with a team of 13 artists, including the current artists in residence at Platform, Wolf von Kries (D), and Nika Oblak (SLO) in Nykarleby, and almost got a bronce medal in its class.

The other runners were Dragos Alexandrescu, Albert Braun, Ulrika Ferm, Ia Ekman, Hannah Kaihovirta-Rosvik, Eija Leinonen, Magnus Lindström, Maria Nordbäck, Patricia Rodas, Peter Rosvik and Tuomo Väänänen.

 

Comments closed

Tree hugger 8.3.-23.3.2008

Published 08/03/2008 by Platform

Barry Sykes | Artist in residence February – March 2008

 

Platform is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition by the London-based artist Barry Sykes, our current artist in residence. All the works have been conceived and completed in the five weeks since Barry arrived. Barry works with a wide variety of methods; primarily sculpture and drawing but also singing, stealing, fitness, forgery and lies. Recent projects have led him to impersonate a part-time police officer, make a series of sculptures blindfolded and redesign British currency. His work asks questions about usefulness, experience and appropriate behaviour.

The title of the exhibition, Tree Hugger, is used deliberately out of context. Usually used as a derogatory term for ecologists and extreme nature lovers it is instead used to raise questions about the approach, intentions and possible benefits of the works. It also describes a desire to interact with your immediate surroundings and the absurdity of some of the activities this has involved.

For this exhibition Barry has devised a number of strategies to create new work in reaction to the expectations of a residency model. His only pre-planned tactic was to involve two collaborators working from London, each in very different ways. For the project ‘The Dad Directives’ Barry has sent his father – a keen amateur photographer – 6 short instructions every weekend to take one photograph and send it to him in Vaasa. These have included ‘Go out of the house after dark and photograph any house with a window that you can see someone through’ and ‘Take a photograph of a photograph you wish you had taken’.

For his research project with i-cabin gallery, Barry has undertaken a long email conversation about importance, usefulness and philanthropy. This epic text will be available to read in the gallery alongside a large hand-drawn map of Vaasa produced by i-cabin based on Barry’s description of the town and exactly €100 worth of adapted wooden handicrafts purchased from the Vaasa prison inmates shop. Other works in the show will include a blatant rip-off of another artist’s work, a design for a new font and a sculpture of two imaginary wall brackets.

Barry Sykes was born in Essex, England in 1976. He gained his Masters from Chelsea College of Art, London in 2000 and lives and works in South East London. His recent exhibitions include Evolution de l’Art, Bratislava (2007); Itchy Park 1,2,4 & 5, Limehouse Town Hall, London (2004-2008); Putting spark back into your relationships, Gallop design studio, London (2006); Romantic Detachment, PS1 New York and Chapter Arts Cardiff (2004), and Déjà Vu, ProArtibus, Ekenäs, Finland (2006). In 2006 he was nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Visual Arts for his collaborative work with the artist Sean Parfitt. Tree Hugger is his first solo show in Finland.

Barry Sykes
i-cabin

 

Comments closed

Eine Kleine Disko 5, 15.2.2008

Published 15/02/2008 by Platform

The fifth EKD took place at the old military barracks in Vaasa in collaboration with Joakim Hansson, Rasmus Hedlund, Peter Rosvik and Platform.

7.12.2006

EKD is a dynamic art project that welcomes performance, noise, video and intervention with related art forms to create flux in EKD context. The announcement “come together” is the setting that creates EKD’s coming-to-be.

EKD is a nomadic art project in the sense that it is not a permanent screening, disco or performance festival with pre-set programmes, but a kind of cultural jamming journey from which the participants never return to the starting point.

Instead of requesting people to seek for art as experiences, EKD brings experiences as art to the spectator and invites people to meet each other within the original idea of a “party”.

EKD is a non-profit project and exists on the premises that are offered for taking EKD events from one place to another.

 

Comments closed

Eine Kleine Disko 7.12.2007

Published 07/12/2007 by Platform

EKD is a dynamic art project that welcomes performance, noise, video and intervention with related art forms to create flux in EKD context. The announcement “come together” is the setting that creates the EKD’s coming to be.

EKD is a nomadic art project in the sense that it is not a permanent screening, disco or performance festival with preset programmes but a kind of cultural jamming journey from which the participants never return to the starting point.

Instead of requesting people to seek art as experience, EKD brings experiences as art to the spectator and invites people to meet each other within the original idea of a “party”.

EKD is a non-profit project and takes place on the premises offered for touring EKD events from one place to another.

 

 

Comments closed

Message 22.9.–7.10.2007

Published 22/09/2007 by Platform

 

Artists: Igor Przybylski, Anita Pasikowska, Ryszard Lugowski and Jan Mioduszewski.
Curated by Eulalia Domanowska.

Igor Przybylski obsessively documented the public transport buses in Warsaw. Some of the results of this, and his contribution, were a video and a computer game.

Anita Pasikowska and Jan Mioduszewski set their minds on communicating with the local inhabitants of Vaasa during their week-long stay in the city. Pasikowska had the mission to draw pictures of windows of people she managed to establish contact with and Mioduszewski confronted the flâneur with the street painter. Mioduszewski showed slides taken during these walks in Vaasa and Pasikowska showed drawings resulting from her meetings with the locals.

Ryszard Lugowski introduced self-made coins from bronze and a film about the moon.

 

Comments closed

Get over it 11.8.2007

Published 11/08/2007 by Platform

Emma Houlihan & Sally Timmons

Emma Houlihan and Sally Timmons were invited to realise a project during Night of the Arts in Vaasa. The two artists teamed up for one week in order to devise a project within the context of Platform’s international residency programme and, in particular, the notion of what it means to participate in a night of culture.

When the city’s cultural institutions opened their doors, Platform’s access was concealed by a wall. As planned, during Night of the Arts, the screening of Platform’s activities in Venice 2007 were screened in the gallery but the wall had to be climbed over to access the gallery.

Emma Houlihan (IE) has participated in exhibitions and art events internationally and also works as a curator/art organizer. Sally Timmons (IE) is an artist and curator based in Dublin. At the time, Houlihan had been artist in residence at Platform since June and Timmons had recently started hers.

Joakim Hansson, Rasmus Hedlund and Maria Lundström presented a short film based on video and stop motion/ time lapse done during a period of two weeks. The video depicts a specific action – the work of CFL at the Venice Biennale 2007 – and the enviroment it took place in. CFL did the building of the Turkish pavillion at the Arsenale, the installation “Don’t Complain” by Hüseyin Alptekin. The material used for the installation was once four barns in the Ostrobothnian countryside.

Joakim Hansson (SWE/FIN), Rasmus Hedlund (FIN) and Maria Lundström (FIN) are studying at the Arts department at the Swedish Polytechnic in Nykarleby.

 

Comments closed

Soundscape & RGB-hypnosis 15.6.2007

Published 09/06/2007 by Platform

Lasse Marc-Riek, Britt Kootstra & Arvid van der Rijt

 

Soundscape from Signal-Recordings of Bats by Lasse-Marc Riek (D)

Field recordings:
Since May 2003 location shouts and social sounds of bats were collected by means of stereo-microphones and ultrasound-detectors. Social sounds such as the communication between a mother bat and her child can be heard by the human ear. Location shouts, used for orientation and hunting, are in the range of ultrasounds and can’t be registered by people. The sounds of the bats were recorded during excursions in cooperation with bat researchers of the “Naturschutzbund Kreis Segeberg” of the following species: Pipistrellus, Nyctalus, Eptesicus, Myotis.

Detector:
The machine transforms the inaudible ultrasounds (sounds higher than 22khz) in audible sounds. In real time recordings you hear clicking sounds and by means of slow or fast motion these sounds are transformed in wet or dry chirping or twittering sounds. The recorded material was analog and digitally edited, arranged and converted into a composition.

Compostion:
Sounds, recorded by chance, a minute in a busy shopping area, the high whistling of a stone-saw, the to and fro of buses, the scraps of conversation of people passing by, the sounds of ringing mobile phones, doors and traffic lights, the barking of dogs and the singing of birds turn into a score. The sounds of the streets were replaced with the transformed bat material, according to rhythm and pitch.

 

RGB-Hypnosis by Britt Kootstra (NL) & Arvid van der Rijt (NL)

Daily routines are the object of my tableaux vivants. Within the familiar frame of a well-known routine the body moves, whilst the mind has the freedom to wander off and travel around the world. The movements are carried out on automatic pilot. Both the performer and the movements are caught in loops. The acts become strange as if repeating a very familiar word over and over again, until it starts to sound alien, as if taken from another language.

 

Comments closed