Is there anything new in contemporary art, or is it simply an update, a remake or a cover version?
reMAKE is a series of five mini exhibitions on show in Room X in honour of Kiasma’s anniversary year. In movie language, the concept of reMAKE is widely understood to refer to a new version of an earlier film. The series portrays works, interventions and projects that put the definition of the relationship between a work of art and a museum into a new light. reMAKE aims to open up the entire presentation environment where a work of art becomes the focus of interpretation.
Marcel Broodthaers’ The Manuscript 1833 (Le Manuscrit trouvé dans une bouteille), produced in 1974, serves as the signature for the series. The work toys with the idea of a message in a bottle and the concept of a found object; the bottle contains Edgar Allan Poe’s tale “MS. Found in a Bottle” written in 1833. The work sums up the idea of the new life of a work of art as a remake and its transposition from one form of art to another.
10.10.-11.1.2009
Aurora Reinhard, Julio & Lupitá
Aurora Reinhard
b. 1975, lives and works in Helsinki, Finland
Aurora Reinhard's work Julio & Lupitá can be seen as the voyage of a story from one art form and culture to another. The video work contains layers of elements from a street dance performance, based on a folk tradition from Latin America. The drama of the work draws from the multidimensionality and grotesqueness of the dancing scene.
Reinhard describes her work: "Julio & Lupitá is a video work about a middle-aged Columbian man, Julio Diaz, and his doll Lupitá. Dancing with a doll is based on a Latin American custom where a deserted husband makes a doll that resembles his wife and dances a last dance with it. After that the doll is burned."
In her works, Reinhard has examined the softening borders of the genders, different roles as well as sexuality through a range of exaggerated stereotypes.
Julio & Lupitá, 2004
video projection
duration 4:35 min
Aurora Reinhard: Julio & Lupitá.
kuva/Photo: Pirje Mykkänen / KKa8.8.-5.10.2008
Kiasma's partner Deloitte came up with an offer for an artist residence in their office building in Ruoholahti, Helsinki. The aim of the project was to re-examine the development of the cooperation between the company and the museum together with an artist. Pilvi Takala's works open up the codes of different social situations. The Trainee is a work based on a one-month intervention, in which we see an initially normal-seeming marketing trainee starting to apply peculiar working methods.
Pilvi Takala, The Trainee9.5.-3.8.2008
Kiasma's Adventures Under Ground
Spanish visual artist Gabriel de la Cruz living in Finland represents a series of works under title Kiasma's Adventures Under Ground. On its 10th birthday Kiasma is transformed by the artist into a pink pig character making adventures with a funfair device and in cartoon animations. The museum building itself is recognizable in the shapes of that lovely character.
Photo: Pirje Mykkänen /CAA7.3.-4.5.2008
A three minute video of people attending a club gig. Instead of the performance on the stage
the attention focuses on club goers observing each other. The visual starting point for the work was baroque painter Caravaggio’s group scenes, with dark backgrounds and dramatically illuminated compositions of actors seemingly participating in something divine. As an addition to these the music for the piece was composed to echo Michael Nyman’s minimalistic soundtracks for Peter Greenaways films, to give a feeling of a staged costume drama, but with a hint of Indie rock to keep it connected with the actual happenings on the screen. The music is performed by a small classical chamber orchestra, set up for the piece.
In her video The Madison, 2006, Jessika Thörnqvist reinterprets the famous dance scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s film Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) made in 1964. She has replaced the main actors in the film – Arthur (Claude Brasseur), Odile (Anna Karina) and Franz (Sami Frey) – with her Norwegian friends who unmistakeably resemble the original actors. The sounds of the dance and the clicking of fingers serve as the soundscape. The black and white video was shot in a restaurant in Trondheim, and its name is a direct reference to the famous line dance of the 1950s and 60s. Thörnqvist’s works frequently deal with the relationships between popular music and the field of art, particularly from the perspective of the DJ culture.
