Sauli Sirviö

Inter-cool 3.0

Inter-cool 3.0, 17.9-28.11.2010, Dortmunder U, Dortmund, Germany.

Bodies, identities and subcultures have long since been an integral part of the discourse on youth cultures. These and other topics are at the core of the art exhibition inter-cool 3.0 organized from 17 September to 28 November 2010 at the Dortmunder U by the Hartware MedienKunstVerein, the Goethe University Frankfurt, and the Cultural Office of the City of Dortmund. Conceived by Prof. Dr. Birgit Richard in the framework of TWINS:RUHR 2010, inter-cool 3.0 is an exhibition for and with rather than about teenagers. Through photographs, videos, street art, paintings, drawings, interactive installations, everyday objects (T-shirts, record covers and footwear), performances, design, fashion, music, social networks and fan art, adolescents and young emerging artists provide glimpses into their everyday life. By doing so, they address issues which are relevant not only to them, such as virtual and material communities, street life, education, self-styling, styles, friendship, love, self-finding, politics, body issues and communication. The participants express themselves in their respective media and imagery, whether goths, scouts, ravers, normalos, gangsta rappers, punks, cosplayers, members of the London grime scene, breakers, emos, hooligans, glamour kids, teenage beach vacationers and many more. The portraits of youth shown in this exhibition are the work of teenagers from France, Great Britain, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, Russia, the USA, Australia, Singapore and China. Alongside works by established artists the exhibition comprises contributions submitted by teenagers in the framework of a special competition. An international project, inter-cool 3.0 is curated by Prof. Birgit Richard from the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, and Dr. Inke Arns, Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund. The exhibition focuses on contemporary strategies on identities and on the debate on reality and fake worlds while analyzing how teenagers address other subcultures. The exhibition furthermore asks how teenagers use public spaces and how they view their body and approach the notion of nationality. Photographs, objects, clips and interactive installations document the codes, communities, club and music culture of teenagers, providing visitors with a first-hand experience of their individual or collective life environments and identities. For this purpose a special exhibition architecture was developed, which alludes to teenagers’ rooms.

Participating artists:
AES+F (RU), Andreas Amrhein (DE), Eva Baales (DE), Markus Bertuch (DE), Peter Beste (US), Lars Borges (DE),
Martin Brand (DE), Sergey Bratkov (UA), Kimberly Clark (NL), Denis Darzacq (FR), Etoy (CH), Cao Fei (CN),
Matthias Fritsch (DE), Daniel & Geo Fuchs (DE), Nan Goldin (USA), Marti Guixé (ES), Andreas Gursky (DE),
Cosima Hanebeck (DE), Alfred Jansen (DE), Kora Jünger (DE), Olga Kessler (DE), Tim Knapen (BE),
Joan Leandre (ES), Frederic Le Bain (FR), Loretta Lux (DE), Susanna Majuri (FI), Hellen van Meene (NL),
Björn Melhus (DE), Matthias Meyer (DE), Ho Tzu Nyen (SG), Sabine Otto (DE), SOSka Group (UA),
Stefan Panhans (DE), Marion Poussier (FR), Jussi Puikkonen (FI), L.A. Raeven (NL), Birgit Richard (DE),
Römer & Römer (DE), Oliver Sieber (DE), Sauli Sirviö (FI), Slinkachu (UK), Cornelia Sollfrank (DE),
Wolfgang Stahr (DE), Jürgen Teller (DE), Albrecht Tübke (DE), Bernd Uhlig (DE), Zsolt Vasarhelyi (HU),
Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek (NL), Tanja Vujinovic (SI), Marcel Wanders (DE), Charlie White (US),
Chen Yun (CN), ZEVS (FR), Tobias Zielony (DE), Irina Zikuschka (DE).

The Great Escape-Tense Territories

The Great Escape

“The Great Escape”, “Tense Territories-Contemporary Aspects on Territorial Behaviors”
is a set of four personal exhibitions at The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland.
22.1-24.5.2009.

The Tense Territories exhibition, which investigates the concepts of personal space, control, ownership and identity, offers multiple views of new forms in contemporary photography. The exhibition is made up of four solo exhibitions.

Participating artists are Mohamed Bourouissa (Courtesy Gallery Les filles du calvaire, Paris/Brussels), Sini Pelkki, Carrie Schneider and Sauli Sirviö.

Tense Territories – Contemporary Aspects on Territorial Behaviors is curated by Aura Seikkula.

“The Great Escape 2000-2008”
Multi-image series The Great Escape constitutes a colourful collage of personal and intimate stories. Sirviö says:”The series Great Escape comes from the time, at the end of the 1990s, when I began taking pocket-camera photographs of the situations happening around me. I lived in a small Turku suburb and things began to get oppressive, and too many of my friends had decided to switch to a normal life, i.e. to start a family, etc. Those who didn’t want to do that started getting involved in all sorts of other unpleasantnesses, for example, drugs. I was in a situation in which the only option was escape. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I began hanging around with graffiti painters, and through that I spent an increasing amount of time in the most amazing places, and I found myself all over the place at different times”.

Tense Territories

Tense Territories, 24.7-30.8.2008, Museum Santralistanbul, Istanbul, Turkey.

Comprising the photographs and video installations by Saskia Holmkvist, Sini Pelkki, Jussi Puikkonen, Carrie Schneider and Sauli Sirviö, the exhibition “Tense Territories” elaborated on the themes “territory” and “dominance”. Curator Aura Seikkula defined the aim of the exhibition as “Over the long period of evolutionary time, humankind has developed a most complicated array of territorial behaviours that range from personal social relationships, to possession of land and physical property.
“Tense Territories” asks whether there is something imperative about territory”.
“Tense Territories” discusses how human behaviour and everyday life is questioned and interpreted by searching and finding the answer of oneself and another. Individuals maintain a multiplicity of territorial belongings that tend to push the traditional forms of identity into the background. This multiplicity leads to a problem of being conceptually undifferentiated and undefined. Identity in the sense of shared processes cannot simply be constructed or instituted as an ideology or hierarchy.
It must emerge as a new tradition of argumentation, consisting in a whole diversity of interdependent territories in which and between which, the narratives are shared and traditions maintained and remade within everyone’s critical understanding, in which and between which, identities are built and selfhoods recognized and in which and between which self and the other responsively and respectively meet. Shared processes have a potentiality of being a great repository of culturally developed resources for the identities to shape and reshape. In between these shared arenas, the operating society takes its form.