24 August 2004, Helsinki, Cable Fabric
Interview by Anna Kharkina with Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Anna Kharkina:
The first question is — What was the artistic context like when you began to make videos? What was the artistic environment in Helsinki and broader — in Finland — at that time?
Eija-Liisa Ahtila:
The first time I started to work with the moving image was at the end of the 1980s. But I worked with some other people — we were taking a video course in one organization. During that time there were three of us: me, Maria Ruotsala, and Erkki Haapaniemi, who was shooting. We made a short, maybe a seven-minute-long piece called «The Nature of Things».
Interruption of the recording.
Continue…
We did that piece during the introductory video course (we were friends) and afterwards we made a couple of other videos, but I was not so much involved in it as the others were. During the 1980s there were only a few people who made anything like video art or used the moving image as a means of expression. It was the end of the 1980s when a lot of changes occurred in the Finnish art field, people started using different mediums, not just painting, and gradually the hegemony of abstract expressionistic painting was broken. At that time there were a lot of talks about modernism and post-modernism, new approaches to art, art and feminism, the role of art in the society and the role of institutions and museums. It was kind of a turbulent time. I had just graduated from an art school and started my artist carrier.
AK: Why did you decide to work separately from Maria Ruotsala?
ELA: We worked together quite a lot. Although we were in the same school we did not know each other so well. In the summer after graduating from school we became friends, we shared same thoughts. It was encouraging to work together. In that atmosphere it was easier to deal with certain kinds of power structures together …
AK: Like museums?
ELA: Yes, that too. And also the male dominated art field where all artworks looked very similar. There was an appropriate way of making art and an appropriate way of thinking about art. So it was much easier to do something together. But as we were growing older we drifted apart and started to be interested in different things and gradually make works of our own.
AK: Did you make the work «Quadrille», which alludes to Douglas Crimp„s ideas, together with Maria?
ELA: Yes, it was a performance.
AK: And was it before KIASMA was opened?
ELA: Yes.
AK: So were there any discussions in Helsinki about the setting up of a museum of contemporary art at that time?
ELA: There were a lot of discussions. First of all, most of the people involved wanted to have a museum of contemporary art, but they were talking about a museum of modern art. At that time there was a big dispute about what modernism is, what is modern, what is post-modern. So we felt that this was totally inappropriate to have the project of establishing a museum of Modern Art. That is why I started to do a research into the history of the museum, and what it really means when people talk about the museum of modern art. That it is a certain kind of a concept, not a general term. It was more like a performance that we made together, or an action piece, or a pamphlet which was based on research. We talked about the history of the museum; how the early museum in Alexandria in Egypt functioned, and the history of the institution until the Altes Museum in Berlin (built in the 1830s, if I remember rightly). It was a proper example of modernist museum and ideas linked to it. We ended the performance with the ideas what the museum should be in our time, what it should look like, what functions it should perform.
AK: Does KIASMA satisfy your ideas?
ELA: My interests have moved to another area… I think that KIASMA is very important for the Finnish culture. Not only for visual arts but also for experimental theatre and dance. I think it is a very important institution for Helsinki and for Finland.
 
AK: The discussion about a contemporary art museum is very vivid now in St. Petersburg because we still do not have one. We even do not have a museum of the Russian 20th century art, especially of that of the time following the Second World War …
Another question. One art critic in his article says that films you have made remind him visually and in the way you work with text of Godard„s films. Can you make your comment on that?
ELS: It„s difficult. It is interesting to hear other people„s views on my works. But I don„t feel like drawing any comparisons. Godard is the genius of the French New Wave and narrative experimentation from the 60s onward… He has made a long carrier in film. The most I can say is that I admire his work. And it is highly interesting what he has done to the way of storytelling and expressing with the medium.
When I make my works and films I concentrate on the subject matter and the problems related to it — at this time I do not think about any filmmakers“ works. It„s quite another matter that I„ve certainly seen a lot of his works — as well as those of other important auteurs“.
AK: When you make a work, do you make a film version of it and a video installation, too? Except «Anne, Aki and God».
ELA: Yes, this piece is different, there„s only an installation.
AK: When you make a work, do you have it in mind that you will show it differently, and how much does this influence you work? How does it change the way you are making your work?
ELA: The early works were based more or less on the same material. But more recently I„ve tried to make them different; let„s take «The House» as an example. In 2002 I made the film «Love is a Treasure» which shows 5 episodes about five women who have gone through psychosis. «The House» is the last episode from this film. In this installation you will basically find 3 times as much material than you see in the film, because there are 3 screen installations. So even if the topic and the story is the same as in the installation, I tried to find out how the story works in space on several screens. And of course, depending on the possibilities, both financial and time-wise, when I write a script I try to include or think about the installation version and film version. I realized that when I write it is more like… it is actually difficult to say, I feel that I do it in a rather traditional way but I also include something that will be in the installation. For example, if I do something with 3 screens I note in the script that these and those images should appear in this place in the installation. But I have to say that this varies from work to work…
AK: So for your installations you have 2, 3 or more sequences for screening. How do you unite them in one film?
ELA: I always write a script. I work with a crew and we shoot the material needed for the one screen film version plus some extra for an installation. I usually work with an editor. We either edit a film version first or the installation version, it depends on the circumstances. With the work called «Consolation Service», which is both a film and two- screen installations, we edited an installation version at first, because there was a deadlinet. We have all the material there and the script, and we just edited it with two images being shown at the same time. We did not think about a film version. After we had made the installation version, we returned to our work and edited the film version from the beginning. So these are two different processes and two different works, which we are doing with more or less the same material. Of course, we use much more material for an installation because it is usually on several screens. And films are traditionally shown on one screen.
AK: There is a distinction between film and video in the contemporary art-critical, art-historical mind. Do you think that this difference is crucial for your work?
ELA: No, I would rather try to avoid talking about film and video. I„d rather talk about moving images, because I think that this is what it is anyway, for several reasons. Everything is more and more digital: video is digital, film is digital. The basic technical difference is fading. Films are made with handmade video materials and art videos are made with film. The technical difference does not matter.
AK: So your works are neither film nor video…
ELA: I like stories. I am interested in narration and telling stories with the help of moving images. There is a certain relation to video art, but more relation to short, narrative films. This is the tradition I work in. I follow the rules of editing, shooting, lightning and acting in my works, but in another way. I try to use them differently. Since I work like this I do not feel that I have to say that I work with films or make videos. This does not tell much. I work with the moving image and I try to explore different ways of expressing with the medium.
AK: But there is a difference in the way the narration is constructed in film and video, at least in what we usually regard as film and video. In a film, we always have a hero, even if the director wants to tell something about him/herself, there is always a character in-between with the help of whom he/she tells his/her story.
ELA: Like a protagonist, like a main character.
AK: Can you agree that this could be the difference between how to make film and video? The type of narration.
ELA: I suppose so. It depends on the works we are talking about — but then again, I also use the main character in one way or another in my stories.
AK: That is why I consider your works narratively to be closer to film than to video.
 
ELA: ok.
AK: Video is a story told by «I», by the «Ego» of an artist, even if there are some actors they do not PLAY the story, they are mostly used as objects in space that does not narrate. There is no drama in their «stories».
ELA: Exactly, video does not create a fictional illusion as film does — traditionally.
AK: Film tries to catch a viewer completely.
ELA: That is the point, actually I have not thought about this from that perspective: that video does not aim at creating a fictional world while a film usually does. I mean the implications of that.
AK: That is why film needs a dark room and a screen, an abstraction from real circumstances; a viewer has to be completely involved in a film. While video can be an installation. Visitors are allowed to have their own body, own movement, and they can be a bit apart from what is happening. Video cannot be dramatic.
That is why I am interested how you make a film and an installation with the same material.
ELA: I do not know. It has never been a problem for me. I„ve taken it for granted. Since my childhood I„ve been interested in writing. Two of my favourite subjects from my early school years were visual arts and Finnish lessons where we wrote short essays or fiction. And I always liked stories, books, so in my work I wanted to combine both. And I never liked the approach — «this is a video camera, what can I do with this!» That„s not been my interest.
AK: So you always have stories beforehand.
ELA: Yes, and I also was never interested in performing myself. So this is also a distancing element from video art. I feel really uneasy in front of the camera. Even earlier, probably not so much any longer, but I could not think of performing in front of the video. I am not a video artist in that sense. Yes, what I have tried to do is a sort of bringing art and film together. Put the writing lessons and visual art lessons at school together.
AK: Some of your films deal with the problem of mental illness, for example, «Anne, Aki, and God» and «Love is a Treasure». What is primary and what is secondary — the subject, the state of mind of those people, or you use the very theme as a proper material for what you want to do visually, as a proper material for your way of narration?
ELA: I do not know. Maybe I have to tell the history of it because it gives the answer. What I am trying to do all the time in my works is to find the way how to tell stories differently. To find out how to tell stories in space and how to change the traditional chronology of stories or the causality: at first the happens, and this leads to this — the way people read films or videos. I have tried to put things together so that the kind of linearity is broken or the way of telling the stories is broken. And I try to do this with space and with several screens. And with all the works I always try to find another way; and sometimes it is easy with the topic, sometimes it is difficult. For example, «Anne, Aki and God» is based on the true story which a friend of mine told me about and asked whether I would be interested to do something about it. That was the first time when I encountered the world of mentally ill people and found that it was really fascinating because I also had this feeling that what happened to them was a kind of break — the way of perceiving the world around them — and they are also breaking the way in creating meaning in their heads. So they are in their life, in their illness, and they create stories differently. I felt a kind of similarity to this kind of story material similar with the ways I wanted to break the stories and tell them differently. From my point of view, the best example of this is the installation «The House», because it is kind of an abstraction. It tells the story of a woman who starts to hear voices in her own house, and the house gradually breaks down. This is a kind of metaphor of her breaking down, which is again a kind of metaphor, you could say, of the story„s breaking down.
AK: Have you visited mental asylums to interview patients there?
ELA: No. But I did interview people. I could not go to interview people who were in hospital because doctors cannot give information on their patients. Actually I contacted different organizations which take care of the people who move back to their homes, or live in homelike circumstances. I left my information for those who wanted to cooperate with me or gave information to nurses or people who worked with them. Then they contacted me. This is how I arranged interviews. Then, basing on the interviews, I wrote scripts. But none of the stories is exactly that of a particular person — one is more, one is less. They are anyway like fiction. They are not documentaries of these interviewed people.
AK: Back to your early work «Me/We, Okay, Gray». It was made to be presented in between advertisements on TV. What was you intention — to break the way advertisements are usually made, to play with this genre or to make something that looks the same but in a different content?
ELA: My intention was to do something in-between advertisements. When I started to do the work I was at home doing something, and the TV was on. I saw a certain advertisement and then I went on doing whatever I had been doing, but anyway, after a while I saw the same advert again and I could not tell if it was exactly the same advert or if they had done a second version. I was uncertain and then I started to think about how advertisements are made and how much they have in common with a short. I thought I could do some kind of advertisements which are not really ads but reminiscent of the idea of an advertisement. So that is why I made these 90 seconds“ pieces. I had in mind the idea that they are shown repeatedly so people can see them several times and I tried to make them full of information so every time people see them they could get some more information. So they could have a similar feeling that I had. Then I wanted to do them on different topics.
In 1993 I was invited to take part in two exhibitions, one was in Moscow and the other one in Stockholm, and the subject matter of both exhibitions happened to be «identity». So I took that as the topic of the works. «We/Me» is about the family and identity in it. It is a story about a family hanging out laundry, something related to washing powder adverts. The second one was about love relations, and the identity in that kind of relationship. And the 3rd one was on the national identity. Actually, it was about Finland and Russia, and nuclear waste, because at that time there was a lot of talks here about the power station near Leningrad. I compared nuclear waste to the cultural «waste» and its spreading. These two won„t stay confined to their borders. This theme was important for me at that time. It was after I had spent a year in London, I felt that this had changed me a lot. This was the first time when I had to express myself in another language, and it was difficult. When I came back I thought about all those things and I ended with these short pieces.
AK: Were they shown on TV?
ELA: Yes, they were shown here on TV but not exactly the way I wanted. They were shown between programs because the channel which showed them did not have advertisement. But I had to work with that channel because they were interested in giving money for the production. But later I made another project called «The Present», which was similar, and it was shown in England, in Switzerland between advertisements, and also, actually, one little thing was shown here as an advertisement that referred to my exhibition in KIASMA.
 
AK: Have you heard the feedback of ordinary people who saw these works?
ELA: No, it would be another project to interview them.
AK: And where did you have your exhibition in Moscow?
ELA: It was 11 years ago, I do not remember. You can find it in my CV.
AK: Did you have any other exhibitions in Russia?
ELA: At least one about two years ago, it was an art fair, Moscow art fair. I do not think there was anything else.
AK: Never in film festivals?
ELA: I„ll have to check. I do not distribute my films myself. This is done by Finnish Film Foundation. But I do not think so.
AK: The last question is about the work «Consolation Service». In Viennese biennale when you showed it did you ask people to watch the work from the very beginning?
ELA: Usually I do not care. People can enter and leave when they want. The work is a loop and you can enter at any point, but «Consolation service» is different because of the nature of the work. I thought I wanted to do something which is a kind of story proceeding from one emotion to another. And I realized at some point that if you did not know the characters, if you do not identify yourself with them, you do not get the feelings, you do not feel for them, and that is why I wanted people to see the work from the beginning, to see the characters, and to know them before they fall through the ice, before the real consolation starts at the end of the film.
AK: Did they die in the end?
ELA: I do not care how people see it. In a way we always die when we have to leave someone we have loved. It is always a kind of a loss and an end.
Illustrations
Eija-Liisa Ahtila
«Anne, Aki and God», 1998
«Аnne, Aki and God», 1998
«The House», 2002
«The House», 2002
«Consolation Service», 1999
«Consolation Service», 1999
| 
