Kimmo Modig: Cool stories

[all texts unedited]

Trying to work—there's an exhibition we need to do—no idea what to do—doing it primarily to have a reason to meet—Athens, February 2015—Sitting on a sofa—someone else's apartment—with the sounds of medium traffic—and the peculiar silent hum of a still life room—the dog wants something—do i want something—my depression is not gone—i suppose i shouldn't travel—is this contagious—even this form right here disgusts moi—thought of pizza—then coffee—would need to speak to people tho—don't want to speak to people tho—or do but only to artists—because I need work reasons to do things—not sure if that's a reason—the dog stopped wanting things—which is not to say the dog died—no one died—there's still a chance—both ways

Georges will be here soon—i've promised to deliver nothing today—and i'm keeping my promise—or not and showing this to G—my toe hurts from new shoes—they were tad too expensive—just like this trip—no funds—no grants—spending my savings from 2014 to be here—it's ok new money will be printed—or earned—I feel like I haven't earn to have anything—whatever—I don't even have money—I only hold it for a second for someone else—like the ECB—but anyway—now I take a look at money—like—say—a hundred euro bill—and say—i'm not having this—and the bill takes note—and leaves

DJ Tonka—don't look it up—not that kind of reference—you're not that kind of listener—you're core audience to no one—you're sadness sold when everything must go—you have failed so others don't have to—you're the loser christ—is what i mean—and i'm mean—i'm mean so you don't have to—no one should—yet here we are—hating hating hating—I saved some commas there—for things that deserve privacy—all "hating"s should and will be put together—is that the solution for narcissists—too—keep em separated—narci ghetto—place where everyone's getting loved—and no one's getting unwanted attention—because everyone loves themselves—and doesn't care for others 

DJ Tonka—it's on eternal repeat—like all great artists—oh god—that's a tiring thought—you say a thing—and spent your life living with the echo—hope you don't spoil it all by saying something stupid—since—you know—people want to see destruction—and people want to be loved—meaning that either they shame and destroy you—or they love the idea that you might love them—either way it's shit—that's why—we do private screenings only

*

a. What was the first scene you ever witnessed?
b. Nu-Metal in Tampere, Finland, late 90's. I was running this festival with my friends in our home town of 10 000 people. Some kids from Tampere, a university city nearby, surprised us by showing up. We got friendly and subsequently, our band scored a few gigs from Tampere. What I remember from that scene, like, the defining moment, took place in this tiny apartment full of records and two turntables. Guy living there DJ'd for a nu-metal band called [redacted], I think. We came there most likely to pick up an instrument or something, it was always a thing never a house visit since none of us lived there, in Tampere, just yet. Later on, most of us moved there but the band fell apart quite quickly, actually. Anyway, that's the seminal moment for me: sixteen, in some cool kid's apartment. I think he had dreadlocks & piercings maybe. I looked at him design a flyer for some club event. I still remember that flyer. It had an oriental lady in the background, drawn well you know like a Marvel character, and then the information in three different weird fonts. Here was this guy playing in a band, doing graphic design, living in a university city. That was pretty much the dream back then. 
a. (plays a sample from [redacted])
b. So this happened before the cold realisation hitting everyone that sitting in front of a computer, airbrushing ads for a Volkswagen might not be that creative nor rewarding. Lot of my friends studied something like graphic design, but then most of them landed in different jobs or re-entered student life. I studied communications and animation, respectively, in these 2-year vocational schools, not finishing either one. Nu-metal died too, although as you can hear it sounds pretty great today, provided today is still 2015. As all cool things, it became embarrassing pretty soon after its peak. My friend from the band posted one of our songs to Soundcloud a year or two ago, gathering likes and laughs. Also I think DJ'ing was becoming very uncool but then a recent dance music phenomenon known as EDM and the star jockeys it created saved it. I mean we will always need a beat, of course. This is something that classical music types haven't figured out: we have electricity and recordings now so we don't need you guys anymore, except for like thematical weddings. Although I'm not sure if there's enough baroque-themed weddings for everyone to go around.
a. Do you see any difference with Nu-Metal scene of your adolescence and euro-centric contemporary art world of today, of 2015?

 

*

Empty apartment. PROTAGONIST sits in a corner of living room floor. Noises from the corridor.

P: I wish there was a way to show your art without meeting people!!!!
WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO SEE PEOPLE 
WHEN ALL I WANT IS FOR PEOPLE TO SEE MY WORKS

Noises get closer. KREON, the young artist, walks in, door is open. A group of Kreon's FRIENDS (F) follow soon behind. They're noisy, laughing. They stay behind at the entrance to the apartment, trying to remove their shoes from their feet, unsuccessfully.

K: Yassas bitches! (F laugh)
We got the solution for you, filos!
 
F [from Just-Ice's Moshitup]: suicide it's a suicide
suicide it's a suicide

P: It's a shame. I would be judged by the men below. They are my family. I'd rather die an everyday death than kill myself famously.

F [rapping Monie Love's "It's a Shame" while throwing their boots towards P]: 
Get back on your feet, please
I'm beggin you to check out all your own needs
Don't let nobody see you in a state of grievin' over the brother

K: Who's this brother I keep hearing about?

P: My art is my brother in law & order. My other family is dead.

F: [singing Public Enemy] Bring the noise!

K: haha, they're right, let's bring the mpatzanakis in!

BROTHER enters. Brother is the most hideous, ridiculous thing you've ever seen, completely overblown in every possible way.

B: IMA SCHOOL U!!!!! (this is all B says. It is not written as dialogue from hereon, but feel free to insert in here and there along the way. Also, kill the brother at some point, in the background, without too much noise, sort of awkward stage death)

[unfinished]

 *

tell me something i don't know, ie. pretty much anything
like, say my name & i won't turn

no one cares what you know
we care who you know
this is the network talking
your peers
the static
every day and every night in yr head, making you buy plane tickets

you're a radio station playing commercials 
thinking that's the way to finance what you want to actually say
but you've forgotten what you had to say
& all you hear is static

you are not the problem nor the solution
if you think you are, 
you are

who do you know & who are you 
talking to & listening to?
who knows

*

Day 1: performance
Day 2: drinks
Day 3: drinks
Day 4: no drinks
Day 5: opening
Day 6: outdoors
Day 7: ?

Art is at its most unbearable when it's still raw. No one has cooked, digested and made sense of it. Art historians, curators, critics, peers and audiences haven't consolidated it just yet. It lies there on the studio floor or where ever, and its maker looks at the work in both terror and hope. The maker knows that everything, such as the given moment, the hasty writings in a notebook, that work there, a brief conversation over drinks, a car ride, any output, can be made to convey historical sense. 

If you're lucky, someone will take your trifles more seriously than life. Or then your works are just left there on the floor dying a meaningless death.

You can give your work everything else but gravity. That's the one thing you would want for your works the most. Since without significance, they're just data. 

If you can afford to be creating, it usually means you're better off than most here. You work with and because of excess, either of your own making or as a result of other people's labor, or brute luck. 

Any sane person would feel the occasional sting of guilt under such conditions. But when gravity strikes, guilt dies. 

In the end, what kills the artist is the delay between those two elementary states.

Years before I was born
All the vocals had already been pitched up beyond any character
The start and end points of all samples had gradually moved 
so close to each other that everything sounded like little birds stammering

I remember when we were young and your mother was sick 
you were chanting a list of new sub-genres next to her bed, no help

Copyright and artistic identity were turning into a game of taxonomic prowess
as the amount of musicians finally passed the number of insects living 
The only way to survive the acoustic flood was to curate and give names
to thousands of SoundCloud accounts at a time

Those of us who couldn't 
got infected by audiofrenia
earth's population dropped to 400 000
most of the survivors were sociologists and biologists

When I was 25, I went down a bad way in Vienna
I started imagining I could hear the Holy Grail of auditory hallucinations
The 2nd Millennium Matrix, also known as the Tonal-Atonal Catch
I was being locked up in a hospital, in the infinite echo chamber room for six months

While I was away, Pekka and Christa travelled three years
searching for an uncompressed snare_808.wav stereo audio file, 
pitch +0st, with no added reverb
I remember getting the news of Pekka's suicide
someone told me Christa was next to him
recording him to his last breath
Seconds before Pekka died, Christa changed her recording settings into 96kHz/48-bit
hoping to elevate him into higher fidelity

A .torrent file containing recordings of 
Pekka's clothes from A/W 2034 rustling and swishing was circulating in 
Southeast Estonia for two days 
one seeder and twenty leechers

When your mother finally passed away
you joined the Finnish branch of the cult she had founded

The Seer of Turku read your cards
and gave you instructions for aural cleansing
They were horrible in their simplicity:
You needed to avoid all frequencies lower than 100hz

You moved to Lapland
installed these enormous stainless steel high pass equalizers outside your cabin 
But when the mining for fundamental resonant tones from the centre of the earth begun
and they had that accident in a mine near your area
there was nothing you could do

The Northern Hemisphere Bass Outbreak got you
It got us all

This is the first time in my life rehearsing. On my own, that is. Working as a sound designer in theatre productions, there was usually a month or so of practicing and run-throughs and workshopping before the premiere. With my own works, such as solo performances, I've never really had a rehearsal period. Sure, I've checked out in advance that everything's working, but that's been the size of it. You could say there hasn't been time, but mostly it's because I haven't felt the need. Lately, it has changed. I've started to see the value in living with your body and mind in a certain position for a prolonged period of time. It's the way in to deep.

Right now, I'm creating my 90-minute show for Baltic Circle theatre festival. I've begun to rehearse. Well, I've had one session, during which I did a sort of run-through. That was last week. It was super. I borrowed a camera from another resident artist and was shooting myself talking. I also recorded a 90-minute audio-only monologue, which is something I've done quite a few times in the past months, so I would see what that time feels like. 

Today is day 2. Of course, I don't have a clue how I will spend the day. I didn't wake up at 6am like last week, but after 8am. I wanted to write this off the way, since last night we were discussing a talk that will be organised for us three resident artists later this month. I was listening to myself talking and thinking "that's not what I do, why am I saying all these weird things?" Possibly to fill the air with the fume of professionality. It's sad that I still need to bring forth a sense of expertise or refinement. 

I've told everyone I know that I'm doing a play titled Court of Helberg. If I remember correctly, the festival is publishing their programme today, so there we go. I've changed my plans tens of times ever since. But I have actually written down notes and dialogue etc for this purpose during the past year. Naturally, most of it's shit and I will not even re-read or consider using any of it. I guess what the writing has created is a filter. It helps my mind automatically pick up the things that relate to what I'm doing. This way, you see potential material all around you, and, during the most manic work phase, you experience everything through that filter. Since my play is about life in creative class, that's what I've lately seen. 

This is how it happens in my imagination only. In reality, it's all scattered. Every new article I read, work I see, person I meet, trip I take, beer I drink, sex I have, they all lead me to a new place. And so the work I'm doing is dealing with a different topic every day. Yesterday I was sure I'm making a play about art & copyrights, today it's about 90's EU kids. Those were unfit examples, though, since ultimately, I admit doing art about art, instead of working on a topic. Paraphrasing André Gorz, any subject matter that makes you want to write is a good one. If I think about my favourite artist, Lee Kit, and the work he does, surely there is a particular theme, a set of references, issues at stake, and so forth. But what it does to me, his art, it changes my way of seeing the world. This epiphany comes from the way things are, not from what the things are saying. 

That's what I'm doing here today, adjusting things so they are a certain way. But since I'm in a residency and not in my home, I'm under (self-invented) pressure to have a relationship to the place where I'm in, and to turn the stuff I do into more or less comprehensible practice. Someone told me jokingly not to worry, as long as I don't sleep until noon and sit in the kitchen drinking beer it should be all good. The romantic artist in me immediately wanted to dispute such a Lutheran maxim. But in my experience, almost all the artists function like this. They wake up reasonably early, work at their desk, do recreational things on the side, go to openings to support their peers and to network, apply for the funds and opportunities presented before them as valid options, show their works in places where one's art works should be shown in, and feel bad if during any of these phases they feel shunned away or unaccepted. This is absolutely what I do, too. Like Morrissey says, I am human and I want to belong. I could just do my work anywhere, on the street, (early) David Hammons style, but I don't. I want to apply for money so I can pay for the materials and travels so I can show my work in specific places. What drives me and I imagine most of people like me is the need to communicate. You're from a place, and more often than not, that place doesn't seem to respond too well to your idiosyncratic visions. You move around, hoping to find a more responsive place. You end up in Berlin London New York Helsinki Paris Tallinn Mooste where ever, and you believe it all starts to make sense, finally, at least some of it. You search for your context like water.

Richard once said: do you want to work on building your instrument or do you want to play it? He was referring to custom-built/programmed digital audio tools, but what he said rings true all around. I think I'm more about playing, but then if I would be, why the hustle? It can be argued that advancing your career makes playing more exciting and it leads to bigger, more engaged audiences. When I was in my teens, I had this theory that musicians shouldn't really travel. Instead, each town should have its own musicians. I strongly believed that music doesn't have anything to do with quality, as the whole concept seemed unbearably quaint to me. This is surprisingly close to the way I consume music nowadays. I have the SoundCloud feed on in my browser, and it plays me whatever tracks  people I'm following have uploaded or re-posted. I don't have any idea who these artists might be. It doesn't matter. I want to hear beats, rap, dance music -a pulse, really. So I guess I still believe in primary affects, meaning that music derives from arcane, even biological concepts of pulse and static, growth and decline, acceleration and slowing down, etc. Perhaps all music is just variations on these basic affects. And the point is to evoke these affects and forms, that's all. It's great if you're good at it, but if you're not, it's more important to have people come together to listen and to play and to dance than it is think whether someone is good or bad at it. This thinking still informs a lot what I do.

A few more words about rehearsing, lastly. Although I don't have any kind of plan for what I'm doing, rehearsing seems to help a lot. I really think I'm creating a work that might be simply more than my previous performances, which have been usually around 15-25 minutes of somewhat improvised talking on a certain subject, often about the given conditions in that situation. I was dancing with a log of wood there in my studio and I said "this is what I do with wood, it's all I know to do with wood." Another thing I liked was smiling and trying to be extremely positive about performing itself. Strangely, I noticed that doing these things for 90 minutes in front of an imagined crowd felt like an actual performance. I even had to close the ritual by walking out of the space, and then coming back some 10 minutes later to pick up my stuff.

All of this must sound terribly pompous and I guess it is that, too. I write these things down and hope that they shed some light to the way certain types of well-funded, de-skilled artists were working in 2014, trying to achieve a beautiful combination between nihilism, the real, and unconditional love.

p.s. it seems I've referred to four men in this article.

On Monday, I arrived to Moks residency in the small town of Mooste as part of my two-part, two-month stint in Estonia. The first month I spent in Tallinn, at Ptarmigan residency, where I wrote all the previous posts for this diary. 

I write each post in an hour. I use an app titled Freedom to cut my internet connection while I'm writing. I try to publish something a few times a week.

First off, I'm gonna tell you how me feels about a residency.

The guilt, from all this excess, is getting the best of me, if there is anything good in me to begin with. I begin to doubt this as I look around and see all these treats I am being presented here: a spacious studio, a room, scenic place, money, travels, this and that. And you should see this place, really. I'm awestruck by all of it: the cows creating maximalist drone music during nights, cats frequent the front steps of the pale yellow residency building, kids going wild from the last sunny days of autumn, little girls sitting at the small half-broken dock on the beach, the rustic in absolutely everything from old fluffy cats to smashed cards sleeping on their side, and then some.

I'm sitting in a deck chair soaking in the sun, probably looking like I've passed out and in need of professional help. Someone walks close by. I correct my position, feeling ashamed of myself just lying here like a lama (jos puhut suomee niin joo viittaan nyt enempi ysärilamaan ku siihen elukkaan toim. huom.), Hip-Hop buzzing on my PC speakers, while I'm overdosing from candy and energy drink. 

My month here might just pass without any interaction. Mostly because I'm so ashamed of myself. I mean, I have free hands to do as I please with my time here, although Moks is known for its relational aesthetics sort of projects, where artists invite locals to do stuff with them. I assume I should get my ass up from this deck chair. At first, I thought about doing some sort of a public project here. But I feel it should've been the only thing, or that I should've had some sort of platform for my work waiting for me here (like a series of happenings, a curated event, pre-planning, the like). See what a little prince I can be. But yeah, building an audience, figuring out a suitable context & space, and coming up with a concept from scratch is of course possible in a month, easily, but I knew I could have not given such things my full attention as I needed to prepare new work for Baltic Circle festival (due November). 

A residency is not something one really curates, since you get into them almost always through open calls. The organisers tend not to, understandably, tell the artists what they should do, but instead have them figure it out on their own while helping them connect with people and resources, since the organisers of a residency are usually local to the place where their residency resides. 

As a visiting artist, you're always on your own, but with this pressure to supposedly create something cool for/with inhabitants, or, you know, at least give an artist talk. Of course, this shouldn't be anything a sane person stresses over. It really is not too much to ask. I just wonder whether I have anything to offer to anyone. I was wrestling with this in Tallinn, too. I've organized quite a few events in my life, done workshops and other such activities, but I can honestly say I have no idea what people generally like or want. But I guess the problem lies in "people generally", as there is no such thing. 

I really didn't propose anything to Moks and Ptarmigan (Tallinn) when I applied to their joint residency thing, which is called Axis of Praxis. They kind of knew me and I understood were happy with the fact that my application was so open-ended. That's another to way for saying I didn't have and continue not to have any idea what I'm doing.

I've been planning to contact some people here to do a theatre performance with, simply because I'd like to try and direct a play and I was thinking maybe some would like to act, too. Additionally, it might be a fun thing for people to witness. Furthermore, I'm fucked. By the same token, why do I set up these damn traps for myself. Moreover, I'm out of adverbs and ideas. 

In terms of concentration, this place makes wonders to me. On both mornings I've woken up around 6am, gone for a 30 minute run, eaten a healthy breakfast, worked until 12, cooked up some nice lunch, spent time socialising online, gone for a bike ride or something, got a bit drunk with other residents, and then headed straight to bed. Today, I did a run through of my play. Feeling really good about that. Before that, I ticked away all the boxes in my to do list (mostly consisting of writing short e-mails). 

In case you were wondering, this is what I do. 

I mean I feel slightly alienated from everyday reality even in my home town, but when you're in a place where everything sort of reminds you of your temporal, shaky status, it's gets confusing fast. I don't know anything about migration, but if it's this complicated to travel to another place and type away on your PC sitting in a deck chair, I can only imagine what real change is like. 

I also wonder what it does to your perception of art when you run a residency centre for 14 years in a small town, as Evelyn and John have done here at Moks. You see tens of artists every year, and I guess you can't help having a few deja vus: sound art droning on in an abandoned building, communally minded theatre-maker being awkwardly bossy around group of participants, people dropping out of a workshop bit by bit, artists attempting to grasp their residency surroundings by means of automatic drawings, esoteric performative gestures, diy silk prints, collective mindmaps, whatnot. The same conversations about your home city's art scene, art funding, art education, music scene, drug scene, whatever connects you two. But of course you can see it in a very different way, sans the pessimistic determinism.

The fundamental residency phenomenons: newfound passion, lofty commitment, intense fear, leaps in and out of faith, stock existential depression, audacious breakdowns, rehearsed debates, quirkiness clashing with love of routines, oddly nationalistic cooking, wild variance in art-ontological issues after a bottle of wine, sex both meaningful and empty, and whatever appears when artists, almost bi-polar by definition, are put into a house and a town to figure out their private and public selves.

Poem 

Could giving up be an aesthetic
I'm asking this mainly for myself

Man is 10 yrs older than me, bust a gut wearing white, toning it down with blue jeans tho
he and I let this war be

128 kilobytes per second of taming your political beliefs with pop music
why do people complain abt bitrate, it's a chance to hear how things sound like when u and i were high

—I got 1920's leftist thinkers finally i got it
Now that modernism is not a problem anymore in our 
late capitalist late atfernoon, I can crave 
for the singular art work again 
because really we're not we won't be ready 
for the stream of anonymous material just yet
gimme this one song

the referential i'm-still-hip-but-30 jokes i aspire to do versus my desire to echo forever

kill it gurl

a woman sits down on a puffy deck chair next to her current lover (the word doesn't make him justice), 
gets older by 20 years on the sitting
the man really the boy foraging for ad lib basis 
to his phone over-usage 
but she doesn't mind 
she gave up on her way here 
in a proud way tho

if you can heal people with kisses
you'll be needed both in times of this war and that peace 

 

*

A man crosses the water

My brother had confessed he was gay, says Belle and Sebastian to my ear. Their guitars sound like cheap white wine. 

I didn't know businessmen were sporting backpacks in our time.

Two thai women walking outside the cafe I'm sitting in. They're wearing yellow hard hats with a smile before 8am. I start to feel ashamed of my 9€ breakfast. "We can never be friends", I conclude, almost out loud, trying to surpass my guilt with kitschy dourn, my skills for resolution an afterthought really.

Another Belle & Sebastian track: overkill, I opt for Daft Punk instead. 

While going thru the titles this 80's theatre group Forced Entertainment -they're around still, makes them no justice labeling them as 80's- had chosen for their works I notice most of these names are snatched from songs made in the 60's or 70's. 

I imagine myself writing this observation out to Facebook and how I must not do the same mistake when I'm over fifty, fiffffty, & famous playwright. My most acclaimed work titled Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger or My Wandering Days Are Over. 

I'm thinking of Jonty Tiplady reading this. In my mind, I tell him to not fucking like this because this is nothing, this is way too little, we must demand more. Blog poetry reform kind of.

There's no reason to believe that Kanye West is what will remain of these times. At the same time, it's pointless to guess what history will do with us or Kanye.

People like the process of proving that something is true more than they like stuff. 

I'm thinking about Georges Jacotey doing what he does there in the narrow roads of Athens, he's not smiling because it's early and he's stressed. But then a dog enters the picture and he gives out his most kindest smile. 

Art historians, when you take on G.J., consider the dogs in his videos. 

They are the key. Although you shouldn't bother with locks other than the one to your house. 

As artists, artists have no secrets.
 
On a cruise ferry to Tallinn with other people. What we have in common is the conviction on life being unbearable without substance abuse. We're dealing with the limits and we don't know who we're with, sings Peter Cook or some other New Order member straight throuuugh my brain. Accepting new countries to European Union seems like an idea worth celebrating again. 

What I learned from the late Tony Judt was that Europe came in terms with WWII atrocities in the 90's. Tony might've overlooked the influence of Eurodance and pop hits in major key (such as New Order's "Regret").   

I'm safe here in writing. Art is never painful, to me. 

Now Jenna Sutela is in my head, brought to me by Soundcloud and the idea of Berlin accelerated by the hurt and hope of 21st century.

I haven't seen the dark places. My art takes place in the middle ground between pretty interesting and lifeless. 

A man in black carrying a guitar case on his back walks by, all curly hair and jaw dropped from the sight of a bar or a potential performance venue. He looks like Trent Reznor because no one else at the moment does. You get me closer to god, Trent the real one continues, but I haven't believed him in ages. 

I went to a service last Sunday. It was very touching. I was deeply moved, I think towards becoming a Christian again. 
Some liberal LGBTQ sensitive small church might do it for me. 

The church I attended to was on an island. I couldn't find the chapel at first. There was a young girl (not unlike the Tiqqun type) walking in front of me, wearing/sporting an apron. She was drinking coffee from a white ceramic cup while walking, like she was trying to drown herself. I asked her if the chapel was the small red wooden house in front of us. She said, "Yes, you're on the right path", which was a peculiar well yeah religious way to put it. 
I realized she was also going to the chapel. I guess she works here at this super small summer-fun island owned by the church. I follow her in, but slow down so it doesn't seem like I'm with her. Not that I would mind the proximity/association, but just.I enter the chapel and notice her behind the dais. She's a priest, part-time at least. For a moment, I cry out my love for egalitarian Lutheran Church, where the waitress becomes the priest. 

In my ear: shuffle mode picks Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy. It's 1991. I know that I've been mad in love before, and how it could be with you, will it hurt me baby, will it hurt me, baby? They uttered these lyrics at us after CCCP and Berlin Wall had collapsed, while recession was wiping out ppl all around Europe, and libertarian politicians were busy planning their future in EU I guess.

Two women sat on the chairs I had moved away from my table. I can't get their references re: clothes, but I understand they love each other, even here, on this boat. 

This is a text I wrote for insitu gallery, for their group show »Framework 1: extrasensory bonds«. The text was on display during the exhibition. Additionally, we arranged to a do a card-reading session on Sat 28 June, 2014.

*

On reading

In November 2012, I was reading a book about Eva Hesse. She was saying how making art is so easy for her, while everything else in life is hard. I haven't suffered as she did, but could nevertheless relate with her sentiment. 

Later that year, I was spending New Year with friends, and we were doing some ad hoc fortune-telling for a divorcee. I told everyone about my card-reading habit, something that I've done as long as I can remember, without thinking about it too much. 

And then it dawned to me. Making art is the same as fortune-telling. It's me wanting us to believe. Or you wanting me to be right.

Now that I think about Eva Hesse's dictum again, I find it hard to digest. Sure, it's true on a very superficial way, since art can be whatever, anything goes. But what makes creating art works painstakingly hard is the quest for their raison d'être. 

I don't have any basis for making the things I do. I'm addicted to doing works that are as easy to do as possible. I don't see any reason to build more than is necessary for art to happen. Dedication, longevity, reliability, cohesion; empty words.

The card-reading for me is already very elaborate, with the 52-card deck, formalities, and everything. I also love doing it, for now. It puts us in unexpected situations, where you and I might end up saying or feeling something real. 

I'd like to think relational aesthetics happened because everyone realised you don't need the art objects as an excuse to hang out with other people. We left the works out of the equation and started to call our social life our work(s). 

Lastly, I can't imagine flying to Berlin for reading cards. Video call works perfectly well, or maybe just having someone else doing it. Maybe it's a doomed idea. Maybe I can't out-smart being there. But if you're there, we'll see.

Fact: I almost puked when I finished this text, for no particular reason.

Kimmo Modig
2 June 2014, Finland

image courtesy of insitu e.V.