A Bullet into Another Reality

The video works by Salla Tykkä are short scenes with strong emotions under the surface presented by actors. Thriller, now on display at Kontti, is part two in a trilogy exploring the development of a young girl.

What made you create Thriller?

Thriller is about a girl in her early teens or her state of mind. It describes transition, and I think I had such a period, I wanted to depict some of that. Thriller is related to some of the sorrows I used to have as a child – problems in perceiving the world. I wanted to present that as this kind of story without a story and also wanted to bring in the animal world. Hence the sheep. I have experience of children’s cruelty towards animals, as they feel they are beyond codes of ethics. Yet children do know that they are causing pain and what they do is wrong. But as they know they cannot be punished, they think they have the right to do it. These were some of the ideas I was aware of, but the work involves a lot of subconscious elements and a lot of stuff that came along when we did the storyboard with Samuli Saasta-moinen, who shot the film, and I have chosen certain angles for achieving certain atmospheres. He is a good cameraman, wonderfully sensitive, and I think this is enormously significant for my works.

What is the world and mental reality of Thriller’s teenager like?

It’s not an urban setting, it’s a strange world for the girl. The time of year in the film is kind of mid-season, dirty autumn and everything is dilapidated. This depicts people in the early 1980s, people who are unable to control nature. And it seems that what the parents, the man and woman, do is so lethargic that they can never control either their own deeds or their environment. To me the house and the natural surroundings represent wildness. Thriller describes the state of grown-ups. The character of the teenage girl in her upstairs room is separate from all dirt and dilapidation.

So Thriller sees childhood or youth as a golden age?

I don’t know about the golden age. The work contains both realities and the huge differences between them. Through the position of the girl’s room and its relationship with the surrounding reality I have maybe wanted to emphasise separation, although we are dealing with parallel realities, which fail to meet. Everything outside the house is somehow cooled down.

What do emotions mean to you as instruments for making art?

Emotions are where the whole process begins, a resource in a way. I feel – here we go again, feel! – that sometimes emotions are everything. When I want to share the feelings, I have to create works of art. But of course this involves other things as well, selection and intellectual, conscious activity, not just burning emotions. I find emotions a direct medium for creating an impact that is very close to me. If I wish to make an imprint on someone, that is; usually emotions are connected with memories – this is how it works for me at least.

How carefully do you plan the issues or emotions your work might spark?

Thriller evolved in a vague feeling of terror, not terror as in a horror film, but terror of alienation, being suddenly a stranger in yourself or your own environment. I hope this point of departure is still present in the final work.

Can you tell us something about your scriptwriting method, about how you create narratives and atmospheres without lines?

Well, it is quite a process. In Thriller I mostly tied them to the locations. To me they are visions and apparitions, acts constructed around a couple of images. After that I think of the elements, the places where the story, the moment or the atmosphere is created. Then the actors, their characters, then the usual stuff such as routes. I see my works as playing with dolls in a way. This may sound demeaning, but I see them as characters in a large space. I can’t see them in a studio. One of my starting points was an image of the girl running along the road. I had an idea of the girl fondling herself upstairs and her parents being these unconscious types downstairs. These were the images on which the somewhat lax plot is constructed.

Music is an important part in creating atmospheres and carrying the narration in your videos, taking the place of lines. What is your relationship to Michael Jackson’s Thriller?

I could dedicate this work to Michael Jackson. The title derives from the song and my Thriller is set in the early 1980s in a vague way. Music was very important to me at that age, the Thriller album in particular. Michael Jackson represents androgyny, which is why he was a suitable idol for a girl who did not want to be a grown woman yet but wanted her idol to also have a feminine side. In addition, the music combined erotic features with anti-erotic features related to a scary supernatural strength. Somehow, the album brought together some basic themes. Of course, I was only later able to see why it was so good, why it made an impression and became so important.

You are into long-distance running and extreme sports. Do you see a connection between your hobbies and the physical scenes in your works?

No doubt about it, I think the body is what keeps us in physical reality all the time. To me it is an instrument of expression. Even the actors’ smallest gestures carry great importance in my works. The theme of running is present in many of my works. But this is not about sports, it is more about physicality and corporeality. In Thriller the running girl, the movement and the act of running, represent a transition not only between places but also a transition inside the girl.

Of course, my life is a kind of a mirror. Running has been important to me in a number of ways. Our ability to use our bodies for other things than mere sitting is kind of primitive and liberating. I don’t know if other people share this, but I have this dream of running as far as I can and never getting tired. It’s emotion as well!

Leevi Haapala
Acting Curator, Kiasma