Points of View - Kiasma 5 years

Kiasma magazine asked a couple of multidisciplinary figures in visual arts to define their own standpoints on Kiasma.

HOW DID PEOPLE COPE BEFORE?

I found the idea of Kiasma as the citizens’ living room really attractive from day one. Yet it was dangerous, too. Something rather slippery, a true challenge in an environment where there is precious little tradition and experience of casual socialising and constructive, critical communality. In a sense, the idea of a living room is a mission impossible. It is an ideal: something you pursue in spite of the fact you will never reach it. Actively and adequately.

The fundamental philosophy of Kiasma seems to have been a tremendous success under the circumstances. This is evident on the basis of the brutal admission statistics and pricing policy, the organic, self-supporting and productive vivacity of the Ground Floor events, and the standard and keenness of the exhibitions. Kiasma has an open nature and attitude. It invites you in, to be present – in more ways than one. The settings and opportunities are provided, but not enforced in a top-to-bottom manner. Kiasma has retained the freedom of choice and participation. A deed that is as magnificent as it is rare, by a public institution. It is also a deed, which is only underlined by the strong opposition faced by the building before its completion.

Kiasma is neither a threat nor a provocation. It is an opportunity, using its flexible structure to create and modify the scene and agenda of visual culture: what happens, where and when. Kiasma is not unlike a fruitful white lie (but not a whale). A lie that lures us inside, making us feel nice and cosy. A situation, which through exhibition policies makes the visitor face and contemplate central, common themes such as politicality, cultural encounters and sexuality – the multiplicity of our entire existence and everyday lives, its richness and exuberance. Issues that are always so difficult and complicated that they warrant a tender approach. An attitude and reality that I think Kiasma still manifests and radiates, particularly in comparison with other international centres of contemporary art.

Mika Hannula
Researcher, Headmaster of the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki

KIASMA OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

My feelings about the five-year anniversary celebration are mixed. Was it only five years ago? By now, the museum is so established that it is hard to reconstruct life before Kiasma. And what is amazing, all this was done by a Museum, a museum of contemporary art to speak out loud!

For the concept of a museum – and the museums are not entirely innocent themselves of this fact – is still deplorably often associated with standstill institutions which are not expected to influence their community, let alone take a stand or address burning issues. Contemporary art is as often as not mere “contemporary art”, something that is impossible to understand or something your kids could have made up.

But Kiasma’s starting point was to approach people, calling itself the citizens’ living room. Its highly central location provided great prerequisites for this.

Certainly contemporary art does not attract all people – we don’t all go to ice hockey matches either. Yet in Finland contemporary art does raise discussion and influences attitudes in that way. While the average museumgoer is a middle-aged, educated woman, in Kiasma you see all sorts of people. There are men and women, girls and boys. Young people make dates at the museum, and the toilets are probably the most popular free public conveniences in town. Although toilet paper has been a surprisingly high expense, it is worth the investment. People might drop in at the exhibitions as well, you never know.

Kiasma sees itself as a service provider, with everyone as the possible customer. The challenges and achievements of museum pedagogy have accordingly been significant. The most recent project, the museum on wheels touring schools around the country, is equally welcome. Not only does it lend a hand in the urgent need for art education in schools: it may also trigger long-standing improvements. An opportunity to see international art is important simply for being able to examine our own art in an international framework. From a foreign viewpoint Kiasma has been at its best when doing things unlike others, stepping off the beaten tracks in art world vogues.

The fact that in Finland the threshold of an art museum is low does not necessarily entail popular entertainment and cheap tricks. It was hardly self-evident that the exhibition of Kalervo Palsa, an artist who was not a household name and whose imagery reflected his own personal anguish, would become a popular and much discussed event that broke admission records. Well-planned information and a rich auxiliary programme must have been key factors. An important innovation is also extended theme exhibitions based on museum collections, Night Train being a prime example. The era of traditional collection exhibitions should be over in other museums of contemporary art as well. Luckily, the age of single truths is past: viewpoints change according to the context. And there are at least as many viewpoints as there are curators.

I am well aware through my own work of Kiasma’s significance as a showcase of Finnish contemporary art. It is easy to invite international experts when you have the exhibitions and archives to offer in order to provide background information. Kiasma and FRAME can also prepare a tailor-made, original model for presenting Finnish art abroad through joint exhibition and publishing projects.

Of course, a five-year-old is at a sensitive age, far from being “ready”. One might mention, for example, the horrid café chairs: heavy and terrible to sit on. I sometimes miss the noise they used to make when moved (now the legs are provided with mufflers), it was actually quite refreshing. It did prevent you from having a conversation, though, but when you learn to listen to it as a polar bear’s roar, as advised by the Cherokee artist Jimmie Durham, “it begins to sound quite endearing”. Although the significance of Kiasma has been tremendous, I do hope the influence of those café chairs in Finnish living rooms, or in our sacred Finnish Design, will remain small.

Marketta Seppälä
Director of FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange

ART POLICY AND POLITICS

The five-year course of Kiasma has been interesting to follow. As an important institution, Kiasma has contributed to the definition of what is, in my opinion, one of the most tangled skeins of contemporary world of art, namely the abyss that has or is being opened up between Modernism and contemporary art, willingly or unwillingly. More willingly at times: I remember how fiercely the early interviews emphasised the fact that Kiasma was a museum of ‘contemporary’ and not ‘modern’ art. To draw a comparison, Moderna Museet in Stockholm has managed to be both, whatever that may be, irrespective of labels and not making a fuss over the matter. Throughout this time, I have taught art sociology in a number of educational institutions and have frequently used Kiasma as a case example, both as a positive and a negative one. I also have to admit that at times Kiasma’s exhibition policy has proved that the unnecessarily wide abyss can be crossed.

I have never given up my faith in the 1970s ideas about “art belonging to everyone”, but my relationship with Kiasma has been ambivalent in this respect, too. I have interpreted the handsome admission rates as rituals of our increasingly middle-class culture, the meaning of which is in a Bourdieuan sense to show one’s cultural goodwill, a social game, taking part. Of course, this is not something to be belittled either, taking into account the possible positive influences of culture, but I believe that for most visitors a visit to Kiasma is just a visit to Kiasma. Kiasma has, nonetheless, been responsible for providing me with my greatest art experiences during the last few years, which have also been highly significant in terms of culture – I could mention, for example, Olli Lyytikäinen and Kalervo Palsa and collection exhibitions such as Popcorn and Politics and Night Train. Many smaller projects, and those that have taken place outside the museum walls, have also been successful, such as Under the Same Sky: Maaria Wirkkala’s contribution made the project unforgettable for many people living in the Kallio area. But the number of projects has also been exhausting: it is hard to keep track of all the small exhibitions, performances, events and seminars even if that is what you do for a living. I sometimes feel that the ever-accelerating cycles of art would need a decent counterforce, an opportunity to stop for a moment.

When it comes to international art policy, Kiasma has, in my opinion, failed. Instead of showing originality, it has meekly followed the standard offering of international biennials and triennials, the star system of global art markets; the large-scale endeavour ARS 01 also manifested this empty politically correct progressiveness. Another piece of evidence of this emptiness is the fact that the state of Israel maintains a huge cultural institution, the Israel Museum, to build, for example, a “decolonising” exhibition of Yinka Shonibare, while, on the other hand, the state is more engaged in vile neo-colonialism, state-led violence and racism than any other “democracy”. And it is with this institution that Kiasma collaborates in themes of decolonisation and progressiveness. Shonibare’s exhibition is something I will boycott. In this respect the world is still out there, for Kiasma to look for.

Otso Kantokorpi
Editor in Chief of Taide magazine