Tellervo Kalleinen In The Picture
Wanted: a role
”When travelling abroad, I put a notice in the paper: ’Plan a movie scene in your own home and give me a role in it!’ the artist Tellervo Kalleinen says in her project In the Middle of the Movie and goes on with her story.
”I used to dig music when I was younger. At that stage, my band was important for me. We used to live and play together. I started to take photographs of our band because life seemed somehow so absurd. The Academy of Fine Arts accepted me on the basis of those band shots.
breaking the system
As a first year student at the Academy, I felt that a certain worship of individualism prevailed there. I came from a collective background: first we formed a band and then it became a performance group. When I enrolled in the Academy, I had anticipated meeting a creative community to share things with and I was shocked when I realised how isolated people were. I found this to be extremely negative. I, Nina Braun and Mirka Raito decided to form a choir, Voukkoset. Our choir soon evolved into quite an absurd stage show. We started to arrange guided city tours in Helsinki and Hamburg, including tours in openings of art exhibitions. The Voukkoset was an important phase in my life: it strengthened my conviction that being an artist does not mean squeezing oneself into some convention of the art world. The mission of an artist is to create and renew the systems in the art world and this is not possible unless you engage only in activities that feel right, good and natural.
the desire or need for independence?
During my studies in the Academy of Fine Arts I also studied in the Braunschweig Art Academy in Germany. Travelling to Germany was the first signal that I needed to do something on my own. I knew I needed distance from my colleagues, and let’s face it, I was the only member in Voukkoset who had never embarked on anything alone. In Germany, I had an opportunity to mature and also develop myself as an artist in my own right.
a career as an independent agent
I am greatly amused by the fact that my main artwork, which I am supposed to have completed alone, involved the efforts of approximately one hundred people. I will perhaps never create an artwork, which would not involve other people in one way or another. My works are like studies, not in the scientific but in the human sense. They always encompass a mystery to unravel or a challenge to meet which enhances my interest in the process. For example, In the Middle of the Movie could be described as a unique imagination archive and a survey on theme emphases given in Estonia, Russia, Germany, Iceland and USA.
future plans, dreams
It is always difficult to talk about ideas in advance. Dreams are so commonplace. I wish to pursue an artistic career, both alone and in groups in the future, too. I just completed a big project with Oliver Kochta. It would be quite natural to continue the project with him. We would be interested to work with other communities, to find Finnish colonies throughout the world. That would provide a great opportunity to study communities by means of art again: the relationship between individuality and communality.
towards the world
Recently I have spent much more time abroad than in Finland. Screening In the Middle of the Movie at Kiasma is especially important to me because it also deals with the Finnish identity. The film always features this Finnish woman for whom people have written a role, and therefore, it is more important to screen the work in Finland than, for instance, in Rio de Janeiro where it was just shown.
Tellervo Kalleinen
In the Middle of the Movie
5 November–31 January 2005
