Some of the works in ARS 06 are created on site. Two of the artists in the exhibition, Monika Sosnowska of Poland and Susan Philipz of Scotland visited Kiasma in the autumn looking for an appropriate place for their works. One of them makes art out of space, while the other uses sound as her material.
SPACES ON AN EMOTIONAL LEVEL
Monika Sosnowska is a Polish artist who has studied painting for a long time but nowadays concentrates on architecture. She aims to construct spaces that affect the viewer on an emotional level. “Sometimes it’s difficult for me to name my works because I’m not certain if they’re sculptures or architecture or where the architecture begins and where it ends. I don’t want to classify things and say what is art and what is not. In my opinion, the question is more complex than that. Everything interesting is art.”
You moved from painting to building…
I’ve played with scale models ever since I was a child, when I used to build houses for my toys. In Poland, I went to an art high school which mostly trained young people to become skilled craftsmen. They were especially keen on teaching calligraphy, bookbinding and typewriting, although, of course, they also taught basics of traditional art studies, such as drawing and painting still lives, landscapes and models. From high school I moved on to Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, where I studied painting for five years. After that I entered the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, where there were no compulsory subjects and it is there that I stopped painting.
What is the intention behind your work?
I’m interested in creating a mental space, a situation which affects the viewers and creates certain emotions in them. I had an important experience in Amsterdam. I visited the house of a blind couple in which they had created artificial environments, such as a park, street, bar and a room. It was completely dark in the house. You could only sense the space by voices, touch and smells. You got an inkling of what the blind feel, how they perceive reality. It was a great and important experience because in the dark I learned a great deal about space. I learned that we mostly perceive three-dimensional space through sound and not vision, which means that the deaf perceive dimensions rather poorly. I also learned that final understanding of a thing can come about through small fragments. People with eyesight normally think from the ‘general’ image to the details. The blind do it exactly the other way around. By touching a statue they gather fragmented knowledge about it, on the basis of which they construct the final image. I utilise this in my works. The most important thing I learned was that some spaces feel comfortable and some don’t. Even though I couldn’t see anything, the space affected my emotions. In a noisy room resembling a street, I felt really uncomfortable but sitting in the bar without seeing anything I felt comfortable for no apparent reason.
The colours in your works have been inspired by the communist era …
If I lived in Helsinki, I would probably have chosen completely different colours and used a different aesthetic expression. I choose certain colours because they are familiar to me and they represent a certain normalcy. I know that you cannot run from your experiences. During my life, I have collected memories, experienced things and together these form my personality. But I’m really not very interested in roots or history. I’m not creating a narrative. I’m not particularly interested in stories, events, history. My works are not politically or socially engaged but in some ways universal. Museums often like to classify things in this way to make things easier for themselves I hate it because it is not always true and it doesn’t interest me. I’m interested in completely different things.
Do you miss anything about your childhood in Poland?
I think everyone misses something about their past. We always have to give something up.
When I was a child, I travelled a lot with my parents and we moved often. For three years, I lived in Moscow and we travelled in Asia and Eastern Europe. Great changes were happening in Poland at the time but then I also starting to travel elsewhere than the Eastern bloc. I think that people in Poland are nowadays more frustrated than before because they see much of the world and understand that it is not always possible to fulfil their dreams. So in some ways the old situation wasn’t all bad just as the current situation isn’t all good. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything from that time because I wasn’t aware of it. I think that at the moment Poland is an interesting place to live in for me, perhaps not the easiest but very inspiring because I’m inspired by my past, dreams, memories and books that I’ve read … together all these give rise to something.
SOUND TURNS ATTENTION TO SPACE
The meaning of music in public spaces is usually to cover uncomfortable silences but Susanne Philipsz does the exact opposite. She plays her versions of familiar pop songs in the most unexpected contexts. “I’ve worked with museums quite a lot. I enjoy working in open public spaces because the audiences happen upon the art and are not expecting it. I like that. It’s a completely different experience from that of people who come to visit a museum or a gallery where they expect to see art”, says Susanne Philipsz.
You originally specialised in sculpture. When did you start working with sound?
I moved from sculpture to sound when I went to do my MA in Fine Arts in Belfast. To me it seemed like a natural progression because I was interested in the sculptural qualities of sound and began to think about how to define space. At the same time, I also started to get interested in working in public space and became interested in buildings architecturally, like working in stairwells and buildings with interesting acoustics.
Do you record your works yourself?
If it’s a work where I’m using my voice I have to be completely alone. When I’m singing or playing the piano I want to sound like what I sound like when I’m by myself. I’m singing unselfconsciously in my own time. I’ve worked with a technician in a studio but it’s different to sing when the clock is ticking and you only have a fixed amount of time. I prefer to be on my own. The whole point of my work is that I’m trying to evoke the sense of solitude in time passing and so I want to record the silences in between and the pauses and the breaths and things like that. I have chosen particular songs because they have similar themes of longing. They’re the type of songs that you might sing when you’re on your own, melancholy songs about escape and longing.
What is the intention behind your work?
What I’m interested in is making people aware of the space, hiding their own sense of self while making them aware of their environment. I’m interested in entering their everyday life for just a few moments. People might be waiting for the bus, not really concerned about their environment and all of a sudden they hear this voice which draws their attention to the architecture. You are in the company of strangers and when you hear the singing you look around at the people around you and speculate “did you hear that as well?”
Have you ever recorded the responses of your audience?
Yes! Actually, the BBC made a documentary about it. They filmed people’s responses when I did a live performance in a supermarket. I was upstairs in the office and sang through the PA system. People were bewildered, looking around and going “!” It sounded just like someone was singing alone to themselves and somehow accidentally pressed the button. I think that this is not necessarily a comfortable experience for a lot of people. I think most people probably thought they were listening to something quite private. No one burst out laughing but there might have been a nervous giggle. However, a man with a briefcase came up to me and asked “What was that singing? Listening to it was pleasurable experience.”
How do you go about starting a piece?
For instance, when I came to plan my work for Kiasma the architecture was one of the things I would look for. Then I became interested in the fact that right beside it is the Parliament House and now it turns out that ARS 06 is going to take place at the time of the presidential elections. I thought that might be interesting as well. Different things inspire my works. It could be architecture, it could be history.
Helga Lara Thorsteinsdottir
trainee of communications