Point of view: Jyrki Siukonen: Pilot Glasses, 1999

Although contemporary art is said to speak to all our senses, it is sight which still dominates. The Museum of Contemporary Art offers visual stimuli and its name Kiasma refers quite fittingly to the intersection of the optic nerves. However, to see what Kiasma has to offer, one might need glasses. Or binoculars. Or cotton gloves of the type Iiris Keitel used when she studied Jyrki Siukonen’s work Pilot Glasses, in Kiasma’s collection.

A ladder to the sky

Large, white-rimmed glasses are mounted on the wall of Kiasma’s Studio K. The glasses have wooden frames and reflecting glass surfaces, mirrors and lenses. This is Jyrki Siukonen’s work Pilot Glasses, which is now being displayed as part of Siukonen’s exhibition Dream of Flying. In addition to the glasses, the exhibition consists of an enormous blue globe filled with helium, from which is suspended a bucket full of sunflower seeds, and a relief-like silver bird on the wall.

For years Siukonen has thought about flying and images of flying. Central starting points of Siukonen’s thinking include dreams of overcoming gravity and of returning to the feeling experienced at birth of being "carried by the stork". "Ascension to heaven, either by ladder or without any aids, is an integral part of spiritual imagery. My own work is connected – without a specific meaning – to this imagery," Siukonen says.

Iiris in the eye of the pilot

Iiris Keitel, who has suffered from cataracts since birth, regularly visits Kiasma exhibitions with her friends. The group might include both sighted and visually impaired friends. Together they discuss what they see and tell the partially sighted about the works. Sometimes they bring a whole arsenal of aids including different kinds of binoculars and glasses. "I myself cannot distinguish details, I live in a world of colours and shapes," Keitel explains. "But the different shades and tones of colours I can distinguish quite well."

Iiris Keitel says she prefers to visit the exhibitions on cloudy days, as the glaring sunlight makes seeing more difficult. She examines the Pilot Glasses from a few metres away: "It is difficult to distinguish the light frames against a light wall." The natural light falling from the windows of Studio K is just barely enough to cast shadows around the glasses. "I can, however, see that there are glasses on the wall."

The Pilot Glasses immediately raise the question of the position of the viewer. At first Keitel feels she is watching the pilot from the outside. As she moves closer, she says she can distinguish the pilot’s eyes behind the glasses. Even closer, the viewpoint suddenly changes: "Now I can see what the pilot sees!"

The images reflected in the mirrors and lenses fascinate Iiris Keitel for a long time. Viewed from a certain angle, the blue globe multiplies into three globes of varying sizes and her own reflection can be seen manifold. Then, from a low angle, the globe looks like the pilot’s eye. The perception of the globe as a blue "iris" and Iiris’ own mirror image is especially interesting. The work of art suddenly receives very personal meanings. "I have undergone an eye operation on both my irises."

Which image is true?

The functioning of the eye and the optic and physiological aspects of visual perception fascinate Jyrki Siukonen. He tells us that as he was working on the Pilot Glasses he thought about the "truth values" of different reflections. The image from the lenses in the middle of the frames is the most in focus, but in it the people walking in the gallery and the cars driving along Mannerheimintie appear upside down. The clearest image is the most distorted. At the same time, an impression of flying trams and people is created and the whole surrounding world seems to free itself from the chains of gravity for a short while. "Being upside down is central to flying."

But on the other hand, our brain also turns an image upside down. The image we see is optically turned upside down, but our brain adapts the visual perception so that the image is understood the right way up. Siukonen tells of an experiment in which a researcher wore glasses which turned everything upside down. Gradually the brain adapted to the situation and "turned" the world back the way it should be. The researcher was even able to ride a bicycle wearing the distorting glasses.

Jyrki Siukonen also speaks about "dream lenses". Like optical lenses, dreams create different illusory states. Dreams present us with a world that resembles the waking world, but in dreams we can effortlessly free ourselves from the Earth’s gravitation and fly. According to Siukonen, flying and dreams of flying are closely connected with seeing: "If I can’t see, how do I know I’m flying?" Siukonen says he also has pondered what kind of dreams of flying blind people have.

The flying Mannerheim

Iiris Keitel says the Pilot Glasses help to examine different ways of seeing in a concrete way. The bright mirror image visualises the way most people see. The mirror covered by a grey film shows the world through Iiris Keitel’s eyes.

The largest and brightest mirror image allows Keitel to see the Mannerheim equestrian statue outside Studio K’s window quite well, but in the smaller and darker mirror image only the pedestal of the statue is visible. "It looks as if Mannerheim and the horse have taken wing," Keitel says. "In the clearer mirror I can check that they’re still there!"

Dreams of flying

In the end Keitel approaches the glasses wearing white cotton gloves. She feels the frames and the lenses. As her hands meet the bulges in the middle of the lenses, she fishes her own reading glasses from her bag. Keitel’s glasses with their thick lenses of +16 and +14 dioptres strikingly resemble Siukonen’s work of art. "Maybe the pilot was partially sighted," Keitel says.

Iiris Keitel does not consider her visual impairment a particularly limiting factor. Her work as cultural coordinator in the Cultural Service of the Visually Impaired, moving about town, visiting art exhibitions and painting as a hobby are self-evident, everyday things to her. When Iiris Keitel as a child was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she briskly replied: "I can be anything I want, except maybe I won’t be a pilot." Nevertheless she says from time to time she has dreams of flying and furthermore she also believes that completely blind people can dream of flying too. "You can also feel flying in your body."

Minna Raitmaa

Sources: Interviews with Iiris Keitel and Jyrki Siukonen on 13 October 2000.