Projects 1998

Videoinstallation by Fanni Niemi – Junkola

19 Aug – 6 Sep 1998
Restaurant Mathilde
Helsinki Railway Station

During the Helsinki Festival, NIFCA presented a work by Fanni Niemi-Junkola at Restaurant Mathilde, Central Railway Station. "Untitled -96-97" by Fanni Niemi-Junkola (FIN) is a 4-monitor video installation, which shows a fight between two women in and outside a subway in Helsinki, and the reactions of nassers-by. The work addresses the experience of urban space.


About Fanni Niemi-Junkola's exhibition at Mathilda Restaurant, Central Railway Station, Helsinki (staged as part of the 'Night of the Arts', August 19 September 6)

Fight-Untitled 95-97 is the title of Niemi-Junkola's video installation at Mathilda Restaurant. It portrays a fight between two women in and outside a subway in Helsinki, and the responses of passers-by. One way to talk about this work would be to say that it deals with ambiguous behaviour in a public space. The fights are staged - in the presence of the cameras filming the event - and at the same time real, showing all the signs of a violent physical encounter. The responses of passers-by, whose faces betray curiosity, excitement or indifference, are of a direct nature, but they are mitigated by the awareness that what they're looking at is fiction.

In recent years, much has been said about changes in the way we relate to public space (read: urban space). The American sociologist Richard Sennett has remarked that in many cities of today one finds an increasing amount of "dead space". The communal life that used to be lived outdoors has withdrawn into the interior of private apartments. When people gather in the open air, they no longer do this to engage in a dialogue, says Sennett. Does Niemi-Junkola's work pose this problem? Is it concerned with the sense of isolation people experience in urban space? What does the artist want to tell?

Niemi-Junkola has said that Fight-Untitled 95-97 is about making space. Making space is a physical operation; it is also a metaphor for (the desire of) producing a mental space of one's own. Such an existential interpretation of the work is relevant, if only in view of the physical involvement of the artist, who is one of the women fighting. Niemi-Junkola has said this was a means to control what happens during the fight. But her physical engagement also denotes an artistic attitude, in which existential motifs are central. Niemi-Junkola has made a work which highlights a crucial aspect of life: the necessity to create space for oneself, with and - consequently? - at the cost of others.

The existential motifs which the work brings to the fore are reminiscent of performance art from the 1970s, where bodies entered arenas, engaging in physical tests watched by an audience. In the art of the 1990s, motifs from historical performances have surfaced in work which in a more reflective way explores the facts of life. Niemi-Junkola's video-installation is an example of this tendency. In the works she has made since Fight-Untitled 95-97; Pro-Boxers, Giants and Pauliina (all from 1998), the idea of the arena is further explored through interviews with boxers, who are asked what they feel before entering the ring; through a mythical struggle between two women on an island, and through the depiction of a performance by a nightclub dancer.

The Swiss critic Ulrich Loock has characterised Niemi-Junkola's work by connecting it to the notion of sculpture as a place in Minimal Art: "By intruding into the sculptural paradigm of Minimal Art through the staging of a violent action, Niemi-Junkola is able to turn the creation of a place from a formal to a (gender) specific matter." Loock argues that in Niemi-Junkola s work, places are constructed with a psychological rather than a formal sculptural significance. But her artistic intention can be explained by going back even further into art history, because it reflects a desire not only confined to our day and age - a wish which around 1970 was phrased by the artist David Medalla as follows: "I dream of the day on which I will create sculptures who breath, laugh, cough and walk like shadows among men."

Mark Kremer
Exhibition coordinator, NIFCA

Fight-Untitled 95-97
Camera: Aku Louhimies, Charles Sandison
Performers: Fanni Niemi-Junkola, Pauliina Pulkkinen