Frontpage   Tomas Ivan Träskman: Exile on Main Street THERE IS A SCENE IN DIRECTOR AKI KAURISMÄKI'S FILM, Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past), 2002, which despite its modest appearance or precisely because it is so unassuming gives us pause for thought with regard to the brittle nature and temporality of identity. The film's protagonist (who remains nameless during the greater part of the film) is sitting in an old-fashioned restaurant section on a train. The man is situated on the boundary between an old life and a new life. The spectator knows that this new life will be a life among characters who have been banished to the outer regions of existence in the quiet but unrelentingly changing metropolis of Helsinki. The nameless man is also aware of this aspect of his predicament. But unlikely as it seems, these outer regions are actually the most hospitable ones the nameless man encounters. After his death and resurrection, losing his memory and all forms of identification and living like a shadow among the other shadows who inhabit these poverty ridden areas, the man realises that the outcasts he meets are invisible and have no voice. These people lack a voice and are oppressed, since they are always forced to represent themselves in the terms and language of the empowered. It is this silence and the journey towards it that I'm trying to describe and illuminate, at the risk of sounding like a spokesman for a social crusade. Kaurismäki creates this representational gap by letting the actors deliver their lines as if they are doing a reading in rehearsal. The people in the film sound as if they are reading out lines from a scrap of paper that has floated ashore in a bottle. Power speaks from a distance and its voice is surprisingly dislocated. Despite their existence in such curtailed bodies and circumstances, the disenfranchised are by no means mere parrots. Their imitation of the language of the empowered creates both a literal and metaphorical reading which makes this overly intricate language reveal itself. The imitation-like delivery of the lines written for these dispossessed people exposes the insoluble conflict between the voluntary and involuntary, and the impossibility and necessity of communication. The utterance of the language of the empowered is a form of self-mutilation that nearly destroys these already virtually non-existent beings. The more they talk, the less they seem to belong to their referents in the material world. Everything is transparent but also deeply hidden for the characters in the film. But let us return to the nameless man. He is sitting in the restaurant section of the trainS The mileu is the kind that we can recall from memories of old-fashioned restaurant cars with dark walls decorated with drapes that smell of frying oil and cigarette smoke. The scene also contains a lacquered table and sparse lighting in a sea of darkness. Simple habit tells me that the scene is typically Finnish. Common sense tells me that this is unlikely, but not impossible. Should not the quintessentially Finnish be something contemporary as opposed to this restaurant car from the 1950s? Well, now that everything is disintegrating, nothing seems to be tied to a single concept anymore. The waiter comes to the table and places down a dish with sushi which the nameless man gobbles up instantly. An occurrence which is the tip of an iceberg in all its modesty. A modesty which opens up a passage, since the nameless man has now become a part of the world. Please excuse this rather prolonged account and especially the last remark regarding the mental capacities of the intended reader. This remark may be construed as labelling the reader, i.e. you... ­ please excuse my somewhat halting commentary, once again - as one of those sad figures who belong to the masses. The masses who rush head long toward oblivion under the banner of necessity. The masses who build their castles to exclude the world and only experience the world in mediated and palatable forms. I hope you do not think I meant you, for then I have chosen the tone of my piece carelessly. I make no claims with regard to my descriptive talent, though the words I use are both colourful and extravagant. It fills me with an inexplicable rage when I hear people make the following confident statements: The world is complex; We live in a hybrid world; The world is fragmented. All of these phrases betray a foolishness which strives to transform the complex, fragmented and hybrid into something commonplace. The entity which then steps into the light feeds on the masses and has no selfhood as such. The entity is devoid of individuality. The world shows itself as an abundance of consumer items which can be purchased and discarded at will. The hybrid, complex and fragmented has a way of concealing the balance of power. This of course serves the purpose of global capitalism. In the global community, identity is constructed from the floating building blocks of the holy triumvirate consisting of wealth, power and imagery. The hunt for an identity has become the main source of social meaning. This hunt is as pervasive as the technological and economical shift which has taken place recently. The hunt for an identity, whether collective or individual, earned or constructed, takes up more and more of our time. There is so much to relate, so many shifts between identities that it never occurs to anyone to stop the proceedings and wonder whether we exist at all, and for whom. But who could utter such dissent in a global community which silences all forms of marginality. Whose voice is actually calling from the void that should not even exist? When the nameless, voiceless, moneyless, rootless and homeless call out from the void, all the implicated West can do is mutter excuses which in their nervousness and concentration sound like the works of fiction they are: "The liberal democratic project is not fully realised.. blah, blah, blah SIt is currently under construction and developmentS" The West continues as if nothing has happened, since it is busy searching for something which it claims it has already found. But there are a number of enclaves in Western society that throw a spanner in the works. Marketing executives would call these gaps segments if it was not so abundantly clear that they lack the very thing the markets crave, namely capital. Neither have the gaps been replaced by emptiness, at least not for the time being. People in the Western urban centres are not only more beautiful but are even rumoured to have more even temperaments, a better work ethic and more pleasing personalities. Fitter and happier in other words. The West has discovered that a personality is a liability, so it has replaced it with a shiny blankness. To be in a state of transition has become a universal condition. We are witnessing a global liberation of the personality! In these enclaves everything is quiet and still or in the terms of the centre under construction. All the gaps which lie on the outskirts of existence such as the poverty ridden neighbourhoods and scenes of race riots, breadlines and refugee centres form a make-shift Saturn ring around the centre. But no telescope is pointing at these enclaves. The whole of humanity and its achievements is intent on focusing on the centre. The silence or Saturn rings recall the violence which constantly tries to erase the memory of immigrants from the social matrix of industrialised countries. The immigrant is similar to Kaurismäki's outcasts who are in the presence of an entity which they do not understand or perceive but which nonetheless has the power to destroy them. But danger has its own attractions, which Edgar Allan Poe himself identified as perversion. The fact is that we all have a tendency to throw ourselves into the abyss at opportune moments. Precisely because it is irrational. At some point our identities seem like mouse traps where far too many mice have to share the same bait. The bait usually turns out to be nothing, as the works of Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen and Colonel so eloquently point out. The stronger an identity becomes, the more restrictive it becomes with less room to expand and renew itself, and throw itself up to further interpretation and transformation. Identity turns into a beacon which is over-determined and static. In Colonel's works, the Danish become hyper Danish which is something they were never even in the first place. In a similar fashion to Kaurismäki's restaurant cars they are civilised versions of the Flying Dutchman's phantom vessels. These apparitions salute the past in a way that only the truly modern could ever do. Aware that only tourists hunt for a personality, we willingly throw ourselves into the abyss. What is to become of us? Is our fate that of an Icaros, Daidalos or a bunch of Flying DutchmenS We live in an age where identity is no longer bound to a particular place, since it is more like a fluid entity which floats over our planet with no fixed position. This omnipresent community or global village is the source of a ubiquity and constant presence which throws up an endless stream of stimuli, but also a profoundalienation. We are aliens unto ourselves. Even monstrous characters. We are the ones who have become hybrid creatures and not the world. Urban individuals forever caught in traffic; birdmen forever striving to fly, something which has always been our dream. At the same time as we circle and flap our wings we are also seeking an escape from this untethered state. Living in the dream did not make the contours of the dream any sharper, since now we float among a myriad of identities playing among themselves. The deepest and most personal part of us ­ that which used to be called a "soul" and even before that a "spirit", then a "self" and later on an "identity" ­ has been banished from our midst. The terrible loneliness which grips the birdman is there because of our lack of dreams, despite living in a dream. Dreams, utopias and fantasies were, despite their often horrific consequences, something we could share with the rest of humanity. This constant lack of anything urgent and demanding is like a strong narcotic in reverse, since all that remains is a hallucinatory blandness. What is left when we abolish utopian desire and thought and enter the realm of normality? Answer: stillness and drab normality. A silence which is attained by entering a state of dreamlessness. But can the Nordic societies afford this silence? Tomas Ivan Träskman is an independent writer and curator based in Helsinki. Träskman also works as a presenter on an arts programme for the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Stine Høholt: Clockwise - New Nordic Contemporary Art: Einleitung [DE] Clockwise - New Nordic Contemporary Art - Introduction [EN] Clockwise - Ny nordisk samtidskunst - Introduktion [DAN] Tomas Ivan Träskman: Exile on Main Street [DE] Exile on Main Street [EN] Exile on Main Street [SVE] Malene Vest Hansen: Nordic Horizontalism: Politisierte Positionen zum Alltag [DE] Nordic Horizontalism: Politicized Positions on Everyday Life [EN] Horisontalt nordisk: politiserede hverdagspositioner [DAN] A CATALOGUE has been published on Clockwise exhibition. To order contact NIFCA assistant@nifca.org

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