My audiovisual projects in the art context are related to the feelings of never belonging to a group. Parts of this thematic also appear in my work, visually, textually or sometimes as an abstract scratch. Ex.: time and predictability; resistance and form of the human body (memory, skin etc); displacement; migration; the exotic etc. In previous works, Finland was used as a symbol of an “unreachable” place, for instance, the imaginary “Human Museum of Helsinki”, part of “Mujuu no Hito” (the one made of light stuff, Japan, 2004).

Now, in Finland… I would not be able to make a work ABOUT Finland, for it, time is too short to avoid doing misinterpretation of a new culture or being superficial. But Finland is one symbol of my recognition of displacement, when back in 1989 in Alaska I had a Fenno-Swedish friend who gave me new words for my own feelings of displacement, probably from my mixed cultural and ethnical origin. So, here I am making a work IN Finland, dealing with feelings of displacement that I assume they exist in every one but with different appearances, sizes etc. …The relation of it with my work? I like to create impossible places for feelings and remembrances that have neither space nor names.

The color white (most of information of light) represents the brightness spread by the new and how an unknown place, with so many new things burns out our perception, when we really want to see things. This video reconstructs a place and a person: white, anonymous, secure, cold, clean, sensual and the same time childish. Some elements appear over and over: white eggs and pearl colored furs, fragile ancestral symbols, which get ruined during the video. In opposition, there are always the white skin, the water and sterile environment. The cleanness suggests certain ritual to waiting for something indefinable. Salt and bones are brutal materializations of the color white.

Marcia Vaitsman, Visual Artist

The main idea behind the musical/sound concept to this installation is the design almost natural of synchronicity between sound and image. This means, more specifically on this case, the choice of not using a natural synchronism. Starting with the video sequences and their heterogeneity, I work with direct sound (constructed or not), adding some original climatic compositions, which superimposed to the natural sounds generate distance and sensorial unification between the visual sequences.

Enrique Bernacchini, Composer & Sound Designer

Marcia Vaitsman is working as an artist-in-residence at HIAP during October-December 2006 within the UNESCO-Aschberg bursary programme. The exhibition has been realized with the kind support of the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) and Galleria Huuto.