Kimmo Sarje:
Kimmo Koskela,
a Versatile Figure of media Art
As a media artist and photographer, Kimmo Koskela is both an accomplished professional and a flexible experimenter. Sociability and readiness to cooperate are his strengths, though sometimes his weakness as well. For he likes to help friends and colleagues to the point that he suddenly realizes that he is engaged in far too many projects, especially of the non-profit kind. While kindness of this nature tends to be economically fateful, it may also be an opportunity to do things that might never be experienced if one did not go ahead and blithely immerse oneself in things.
Every now and again Koskela finds himself in the post of managing director of a large art production company, or more precisely production community. It’s a job that he doesn’t really seek; on the contrary it will only alienate him from what he really wants to do – his own art. But relaxed informality is also an integral part of Koskela’s creativity. It is his way of keeping balance among the tensions of chaos and the cosmos.
Our collaboration and friendship dates back from the early 1990s, when Hannu Eerikäinen and I curated the First Triennial of Finnish Art for display in Helsinki and St. Petersburg. Koskela participated in the exhibition with Puhuva maalaus (Talking painting), an interactive video painting created with the dancer Rea Pihlasviita. On show at Kunsthalle Helsinki was a large gilt frame on which the movements and poses of Pihlasviita in the artist’s studio were projected according to the requests of viewers. The requests were passed on with microphones and telephone lines and the dancer could also comment on her viewers. It was the first telematic experiment ever performed in Finland and also a favourite among visitors to the triennial.
On our way somewhere in a car while transporting material for the triennial, I indirectly suggested two collaborative projects to Koskela. “Of course!” was his reply, although financing was limited to our empty pockets at the time. I told him about a miniature opera entitled Nostalgia for Avant-Garde, for which I had written a fragmentary libretto based on a text by Kazimir Malevich. The musician and actor Juha Haanperä had composed the music and performed it at the opening of my exhibition of the same name in 1989. Before long, the opera was being filmed in the inspiring interior of the Lenin Museum in Tampere. Subsequently our miniature opera of seven and a half minutes, which we directed together, was presented at various events, and has also been the basis for a couple of our video installations. Koskela’s collection of antique monitors and audio equipment has also facilitated impressive technohistorical displays. The art critic Pessi Rautio described our installation as a “total avant-garde experience” in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on 4 December 1999.
The concept of “living works of art” was the basis for my other proposal that was realized almost immediately. I told Koskela about some old Finnish writers, philosophers and artists whom I knew, and how their faces reflected wisdom and experience, and how ideas and values had taken flesh in their personas. They were a rarely used resource of our intellectual and artistic heritage. I suggested that we should launch a series of monologues, for which we would invite “living works of art” to speak of their worldview and work. Koskela constructed a studio stage of the most unassuming character in which the speaker’s face was in focus against a blue background, which could easily be replicated in different situations.
Before long, the artist Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo (born 1900) was in Koskela’s studio in Helsinki’s Punavuori reminiscing about his amazing life as an agitprop artist in the former Soviet Union during its early decades. “Aha! This is familiar to me. It’s a bit like Odessa, when I assisted Sergei Eisenstein when he was filming Battleship Potemkin, and especially the famous scene on the steps.” Chatting in more or less that manner, Ahola-Valo placed himself before the camera.
On a winter’s day, the half-blind philosopher Sven Krohn, like the Ossian of fable, recalled, fragile but with clarity, his philosophical sources of inspiration. The composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, prepared for the task meticulously and spoke to the camera in a relaxed manner. Each raised eyebrow, furrowing of the brow or the slightest change in tone was part of a careful and intellectually joyous tale and choreography. His monologue was completed in a single take, and I assume that not an inch of it was edited out. The author Anne Friend did not want to come to the studio, but this did not stop Koskela from staging similar conditions in her home. Wonderful wisdom, warmth and femininity radiated from this 90-year-old researcher and prose writer.
Curator Maaretta Jaukkuri was fascinated by our Monologues of this Century project and invited us to participate in the opening exhibition of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in 1998. The Swedish art critic Ingela Lind regarded the work to be the most touching of the whole exhibition on visual grounds alone (Dagens Nyheter, 13 June 1998). At present there are some thirty taped monologues, which have been presented in various combinations at exhibitions and events. The collections of Kiasma and the Pori Art Museum contain approximately half of them. And even now this project is still in progress with varying degrees of activity.
A demanding electronic stage montage such as the revolutionary Opal D performance and cooperation with dancers and choreographers are the mainstream of Koskela’s art along with his ambitious documentary work. I am happy and grateful to my namesake for also having, alongside his many other projects, the curiosity and time for our joint conceptual and cultural-historical projects.
Kimmo Sarje
Ph.D, artist
Arno Minkkinen:
Kimmo Koskela,
Peter Pan To The Resque
Our lives as artists advance in a manner not unlike screenplays shifting from one plot point to the next. The peaks are sporadic and the valleys plethoric. In the hot summer of 1982 – no longer tethered to the support system of academic teaching and working outside the formalist dogma of the time – my career hit an impasse that threatened to turn a decade of creative activity into a one-act play.
We were living in a brown house in Andover, Massachusetts at the time and I was back writing advertising copy about computers, sparkling wine, and ice cream cones. A four-year professorship
at MIT and a visiting artist stint in Philadelphia had by then been reduced to single lines on the dwindling resume. Enter Plot Point I: Lucien Clergue in France invites me to the big screen at Arles; Kimmo Koskela comes to live with us and paints our house yellow.
Kimmo was the type of guy who would walk straight into a lake with his clothes on so he could get a picture of everyone on the shore.
His penchant for thinking outside the box, or circle, or shoreline, is now legend, the signature of his genius as an artist. It was the same with the house. Utilizing a system of self-made scaffolds, he circumnavigated the two-story structure like Peter Pan wielding a paintbrush instead of a sword, single-handedly transforming our home into an ad for Sherwin-Williams Paints.
The house, of course, was not the art object, but simply a metaphor – the time had come for me to renew my commitment to photography and the creative life. What I saw in Kimmo, as both my student at Iisalmen Kamera workshop the year before and later in the work he was doing to stretch the boundaries of photography in the mid-eighties, pointed to what all artists need, but don’t realize they crave: the example of youth, the intrepidness of the mind and heart that willingly engages the seemingly impossible – just for the dare, just for the hope, and maybe just because the fun mixed in is too fucking irresistible. And later, in the late eighties and early nineties when Kimmo began making films, the artistic ingenuity within him – that pixie dust of yellow paint – elevated of his work to new levels of magical inventiveness. It was also the time we began working on Still Not There, the film he directed for Finnish television that anchored our abiding friendship and collaborative spirit for years to come.
I would think that Matti Koskela, father/artist extraordinaire, finds in the work of his three sons an inspiring resource of youthful resolve and audacious discovery. They, in turn, surely look to his example for setting their course on a lifetime devotion to the arts.
Over the years I have pulled up to the old house on Lowell Street and noticed when it has been neglected. It’s then that I imagine Kimmo up on his ladder, fighting the heat in his swimming trunks, bucket of yellow paint by his side, waving his brush like a sword in the air.
The role of the artist is to renew our lives, but also, in turn, to listen internally to the song of the child within us all. Or, as I like to remind my students, how Brancusi puts it: “Unless we see with the eyes of a child, we will make no art.”
Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Fosters Pond, 10.08.08
Curriculum Vitae
Kimmo Koskela
artist, director, photographer, cinematographer, producer
Born in Kajaani 2.3.1960
FILM AND VIDEO PROJECTS
1994-2008 MONOLOGUES, 26 x 30min documentary series on Finnish individual intellectuals
Cinematography, editing and producing. Directing (in collaboration with Kimmo Sarje), Work in progress
2008 MINKKINEN PHOTOGRAPHY, 9min galleryloop film
Directing, cinematography and producing. Shown in Gallery Barry Friedman, New York
2007 A SONG FOR THE LIGHT, 45min music film with the vocal ensemble RAJATON
Cinematography (Director Varpu Kuusela) , Broadcast in YLE TV1, Finland
2005 BLIND MOMENT, 27min dance film
Directing, cinematography and producing. Choreography Harri Kuorelahti
Co-production with YLE, Finland, represented YLE at the Golden Praque 2005 competition
2005 KALIKI, 15min dance film
Cinematography and producing. (Director Teemu Mäki)
2004 SAHARA, 28min dancefilm
Directing, cinematography and producing. Choreography Alpo Aaltokoski
Co-production with YLE, Finland
2004 FAIRY, 27min dance film
Directing, cinematography and producing. Choreography Jyrki Karttunen
Co-production with YLE, Finland
2004 TRESHOLDERS, 5 x 25min documentary series on Finnish new media culture
Directing, cinematography. Producing in collaboration with Minna Tarkka
Co-production with m-cult, centre for new media culture and YLE Teema, Finland
2003 OPAL-D, 30min dance film
Directing, cinematography and producing. Choreography Arja Raatikainen
Co-production with YLE, Finland
1999 WATER STORIES, 45min, creative documentary
Producing, Editing (Director Harri Larjosto)
Co-production with YLE TV1, Finland
1997 ASPIRATION FOR AVANT GARDE, 8min, video tape
Cinematography, editing and producing. Directing (in collaboration with Kimmo Sarje)
1997 RETRIBUTION TO EARTH, 25min short film
Commissioned by The Year of the Dance in Finland 1997
Cinematography. Editing and directing (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
Broadcast in Yle, FST (Swedish television in Finland)
1996 PEEKABOO I.C.U., 15min, fictive documentary
Cinematography, editing and producing. Directing (in collaboration with Ronny Winter)
Broadcast in YLE, FST
1996 STILL NOT THERE, 52min, documentary on the life and work of Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Cinematography, scripting, directing and producing
Co-production with YLE, Finland and Gernot Steinweg, Germany
Broadcast in YLE TV1, Finland
Emmy Award nominee for Finland, 1996
Prize of Honour at the Art Film Triennial in Kalmar, Sweden 1997
The Silver Key award at the sixth international Art Film Festival in Bratislava, Slovak Republic 1998
1995 ORGASTIC ORANGE, 25min, telecommunication short film
Cinematography. Scripting, directing, editing and producing (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
Co-production Gernot Steinweg/KANAL 4 TV, Germany and YLE TV2 and YLE International Co-Productions, Finland
Broadcast in Germany, KANAL 4 and Finland YLE TV 2 , 1995
Special prize by the organizers at the Oberhausen short film festival, Germany 1995
Prix du cinema de demain at the 5th Mondial de la video in Brussels, Belgium 1995
Nominee for the Best Performance Special Award at the Banff Festival, Canada, 1996
1994 6 PERFORMANCE CLIPS, 6 x 3 min, videotapes for FST, Swedish Television in Finland
Cinematography. Scripting, directing, editing and producing (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
Broadcast in YLE TV2, Finland 1994
1992 PINK NOISE, 29 min, dance film, part of the European Video Dance Exhange Project
Cinematography and producing. Scripting, editing and directing (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
Co-production with Gernot Steinweg, Germany
Broadcast in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Croatia 1993
Grand Prix at The 5th AV biennial in Lahti, Finland 1992
1992 MEIN KAMPF IN MEDIA, 19 min
videotape performance reconstruction utilizing video and TV-media,
Cinematography, editing and producing. -Director R. Pihlasviita
Broadcast by KANAL 4, Germany, 1992 and YLE TV1 Finland, 1993
Grand Prix at The 5th AV biennial in Lahti, Finland 1992
1991 DINNER WITH ALEXANDRE, 3 min, short film
Cinematography. Editing and realisation (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita).
Broadcast in KANAL 4, Germany, 1992
1991 PATHOLOGICAL INVENTIONS, 10 min, videotape
Cinematography and producing. Scripting, editing and directing (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
Broadcast in KANAL 4, Germany, 1991
1990 UGHJAPAM, 25min, videotape for the National Museum Conference, Finland.
Cinematography, scripting, directing and producing
1990 I´M A SPRING, 15min, videotape, directing Pekka Kantonen
Cinematography, editing and producing. -Broadcast in YLE TV 1, Finland
1990 VIDEO XII-I, 5x20 min, dance videotape photographed in France
Cinematography and producing. Scripting, editing and directing (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
1989 THE SON OF PLATON, 35min, videotape,
Cinematography, editing and producing. (Director Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Maria Ruotsala)
MEDIA ART AND INSTALLATIONS
1999 ASPIRATION FOR AVANT GARDE, 2x videotape, 15 BW monitors, 1 colormonitor
Cinematography, editing and producing. Directing (in collaboration with Kimmo Sarje)
Galleria Kari Kenetti 1999, Pori Art museum 2003
1998 MONOLOGUES, installation, ten monitors, interactive installation
Cinematography, editing and producing. Directing (in collaboration with Kimmo Sarje)
Opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasma in Helsinki, Finland 1998
Installation, six monitors, Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland 2003
1994 TALKING PAINTING, telematic interactive installation
Concept. Realisation (in collaboration Rea Pihlasviita)
1st triennial of Finnish Contemporary Art, Arthall Helsinki, Finland 1994
ISEA 94, International Symposium on Electronic Arts, 1994, ISDN Global, Helsinki 1995
1992 INTERACTIVE SKI JUMP, Finnish Pavillon, The world EXPO, Sevilla, Spain
Concept, realisation and producing
1989 STRATUM, 15min, video / multivision
Scripting and directing (in collaboration with Marikki Hakola)
Opening of the Cultural Center in Espoo, Finland
1987 SNAKE, 6min, multivision, nine projectors / audiovisual performance
Concept and realisation. Directing (in collaboration with Marikki Hakola)
1986 INSECT, videotape installation, non stop
Concept and realisation
1985 SILENCE, 6min, multivision, four projectors
Concept and realisation
1984 CLEAN CANVAS, 20min, multivision commissioned by The Helsinki Art Museum
Scripting and directing (in collaboration with Saila Puranen)
1983 ABSTRACTIONS, multivision, eight projectors
Concept and realisation
LIVE PERFORMANCES
2000 OPAL-D, 50min, dance, media art performance
Media art realisation, producing. (Choreography Arja Raatikainen)
Co-production with Information centre for dance and Nomadi productions
Performances: Premier 18.2.2000: Bagnolet Festival, Stoa, Finland
Posthof, Linz, Austria 2001
Louhi Hall, Espoo, Finland 2002
Victoria Theatre, Singapore Arts Festival, Singapore 2002
Trafo House of the Contemporary Arts, Budapest, Hungary 2002
Nordic Scene, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium 2002
Erholungshaus, Leverkusen, Germany 2003
Full Moon festival, Pyhäjärvi, Finland 2003
1996 CYBER CUBE, 30 min, live media performance in a cube
Cinematography. Editing and realisation (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
Live interactive videophone connection to the Medienkunsttage in Mainz, Germany
Premier at the Kuopio Art Museum 1996
1995 RED 3.0, 50min, stage media performance
Realisation (in collaboration with R.Pihlasviita)
Premiere at the Helsinki Festival, Helsinki City Theatre 1995
1993 RED, 55min, dance-media performance
Concept, realisation and directing (in collaboration with Rea Pihlasviita)
Premier in February 1993 in Theatre des Amandiers,Paris
Performances in: Kuopio Dance and Music Festival, Finland 1993 / The opening of the Theater Ac., light and sound dep.,
Tampere Finland 1993 / Euro Szene Leipzig Festival, Germany 1993
1991 MEIN KAMPF, 45 min, multivision, 12 projectors, audiovisual dance performance
Photography, programming. Director R. Pihlasviita
Performances in Porvoo and Helsinki in Finland and in France, Institute Finlandais, Paris 1993
1991 PATHOLOGICAL INVENTIONS, 55 min, dance and media performance.
Concept, realisation and directing (in collaboration Rea Pihlasviita)
Performances in: Premier in Old Student House, Helsinki 1991
Dancir Visuals Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark 1991
Finnice, mois de la photographie, Nice, France 1991
International Video Festival, Aarhus, Denmark 1991
Theatre des Amandiers, Place a la dance contemporaine a Paris festival, France1992
150 years of Photography, Finland 1992
1990 4 bis, 40 min, audiovisual dance performance, performed in AV- biennial, Lahti, Finland 1990.
Concept and realisation and directing (in collaboration R. Pihlasviita)
Premier: Lahden AV-biennaali, 1990
1990 UNA PALLA DI FERRO, 20 min, media and dance performance ordered by the National Art Museum conference
Concept and realisation and directing (in collaboration R. Pihlasviita)
Performed in Lahti Art Museum, Lahti, Finland 1990
1990 CIRCU, 50 min, multimedia dance performance
Consept and realisation and directing (in collaboration R. Pihlasviita).
Performed in Lahti, Kuopio and Helsinki, Finland 1990
1989 ROPE, 9 min, videotape, performance
Concept and realisation
Performed in Billnäs art exhibition, Finland 1989
1988 MOTHER KILLER, 50min, video for a theatre performance
Written by Outi Nyytäjä directed by Seppo Wahlgren
Cinematography, editing and producing
Performances in The Little Theater, Lahti, Finland
Mikkeli theater days, Mikkeli, Finland 1989
SOLO PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS
1994 GALLERY JANKOWSKY, Kajaani, Finland
1991 LOLA GASSIN GALLERY, Nice, France
1990 STAFFAS ART GALLERY, Porvoo, Finland
1990 NYKYAIKA PHOTO GALLERY, Tampere, Helsinki, Finland
1987 PECSI ART GALLERY, Pécs, Hungary
1986 FOTOGRAM PHOTO GALLERY, Jyväskylä, Finland
1986 BRONDA ART GALLERY, Helsinki, Finland
1985,-88 HARJUKATU 40 Art Gallery, Lahti, Finland
1985 WB PHOTO GALLERY, Kuopio, Finland
MAIN GROUP SHOWS
2008 4xKOSKELA, Lahti Art Museum, Lahti, Finland
2008 MINKKINEN PHOTOGRAPHY, Gallery Barry Friedman, New York
2003 ASPIRATION FOR AVANT GARDE, with Kimmo Sarje, Pori Art Museum
1999 ASPIRATION FOR AVANT GARDE, with Kimmo Sarje, Gallery Kennetti
1998 THIS SIDE OF THE OCEAN, Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art
1994 ISEA, International Symposium of Electronic Arts, Helsinki, Finland
1994 FIRST TRIENNIAL OF FINNISH ART, Arthall, Helsinki, Finland
1993-95 NORDIC LIGHT, photography exhibition touring world wide
1991 FINNICE, mois de la photographie, Nice, France
1991 TITANIC, Art Gallery, Turku, Helsinki
1990 16 PHOTOGRAPHERS, Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland
1989 BILLNÄS ART EXHIBITION by Muu ry, Billnäs, Finland
1988 KODAK EUROPEAN AWARD, Arles, France
1987 INTERNATIONAL POSTER BIENNIAL, Lahti Art Museum, Lahti, Finland
1986 FINNISH PHOTOGRAPHERS, Düsseldorf, Germany
1986 WHERE, Finnish Photography 1942-86, Arthall, Helsinki, Finland
1985 YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHY, Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland
1985 7 YOUNG ARTISTS, Lahti Art Museum, Lahti, Finland
1984 BY THE RIVER, Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland
1983 YOUNG FINNISH PHOTOGRAPHY, Iisalmi, Finland
WORKS IN MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS
Alvar Aalto Museum, Jyväskylä, Finland
Aine Art Museum, Kemi, Finland
Helsinki City Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland
Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland
The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland
AWARDS
1998 " Best multimedia in Finland " competition, 1st price for CD-rom " Blob Job ". Cinematographer
1998 The Silver Key award at the 6th international Art Film Festival in Bratislava, Slovak Republic for " Still Not There " Director
1997 Prize of Honour at the Art Film Triennial in Kalmar, Sweden for " Still Not There ". Director
1997 Don Huonot, " Rock video of the year ". Cinematographer
1996 Apocalyptica, " The unforgiven ", " Music video of the year ". Cinematographer
1995 Annual Prize for Personal Achievement in the Arts, Regional Council of the Helsinki Area, Finland
1995 Prix du cinema de demain at the 5th Mondial de la video in Brussels, Belgium for " Orgastic Orange ". Director
1995 Special prize by the organizers at the Oberhausen short film festival for " Orgastic Orange ", Germany. Director
1992 Grand Prix at The 5th AV biennial in Lahti, Finland for " Pink Noise " and " Mein Kampf in Media ". Director
1986 Lion d´or prize for Arno Minkkinen exhibition Pori/Paris poster at the Rencontres d´Arles. Graphic Designer
1983 State Award of Finland for Photography
©Kimmo Koskela, from videoinstallation, Bullfinch, 2008
Kimmo Koskela, from the film, Still Not There, 1996
©Kimmo Koskela, Aquas Red, color photograph 108x162 cm, 2010
©Kimmo Koskela, Aquas Topaz, color photograph 108x162 cm, 2010
©Kimmo Koskela, Aquas Green, color photograph 108x162 cm, 2010
©Kimmo Koskela, Hair, color photograph 66x100 cm, 2010
©Kimmo Koskela, Hands Water, color photograph 66x100 cm, 2010
