KirsiMarja Metsähuone

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Selected experimental video works and short films
For previewing full-length moving image works please contact the artist.


Love Me
- entirely photo-based experimental video work

Picture

Nonsensical (... or pertinent?) musings on matters of love by
inanimated characters appearing animated emotional beings.


2016. Original format: photographs, audio. 3:33 min



Music: Maripichan Sound-Machine; Marisol Barrios
Mater (Parte 1), Boxset 2002-03, Album 1


Text excerpts: Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872
Chapter 5 - A Wonderful Likeness by Radio Theatre
Group. Narrated by Louisa Thornton



Love Me in screenings:
* The Compiler Screeningns/Whiteframe, Stadtkino Basel
   (December 2016), Basel, Switzerland
* Muu Gallery (December 2016), screening, Helsinki, Finland
* Muu Gala, featuring front-line Finnish video artists, Cultural
   Centre Caisa (October 2016), screening, Helsinki, Finland

FILM EXCERPT

Umbra Umbella - entirely photo-based experimental video work

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  Entirely photo-based experimental short film on a less seen angle, elevated, 
  overhead view of urban life looking down on passers-by on a street.

  Fall as rain. Become heavy enough to plummet under gravity...
  2015. Original format: photographs, audio. 5:30 min
  Music: Maripichan Sound-Machine; Marisol Barrios "All Day, All Night"
 
  FILM EXCERPT

Known Named Identified - experimental short film

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We will always remember. Not anonymous. Not foreign. Not forgotten.

About human dignity and tolerance, the living and the lost, the memories and
the remembrance. Names of the victims perished in mass destruction often
remain undocumented. Tracing and recording names is ongoing; the name
collection becomes part of a collective memory. Name is history, identification,
power, continuum, truth. Name is a representation of one's identity.

In the video voices repeat "name" in over 30 languages such as German,
Greek, English, Polish, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Swedish, Italian. The
repeatedly spoken word "name" similar in most languages becomes mantra-like
chant refering to memory, not forgetting and to all our names, to all the unknown
and known names. Shot in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland where wild flower
meadows unaware of the past cover the ground.

Part of Shoah Film Collection, Germany. Film:  Shoah Film Collection website
Artist's interview on Shoah Film Collection web site.


2014.  Original format: video, photographs, audio.   5:37 min. 

FILM EXCERPT


Ghosts of Gesture - experimental short film

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To repeat the past or depart from it?

Ghosts of Gesture explores illusion of movement in frozen time, gestures, imaginary memories and play of identities.    

In the video I examine a woman's role, gestures and expressions
and perform a dual role of a photographer and a woman being photographed.

The idea behind the video work is based both on the experiences
of women in my family who were unable to fulfill their dreams 100 years ago and on the women's suffrage movement activists who in the beginning of the 20th century campaigned for women's rights
and gender equality.    

The dialog is partly based on the fragments of writings and
speeches by the British suffragets. 
      
2013. Original format: photographs, video, audio. 2:27 min.  
 
FILM EXCERPT


Paranoia - experimental short film

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Where is safe?

A short film about childhood memory in retrospect.  

About emotional learning and storing of memory.

Is the incident that is still so vividly in mind true
or dreamed - is the fear that is still so easily recalled 
real or imaginary?    




2013.   Original format:  photo, video, audio.   1:18 min. 
In English. Voice: Anton Metsähuone


VIEW FILM


Transition Process - partly photo-based experimental short film

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Are we hiding in an eternal transition process where freedom of speech and expression, equality and peaceful co-existence are only a dream?

A visual poem - a moving image and audio collage - of a photographer and the absurd world we live in.

Over time politicians and others have repeatedly used the phrase 'transition process' to describe a challenging moment after which things will change, life will be better. But as it is we seem to face these periods one after another without anything becoming any different.

2012. Original format: photographs, video, audio. 5:00 min. 
Music by A. Khaskin.

Transition Process in screenings and video/film festivals:
 * Nordic Film Fest, Casa del Cinema (2015), Rome, Italy
 * MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st century Arts (2014),
   the Open Museum Open City exhibition, Rome Italy
 * Image Contre Nature Festival, International festival of experimental
    video – 13th edition (2013), Marseille, France
 * Central Illinois Feminist Film Festival (2013), Illinois, USA
 * 16th International Traverse Vidéo Festival (2013), Toulouse France
 * Cinethesia Feminist Film Festival, Varsity Theater (2013), Illinois, USA
 * Sardinia Film Festival, Official International Selection (2013), Italy
 * Madatac04 Video Festival, Competitive Official International Section 
    (2012), Madrid, Spain

EXCERPT


RoaM - experimental photo-based video work

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The video translates the unfinished and anonymous archelogy of urban imagery into a non-narrative stream of consciousness.

The camera, the nomadic eye, wanders around non-stop while recording visual clues of stories that are left open or only seem like stories, human presence or memories of presence, layered urban landscapes, decollaged images, freedom of expression in the form of encoded messages, symbols and signs, chaos and calm.

RoaM documents the fragmented dialog born out of the interaction between people, culture and the urban environment. Created entirely with photographs shot in Rome over a period of several years.

2011/2012. Original: photographs. 8:27 min. No dialog.
Music by Arthur Cravan

RoaM 2 in the making

EXCERPT
RoaM in screenings and video/film festivals:
 * Nordic Film Fest, Casa del Cinema/Circolo Scandinavo (2015), Rome, Italy
 * Urbanarium, The Espaco Cultural Sérgio Porto & the Entre Project (2013), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
 * VIDEOBARDO IV International Videopoetry Festival "for the Earth" (2012), Buenos Aires, Argentina
 * TR1-Kunsthalle, Photographic Centre Nykyaika 30th Anniversary Exhibition (2012), Tampere, Finland
 * Sardinia Film Festival, Official International Selection (2012), Sardinia, Italy
 * BBC LiveLive Project (in collaboration with London Olympics 2012), Great Britain
 * Madatac 03 Video Art Festival, Competitive Official International Section (2011), Madrid, Spain
 * Helsinki Short Film Festival, Experimental film category (2011), Helsinki, Finland
 * Spazi Aperti, Accademia di Romania, Aesthetics Experience (2011), Rome, Italy

Orange Morning Paper River - experimental 16 mm short film

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Irrational & dream-like film is a montage of strange images and stream of consciousness.

The original 16 mm film footage has been altered, literally destroyed, by scratching, drawing, painting and taping grass, yarn, spices, letters, text and images on the film. The reworked footage has been reshot and edited digitally.

The audio is an abstract layered montage of voice fragments and sounds of scraping, whizzing, buzzing and rattling recorded during playback of the reworked thick film reel on a 16 mm editing table.

2011. Original format: 16 mm film.  6:35 min. Color and b&w

* CINESONIKA International Film and Video Festival (2012),
   Vancouver, Canada
* Gallery Å, solo show (2012), Turku, Finland

FILM EXCERPTS


Thy Eternal Summer - video work

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Summer as a metaphor for self-portrait, identity and search of happiness.

“The viewing experience feels like being in the middle of Scandinavian Midsummer nature producing an almost tactile memory without actually having been there”

2009.   7:44 min.  Music by dj ZenTao.
In English. Available also with Finnish subtitles.

* Madatac International Video Art Festival, CentroCentro Palacio
  Cibeles (2012), Madrid, Spain
* Spazi Aperti, Accademia di Romania (2011), Rome, Italy
* Supermarket /Muu Gallery (2010), Stockholm, Sweden
* Rantakasarmi Gallery, Helsinki Artists' Association's exhibition 
   (2009), Helsinki, Finland
* Cable Gallery, solo show (2009), Helsinki, Finland

VIDEO EXCERPT


Core Memory
- experimental super 8 mm film

Picture


Photograph as a memory of an experience. As an authentication of the past. As a way of reaching to the past.

A film utilizing personal history and experimental techniques examines a concept that an experience is only remembered through a photograph - without an image there exists no memory of the event.

Created with super 8 mm film that includes photographs, animation and hand drawing on film emulsion.









2009. Original format: Super 8 mm film. Transferred to video. Long version 5:41 min. Short version 3:34 min. In English. Availabe also with Finnish subtitles.

VIEW 'CORE MEMORY' (short version)


Brainstorm - experimental photo-based animation

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Photo animation with nine self-portrait photographs.





2009. Original format: photographs. 2:59 min.
Music by Shawn Nourse - Earthworm Ensemble



You Can't Eat That!
- short film

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Documentary style but absurd portrait of a girl who isn't supposed to eat strawberries.
She wants to eat the strawberriesof course but she cannot. Not even though they are already in her mouth because they will be taken out. During the whole time she has to stay serious: both before the strawberries are put in her mouth and also afterwards. But the plan does not work. Instead she keeps bursting into contagious laughter.

On the more metaphorical level the film can be interpreted as portraying a sensible, charming, natural and slightly rebellious reaction against an absurd situation.

Girl: Viena Metsähuone. Voice: KirsiMarja Metsähuone
2007/2009.  3:15 min. In Finnish, subtitled in English.

*  Cable Gallery, solo show (2009), Helsinki, Finland
*  113th Annual Exhibition of Finnish Artists, Kuntsi Museum of
   Modern Art (2008), Vaasa, Finland
*  Laterna Magica Gallery (2008), Helsinki, Finland
*  Short & Documentary Film Festival Kettupäivät (2007), Helsinki, 
    Finland

VIEW 'YOU CAN'T EAT THAT'


Work Makes Me _____ ?
- experimental short film

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A short film about workplace harassment

Children are bullied at school. Grown-ups at work.
Everyone has experienced bullying. As a victim, as an offender, as a bystander.

In Finland every 5th employee has been a target of verbal abuse, bullying and harassment at work according to the Statistics Finland 2003 Quality of Work Life Survey. Anyone can end up being harassed at work. It is a human rights issue. It is incapacitating, inhuman, invisible - and illegal. In reality there rarely is help available for the victim. Even though life crumbles and job is lost. All the while the bully keeps his/her job without sanctions. The society also pays a high price for the harassment. The costs in Finland were circa 85 000 €/day, 31 million €/year in 2004. The amount has not gone down since - quite the contrary.

2006. 10 min. In English.

FILM EXCERPT
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