Wednesday 30 March 2011





gone to the Marsh…
video, 6.12min 2011



A voice over is describing the work of an artist while she is trying to create a topic specific artwork for an exhibition. The topic is endangered wetlands, human versus Nature.

During the process the artist is feeling both artistic and sexual frustration and has difficulties in channeling her work in a satisfying direction.

She keeps referring to Nature and sex. Back and forth. She finds connections that at first glance seem far fetched - natural wetlands, marshlands and female genitalia. Somewhere the myth of the water spirit sneaks in. Topped with Japanese cars and famous paintings.

In the end she finds a closure, where the circle closes and everything seems connected.


In my work I often combine different works, I make connections and use parts of texts that I write on daily basis. I often ponder with the question "what is important" - and this pondering mostly leads to a immense feeling of frustration. And the only way of getting rid of this feeling is allowing myself to act out the feeling. These moments often result in performances and texts.

For the exhibition Slippery Terrain in the Nordic House I have created 2 new pieces, 1 photograph and 1 video.
Both works are connected to each other. Both of them incapsulate a perhaps subtle wish of a better world. As the artist in the video, who does not like giving orders nor finger pointing, I also don't like making conclusions about a place or a topic I do not now well enough.
As an artist I try to figure out what to do or say to reformulate concepts, ideas and beliefs and to become conscious of things.

I do wish that we would all pull ourselves together…

Wednesday 23 March 2011

"when artist meet they talk about money. When bankers meet they talk about art"

springer hit. springer dit. gör det ena och det andra och så mycket som möjligt på en och samma gång. plus kaffe o cigg.

bör tilläggas att jag arbetar med en serie events som alltid börjar med RELAX.

haha. det är så kul. knäppt.

Arbetar i en stor ateljé för tillfället. Önskar att det alltid var så här. Dethär är bara lyx för tillfället. Ett residens stipendium jag har fått av Västra Götalands kulturnämnd. Ett stort tack till dom. Får vara här i 3 månader. Breda ut mig. kladda, måla, rita, spela musik skithögt, spela in video, audio, dansa, vila, laga mat, kissa, supa, flina...you name it. Och det bästa: jag behöver inte städa upp efter mig varje dag. Det är lyx, mina vänner.

Ingen vardagsmat för en fattig konstnär. Fattig men privilegierad, känner jag allt som oftast. Tja, man jobbar ju hårt för nothing egentligen. Men fet lön och ett fett bank konto är inte det som räknas, inte för mig. Det är underbart att visa sitt arbete och få kommentarer, komma in i diskussioner, kanske få någon att tänka om, på nytt, vända på steken. Senn tja, visst skulle det vara angenämt om inte rent sagt satans häftigt om någon skulle köpa ett verk. Låt oss säga ett museum eller en samlare. I bästa fall kunde det innebära att någon någonstans skulle faktiskt tro att den Nina Lassila, henne kommer man att snacka om i framtiden. Följ upp dendär Lassila, hennes verk kommer att bli värdefulla någon dag. Hennes namn kommer att stå i konstböcker för all framtid.

luftslott....


tss.

Men honestly. hade jag velat tjäna storkovan i livet hade jag studerat ekonomi och startat ett företag och säkert fixat det galant. men nu har jag valt en annan valuta...


"when artist meet they talk about money. When bankers meet they talk about art"

Tuesday 15 March 2011

the rose of the water spirit...

working on this site specific thing about wetlands, marshlands what ever it's called. Swamps?

It's quite familiar to me - since my childhood. The paths down to the lake were surrounded by this wet muschy dark green swampy terrain. The path was long and sometimes muddy and slippery. So I should feel comfortable with the exhibition title Slippery Terrain?

I do recall all the plants that were growing there. This troll like small pine tree looking plants, the straws with a cotton little soft white hairy ball on the top (my favourite) and the lower down to the lake as you'd get you'd find the yellow Näckrosor - Waterlilys in english. Interesting name that in swedish. Näck, from Näcken - an ancient spirit of waters - quite an evil one and male, sometimes seen naked playing the violin in a creek or some sort of water - tempting people to come closer and then drown them or something else. In Finland he is believed to live in a castle under the water and he gets to his castle by diving into the bottomless lakes of Finland. Sometimes in the dusk he is seen on dry land...

so the rose of the water spirit...

yes, I'm getting somewhere. That's it - I'm going to find Näcken/Näkki, buy him an icelandic violin or instrument and take him to the Nordic House and play for the people. Good one?

Or perhaps the icelanders have their own water spirit?

see, this is how art is made. By strange connections, google & Wikipedia.





Näck, Nøkk
The Scandinavian näck, näkki, nøkk, nøkken, strömkarl,[5] Grim or Fosse-Grim were male water spirits who played enchanted songs on the violin, luring women and children to drown in lakes or streams. However, not all of these spirits were necessarily malevolent; in fact, many stories exist that indicate at the very least that Fossegrim were entirely harmless to their audience and attracted not only women and children, but men as well with their sweet songs. Stories also exist wherein the Fossegrim agreed to live with a human who had fallen in love with him, but many of these stories ended with the Fossegrim returning to his home, usually a nearby waterfall or brook. Fossegrim are said to grow despondent if they do not have free, regular contact with a water source.
If properly approached, he will teach a musician to play so adeptly "that the trees dance and waterfalls stop at his music."[6]
It is difficult to describe the actual appearance of the nix, as one of his central attributes was thought to be shapeshifting. Perhaps he did not have any true shape. He could show himself as a man playing the violin in brooks and waterfalls (though often imagined as fair and naked today, in actual folklore he was more frequently wearing more or less elegant clothing) but also could appear to be treasure or various floating objects or as an animal—most commonly in the form of a "brook horse" (see below). The modern Scandinavian names are derived from an Old Norse nykr, meaning "river horse." Thus, likely the brook horse preceded the personification of the nix as the "man in the rapids". Fossegrim and derivatives were almost always portrayed as especially beautiful young men, whose clothing (or lack thereof) varied widely from story to story.
The enthralling music of the nix was most dangerous to women and children, especially pregnant women and unbaptised children. He was thought to be most active during Midsummer's Night, on Christmas Eve and on Thursdays. However, these superstitions do not necessarily relate to all the versions listed here, and many if not all of them were developed after the Christianizing of the Northern countries, as were similar stories of faeries and other entities in other areas.
When malicious nix attempted to carry off people, they could be defeated by calling their name; this, in fact, would be the death of them.[7]
If you brought the nix a treat of three drops of blood, a black animal, some brännvin (Scandinavian vodka) or snus (wet snuff) dropped into the water, he would teach you his enchanting form of music.
The nix was also an omen for drowning accidents. He would scream at a particular spot in a lake or river, in a way reminiscent of the loon, and on that spot a fatality would later take place.
In the later Romantic folklore and folklore-inspired stories of the 19th century, the nix sings about his loneliness and his longing for salvation, which he purportedly never shall receive, as he is not "a child of God." In a poem by Swedish poet E. J. Stagnelius, a little boy pities the fate of the nix, and so saves his own life. In the poem, arguably Stagnelius' most famous, the boy says that the Näck will never be a "child of God" which brings "tears to his face" as he "never plays again in the silvery brook."
In Scandinavia, water lilies are called "nix roses" (näckrosor/nøkkeroser). A tale from the forest of Tiveden relates of how the forest had its unique red water lilies through the intervention of the nix:
At the lake of Fagertärn, there was once a poor fisherman who had a beautiful daughter. The small lake gave little fish and the fisherman had difficulties providing for his little family. One day, as the fisherman was fishing in his little dugout of oak, he met the Nix, who offered him great catches of fish on the condition that the fisherman gave him his beautiful daughter the day she was eighteen years old. The desperate fisherman agreed and promised the Nix his daughter. The day the girl was eighteen she went down to the shore to meet the Nix. The Nix gladly asked her to walk down to his watery abode, but the girl took forth a knife and said that he would never have her alive, then stuck the knife into her heart and fell down into the lake, dead. Then, her blood coloured the water lilies red, and from that day the water lilies of some of the lake's forests are red (Karlsson 1970:86).

Tuesday 8 March 2011

Kätzchen

soft kitty
warm kitty
little ball of fur

happy kitty
sleepy kitty
purr purr purr

"Pull yourselves together"

How did I find her...? by random somehow. Hm. Well woke up last night from a weird dream (was eating pizza with my family after a long drive in a restaurant which was packed with embarrassing finnish people, seemed to own lots of strange masks and was proud of them, saw Knut the Berlin polar bear swimming in a pool - he looked a bit like a huge bat - then he came up from the pool and came towards us like a big dog. His fur was very wet, he walked with me holding his head next to my waist. He was really nice. At some point I loudly insisted to be referred to as Frau Lassila.) . So yeah, I was awake for about 3 hours after that, reading about women's lives in different parts of the world in the Guardian, which I must say is an exceptionally good newspaper - the website also. Compared to the Guardian most of the nordic newspapers suck big time. Well, then I found Bobby Baker, ah, perhaps because I saw this title : "Pull yourselves together", and felt immediately that THIS IS MY TITLE...can I use it anyway, perhaps change it a bit?
Furthermore "Bobby" is a funny co-incidence - as I have a photograph of myself making a funny face to Bobby the Gorilla at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin.

BOBBY BAKER




Bobby Baker is a woman and an artist. She lives in London, England. In her career of over 35 years she has, among other things, danced with meringue ladies, made a life-size edible and tasty cake version of her family to be eaten by visitors, opened her kitchen to the public and subsequently many kitchens around the world, driven around the streets of London strapped to the back of a truck screaming at passers-by through a megaphone to “pull yourselves together” and cured thousands of her pea patients with their many ‘unreasonable’ psychological and behavioural problems with her Therapy Empire in How to Live. 

Bobby Baker’s company, Daily Life Ltd, is a charity, regularly funded by Arts Council England, which aims to produce artworks that explore the value in this world of ambiguity, altruism, awareness, arithmetic, agony, accessibility, attention to detail, arduous application…oh and, of course, art – in a (dis)arming, amusing and occasionally alliterative way.

Exceptionally funny, Bobby Baker is a performance artist of rare quality and distinction. 
Daily Telegraph

bobbybakersdailylife.com
looks like we butchered a pig and no-one wanted bacon.

Wednesday 2 March 2011


all yesterday I was reading about small tits (yes I have small tits) and other relating topics ("if women would know what men are like they would not need implants or have to worry" I learnt).
Today it continued - all I could see while going shopping was perfect waists and luscious tits.
I felt stupid. I'm ashamed of myself.

Today thoughts have been passing like tornados, coming and going faster than the speed of light.
2 min ago my bum was sort of ok. 3 min ago life was like Tetris, with a new text idea included.

*****
7min ago I was into filming a dirty clown taking a shower. 12min ago I was reading about female hysteria. Before that it was melancholia. It all got started with me typing in optimism in Google search.
Don't ask me where that came from.


*****

oh, somewhere there between 2 and 3 min, I was coming to the conclusion that 2 yoghurts, a bit of salad and a plate of pasta was perfectly enough of food for a woman my size.


life is truly an adventure.

Tuesday 1 March 2011

an effort to see what's bugging me around the issue of the nude

I have always found "the nude" problematic, in my personal work but quite often also in other work that I have seen. I have some how found it to be an easy method, an easy way to gain attraction. Well, at least when the issue has not been about been about gender, sexuality, erotic issues or so on.

Especially early photography and performance has been the IKEA of the nude…

There are lots of good great exceptions of course.

This essay is about my difficulties and my need to create something around the nude.

Yes, perhaps it's not such a biggie after all.

But there is something naive and disturbing in the use of a nude - in the same way as I can see what I was doing in my very early photographic work. I made beautiful but quite grotesque portraits with food all around them. And in hindsight it is easy to say why I did it: I was obsessed with food and my self image. I had a severe eating disorder for years. And my self image sucked big time. So no, wonder I did those images. It was pure therapy - even if I did not recognize my problem in what I was creating. I thought I was making cool images. Well, they were cool - but nevertheless they were the images made by a sick girl.

So making a nude would have been out of the question for me. A nude perfect body would have driven me to suicide probably…

But now - now I'm a healthy super woman - so why is it still an issue?

So, to provoke myself I throw myself in the saddle of Panasonic 567 and get undressed…in front of my video camera. I decide first to shoot beautiful classy nude stills. But with the quirky idea of using the in between posing material. Tom ake it all a bit funny.

After shooting I look at the footage. I scrutinize myself - as I knew I would do. I do have very small tits, and my belly is bulging in a quite ugly way. My face is only nice in profile shots (knowing this I have tried to avoid looking into the camera). Legs, back & hair is nice, sometimes even fabulous.


Conclusion: I'm a fucking pussy!

I need to go on with this. Perhaps not for arts sake, but for my own sake. As a hobby. As a final procedure. Perhaps I will find out what is bothering me around the nude issue. Perhaps I will find the right words and this all might hopefully even be of some significance to a greater audience. Perhaps it will be even somewhat important. Or what. Is it a gender issue again?

then it follows the red thread of my work.

Bon.