TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

maanantai, maaliskuu 01, 2004

8:14 AM
Posted by jodi rose

"had we but world enough, and time..."

My head is spinning today - trying to work out how I can possibly get to all the fabulous Finnish bridges I want to in the two weeks I'm there. Included in that time is a weekend in Stockholm, a week doing the Locative media workshop, and 2nd weekend for Pixealache festival. Can't leave any earlier as the ABC Studio booking for that week is crucial in getting some work done on the sample CD, which I really want to have ready in some form at the festival and exhibitions.

Wishlist includes the Porvoon Jalankulkusilta in Porvoo (which is reasonably achievable as only an hour from helsinki on the bus), Heureka Silta in Vaanta - the cables look like gorgeous wings, almost closed over the bridge, also seems fairly close in fact right near the airport, then the Lumberjack's Candle Bridge in Rovaniemi up near the arctic circle. Apparently a landmark of the town, close to Santa Claus' village and either 12 hours by train or a short flight which is only affordable if one stays for at least 3 days - and being time poor, as well as cash poor, both these options aren't looking great. But it's such a fantastic location and I've been wanting to get up there since last time I was in Finland, 2002.
This website has photos of bridges in Finland. http://www.algonet.se/~pwh/finland1.htm

The ultimate Scandinavian bridge experience is the Utsjoki Saame Bridge, between Utsjoki Finland and Saame, Norway - it's almost off the map, right up the top of the land mass and the northernmost cabled bridge in the world. That one needs at least a week to get to, being accessible only by bus from Rovaniemi or Ivalo. Maybe it will have to wait until the extended tour of Finland. "The silver colour symbolizes the salmon in the river Tenojoki. The anchor box of cables on the upper end of the pylons resembles a salmon tail. Ice cones designed to decrease the load of ice floes were planned for the lower end of the bridge piers. The deck spans at the Norwegian end of the bridge were determined by the size of the largest ice floes. The total length of the bridge is 316.5 metres. There are rest areas around the pylons on the bridge deck designed for the viewing of salmon fishing."
Obsession, it can drive you mad - one of the radio producers muttered as he wandered past my desk. Indeed, closer to the edge of sanity today than I have been in a long time. The process of detaching from everyday life is well underway, starting to have that floating feeling more often, not quite anchored to any known structure. The lovely Lea from Radio Eye reminded me about Indira's net (see 'concept' page) and that's the state I'm in - pulsing points of light stretching across space and linking up in a vast network of bridge cables.
Now might be a good time to share a few lines of Hart Crane's poem to Brooklyn Bridge:

"Through the bound cable strands, the arching path
Upward, veering with light, the flight of strings,
Taut miles of shuttling moonlight syncopate
The whispered rush, telepathy of wires....
Sybilline voices flicker, waveringly stream
As though a god were issue of the strings..."

I love that. Funnily enough found it long after I'd dreamed up this project, with the voice of god in the cables.
Just for the record I'm not religious in any way, shape or form - being brought up by an anarchist socialist mother, but the search for meaning, something more than the ordinary is what brings a sparkle to life for me. I could never be one of those 'young british artists' engaged with the everyday - I want transcendence, I want passion and spirit and magic - and I want it NOW!!!

Saw David Bowie on Friday night, had a few magic moments, he was the most relaxed performer I've ever seen, just hanging out having fun, chatting to the audience as though we were old friends, and giving good rock star in his poses and gesturing. It was a blast hearing some of the old songs, and pick from the new CD were 'I'm afraid of Americans', and 'Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole' - I loved the Jonathon Richman version years ago.

Enough ranting for now. Hello and welcome to all my new friends and visitors

Full program now available on www.pixelache.ac

Did I mention singing bridges is the main even in Stockholm on the Friday night?
At the Sauna Office for Contemporary Art, which does lots of cool stuff:

"Sauna is an interdisciplinary office for contemporary art on Bastugatan 1,
Slussen, in central Stockholm. People with experience from art, journalism
and architecture run Sauna on an ideal basis. The office is small, only 21
m2, and this is the foundation for the continuous project we're currently
running called "The Extended Space". The space functions as a workspace,
meeting place and exhibition space - a place where private life meets public
life.

Sauna offers artists and other active within the cultural sphere, in and
outside of Sweden, the possibility of an altered and expanded exhibition
space. We also want to contribute to a process where a broader audience get
more acquainted with art forms that are not distanced from life itself;
current developments in society, as well as the most vital questions of the
individual and the collective.

So far we have developed a range of different projects of which the
following is just a small selection:
* We began our activities during autumn 2002 by showing video works outside
of the art institutional context in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Johanna Billing,
Jonas Dahlberg, Annika Eriksson, Katarina L?fstr?m, Gunilla Klingberg and
Cecilia Lundqvist were the Swedish artists who's video works could be seen
by a Mongolian audience - including homeless children or women at the prison
in the outskirts of the city.
* The Norwegian artist Lars Traegde showed "L'Orangerie", a project
consisting of a mobile orangery integrated into Saunas office space, a soil
less garden, a system of roots that may travel the world to wherever you may
be. The orangery demands neither daylight nor soil and is run by a technique
that's developed in cooperation with NASA.
* At last year's version of the Stockholm Art Fair Sauna were invited by the
Swedish art fanzine Mars. Sauna decided to create a room - an extended space
- for the fanzine and its editor, Paul Steen, as well as the visitors of the
Stockholm Art Fair.