Artist´s Statament
My installation is about the memory. The memory of landscape, the memory of society, the memory of yours and mine.
Kakola is one of the most notorius prison in modern time Finland and it can be regarded as a cultural heritage of finnish society from 1850-. It was a place you heard stories about through all these years. I moved to Turku in the beginning of the 80´s as a teenager and I already knew many of the stories. Turku is build on several hills. This hill, Kakolanmäki, was the only hill I never visited until last year when planning a city project and the actual prison had been moved elsewhere in Turku in 2007. Now the area is free to walk, and even in daytime, the walls and bricks really talk to you. I would say, it is impossible to walk there without thinking the memory.
Nobody knows what will happen to this monument in the future, but it stays a reflection of our society that built them. The society that believes in punihsment and revenge. The granite monument is waiting silently what will be it´s destiny - at the same time being the destiny of so many in the past. I wanted to see how the scene would react for an eye when putting some of it´s prisoners back to the scene as album pages that you can find in the local museum. Starting from there, I created "a picture book" by photographing the prisoners and there stories to be seen in the original landscape, the hill, in many time bigger size.
The installation at Kakolanmäki made me think that unlike these people mostly never got another chance, the album pages of them should be given it somewhere else. My father used to say: "society never forgets", meaning whatever you do in good or in bad, you leave traces. But is it really so? Do we never forgive? Many of these prisoners were horrified criminals over hundred years ago. Thinking what they probably had done, would it be easy to you to forgive them? Would it be to me?
The installation at Pori is this work´s second appearance.The book pops up now in the old and mysterious interior of Generaattori. The prisoners in the pages stay as prisoners, but one cannot reject a thought: Would this world be a better place with forgiveness or mercy instead of revenge? The answer remains open.
My installation is about the memory. The memory of landscape, the memory of society, the memory of yours and mine.
Kakola is one of the most notorius prison in modern time Finland and it can be regarded as a cultural heritage of finnish society from 1850-. It was a place you heard stories about through all these years. I moved to Turku in the beginning of the 80´s as a teenager and I already knew many of the stories. Turku is build on several hills. This hill, Kakolanmäki, was the only hill I never visited until last year when planning a city project and the actual prison had been moved elsewhere in Turku in 2007. Now the area is free to walk, and even in daytime, the walls and bricks really talk to you. I would say, it is impossible to walk there without thinking the memory.
Nobody knows what will happen to this monument in the future, but it stays a reflection of our society that built them. The society that believes in punihsment and revenge. The granite monument is waiting silently what will be it´s destiny - at the same time being the destiny of so many in the past. I wanted to see how the scene would react for an eye when putting some of it´s prisoners back to the scene as album pages that you can find in the local museum. Starting from there, I created "a picture book" by photographing the prisoners and there stories to be seen in the original landscape, the hill, in many time bigger size.
The installation at Kakolanmäki made me think that unlike these people mostly never got another chance, the album pages of them should be given it somewhere else. My father used to say: "society never forgets", meaning whatever you do in good or in bad, you leave traces. But is it really so? Do we never forgive? Many of these prisoners were horrified criminals over hundred years ago. Thinking what they probably had done, would it be easy to you to forgive them? Would it be to me?
The installation at Pori is this work´s second appearance.The book pops up now in the old and mysterious interior of Generaattori. The prisoners in the pages stay as prisoners, but one cannot reject a thought: Would this world be a better place with forgiveness or mercy instead of revenge? The answer remains open.