love like you've never been hurt.

greetings from berlin! in addition to exercise there are few things in life that lift your serotonin levels like a trip in the company of great women.

ready to take off.

morning view.

i am not sure what in berlin strikes me as full of life. in itself the concrete gloominess is brightened only  by street art and tivoli lights marking restaurants and stores this time of the year. the magnificent promenades are not lined by lush trees as they are from spring till fall, but somehow there is a buzz.

prenzlauer berg.

friedrichshain.

kreutzberg.

the mecca of cheap breakfasts and beer (that is better value than water) is something of a haven for a foodie on a budget like myself. moreover, since the weather did not exactly favor long strolls around the city – it was piercingly cold and rather humid even when the rain was not turning into sleet – we took advantage of our cosy apartment in friedrichshain, the little bars in the neighborhood and a myriad of ethic restaurants.

elfida brunch buffet.

stella at the perennial favorite, elfida.

pie at the intimes.

margaritas as my favorite from last visit, santa maria.

little sweetness from downstairs: the nuss ring.

the neighborhood was familiar to the rest of the pack, but offered plenty of new for me. my last trip centered around kreutzberg and it was gratifying to dive into the nooks of new blocks and streets.

the most important part of traveling are without a doubt your companions. our group dynamic consisted of plenty of impromptu craziness, but also the power of life experience, sensitivity and intelligence that was not necessarily the academic kind. there was room to breath and to air out the most embarrassing and humiliating details without feeling crushed by a condescending attitude whether it was past hurts and issues of trust, the pain of missing our kids, the uncertainties of creativity or whether the store downstairs was too far for another round of drinks.

the travel records of my lovely companions can be checked out (in finnish only, i'm afraid, but with better pics than mine, naturally) at stella's, dorit's two and jenni's blogs.

love you all.

i returned home at 6.30 am from dancing and went looking for some love in the room next door. they took a picture. gee thanks.

on relativity.

my mentor had a poignant suggestion to people who insisted that everything is relative: "just try jumping off a ten storey building and see how relative things are." naturally, his little remark was as beyond the point as the original suggestion was hasty, but there was a brief reminder of some things being universal.

talking about universals gives certain people the chills – and reassures some – but the mere acceptance of the existence of universal laws explains very little of the world. the thing is, once we start making sense of what happens around us, we start putting facts together and the glue we choose has an immense effect of what kinds of conundrums come about.

to put it simply, our explanatory stories – or narratives as the good old hermeneutic inquirer would say – are construed by us with whatever material we have at our disposal and the results are selective and biased in every beautiful sense of the words.

i have a paradoxical but loving relationship to moments when little details force me to reassess the storyline i put together. a challenge to my factoids which are built for self-defence or out of pure fatigue can illuminate where i picked the wrong jar of adhesive and give me a reason to reconstruct what i consider real.

lately i have found myself pondering the nature of being busy. my most common greetings start with oughts and shoulds, and i find myself explaining my absence from everywhere including the present moment.

or, to be honest, i feel like the artist faye mullen's model who chose bricks as her point of reference:

photo from series i am an artist and i weigh by faye mullen 2010.

whatever i give feels like a brick is lifted off my shoulders but provides the exact pleasure to the recipient that can be expected after being a given a solid block of clay.

to be honest, it ain't a great feeling.

thus, i have concentrated on doing things that give me pleasure. slowly finding time to browse the tubes of glue at my disposal and rearranging the bricks and bringing forward other elements that build up who i am and what my reality consist in.

i started with my nearest and dearest and am slowly moving towards friends and this blog. i refuse to let my narrative get stuck with beginnings like should've and ought, and will soon be distributing marshmallows and fountains of down.

the ultimate goal? i checked out that my weight equals about 9 spider monkeys and i think transforming my busyness from laying bricks into little monkey-gone-crazy is more like the narrative i want to believe in. i'm still not quite at handing out bananas, but trust me, i'll get there. i will still be more busy than i have ever been in my entire life, but it's all about finding the right relativity, right?

expiration

sharing life with animals comes so natural to many of us. our anthropomorphism fools us into thinking they share our complex emotional conundrums or that they love us with unconditional devotion. nevertheless, we often miss the more obvious similarities.

aging shows in our companios in a similar way to us but in acceleration. the signs are the same: greying fur and feathers, spots, warts, sagging skin, and so forth. cataract, hearing loss, aching joints and diminishing muscles. it's all there. terminal.

photographer isa leshko brings us a series of animals in their dusk. elderly and fragile, it is impossible to ignore them as beings with life experience. even when we're aware that they probably are not nearly as preoccupied with their demise and the collection of experiences they've gathered so far as we might be looking at them.

Rooster, Age Unknown

Marino, Bronze Turkey, Age 5

Handsome One, Thoroughbred Horse, Age 33

Violet, Potbellied Pig, Age 12 

Phyllis, Southdown Sheep, Age 13

all photos above © isa leshko

my dear little critter is showing so many signs of aging that every single time she takes more than half a minute (which is a long time, mind you) before waking up, i prepare myself for the worst.

she cannot see anything because of cataract, her hearing is almost gone and at her last vet's checkup her muscle mass had vaporized. she still has her smell and her appetite – and boy does she like to eat – and she loves going outside for walks and runs. everything's good so far, then.

but her grey snout reminds me that there is a day when a companion will be gone.

Jorma-Irmeli, Italian Greyhound, Age almost 13

studs of circumstance.

stretching the limits of what it means to be a photographer, the project of cosmin bumbuț brings forward intimate moments of life into which a male photographer could not otherwise have access.

he gave cameras to the inmates at tîrgșor women's penitentiary in romania and received a collection of content from life within forced borders. he then created a video (i cannot embed, but urge you to go and watch it) with the following description:

girlboys are women who, during prison detention, assume a male identity. they have “wives” who tidy up, do the laundry and wash the dishes. girlboys protect them, fulfill their emotional need and offer them sexual pleasure. they have men nicknames, cut their hair short and wear masculine clothes, clench their fists and demand respect. some of them have children at home and they do this only while they are imprisoned. other, continue their relationships after they are released. most of them are old offenders. almost all have suffered sexual abuse.

the selected set of photographs shot by the women themselves portray a world where elaborate gender systems flourish, but is in no way a stereotypical portrayal of prison life turning women into lesbian predators and victims. the longing for everyday aesthetics – frilly sheets, flowers –, privacy and close relationships is so evident, alive and yet constantly at peril.

from degetoaice 2011 © cosmin bumbuț

soft darkness.

last week i briefly visited the opening of ida pimenoff's exhibition at photographic gallery hippolyte.

each work is from the series and her first monograph, a shadow at the edge of every moment of the day, the title of which so readily and accurately embraces what you see. soft darkness, shadows filled with warmth.

the defense – and proof – that the edges of life as we tend to conceive it are not harsh or cold.

untitled, 2011.

the door, 2010.

two windows, 2010.

hope in pink.

the imagery of japanese born new yorker fumi nagasaka so completely captures the visual world that i have grown into from my teen years that i sometimes find the photos and videos almost too familiar.

this is not to say that i consider her images alike the reality i live in, but rather that they embody everything i find beautiful and aesthetically pleasing in the world. her romantic colors suggest a softness that surrounds her consideration for awkward beings. beauty is not about symmetry, or when it is, there's a suggestion of frailty and impermanence.

a contributor at dazed, she created a short film with model du jour, andrej pejic, about her experience in japan when the earthquake hit and how people kept expecting good news in the midst of all the pain and suffering. and then the cherry blossom season begun...

 

flip through her website and blog for photos and film.

exquisite.

transient seclusion.

creeping loneliness in the middle of a bustling city. the need to reach out to someone familiar. to smile about the little things that can fit into 160 characters – or usually less.

knowing that in this bubble i just created for myself is a longing for a little beep and a response "i am there with you." no vocalization required, no need to involve others around.

how genius technology can be.

these photos of random people on the street texting by joseph o. holmes highlight how the simple act of typing a short message can create a small space of intimacy. although terms like 'intimacy' often build up expectations, the unpretentiousness of holmes' pictures reveals that expressions of proximity rarely need dramatic measures.

be the message itself mundane, hostile or an expression of love, the result is a connecting capsule between people muddling everything else around.

ethereal.

my companion of over 12 years is a delicate being who leaves no-one cold. she resembles almost everything else than a dog and arouses feelings of sensitivity and nurturing in almost everyone she meets.

when she encounters a talented photographer the results are otherworldly.

all photos by our office assistant, maarit.

ars in town.

ars 11 has landed in this springy city of ours. i attended a preview last night, and cannot urge you more passionately to go.

the theme of this year's grand exhibition is africa in contemporary art. there are over 300 works of various media from 30 artists whose take on themes of global significance is impressive to say the least.

my favorites were numerous: among them were baudouin mouanda's photos of congolese dandies about whom i browsed a book lately. locally known as sapeurs, these men take style and color to a level of its own.

also, the photos and hanging installation (pictured below) of patrizia guerresi maïmouna were stunning.

sospesa (2008)

entering the room where nandipha mntambo's torsos hung was filled with the intoxicating fragrance of cowhide. although the installation (below) was impressive, there is no way to capture and share the scent that was essential to the piece.

emabutfo (2009)

needless to say, i was thrilled to walk into a room that was filled with something i instantly recognized: the photographs of pieter hugo about which i talked about here last fall.

all five floors are full of interesting and beautiful works – go visit!

dead drops.

it must have been about a decade ago when i was hanging out at one of my favorite bars in turku and got an idea: there were cigar boxes from all over the world decorating the shelves and i had been opening and peeking into them ever since i started frequenting the place. that night i decided to pick a small post-it from my calendar and scribbled a brief message on it saying

hello, like-minded being! please, leave me a note.

and dropped it inside one of the boxes.

i had started a dead drop without knowing the term. it comes from good old espionage jargon: a secret place to exchange information between agents without the need to meet in person.

for years i collected little messages from my box; i think there were a few dozen in total. several were from people who knew me and had seen me peeking into my precious wooden chest in the hopes of finding a new note, but many were from strangers who shared my curious nature.

most were brief, perhaps merely a "hello!", but some could be described as short letters. there was a tingling sensation each time i opened my little letterbox and every single addition felt like a revolution.

my note is still there as far as i know.

photo from deaddrops.com

a digital alternative to my little experiment is the project of aram bartholl. he has left empty usb-drives around the urban landscape for people to use for file-sharing.

his manifesto describes a publicly accessible, passively powered hub for any kind of information anyone might want to share with others and appears critical of information clouds with limited accessibility. although for someone more-marginally-than-nyc located his perception of virtual shareability as limited rather than sharing at a random physical location might seem rather distorted, i find plenty of appeal here.

popping and peeking from walls anywhere one could imagine, the excitement of finding a usable file somewhere unexpected seems like something i could get excited about.

and let's not start with the viruses, ok? i know i know, it's dangerous and stuff and everything and undoubtedly someone is going to vandalize these little ports, but let's pretend like we can trust each other for once, please.



to find out more and to install your own, go to the site.

seeing as one.

it may be another question of which came first, but there is something immensely fascinating in the sort of photographic evidence most of us strive for when visiting tourist destinations. i am talking about the obvious state of affairs that for someone to visit pisa for the first time and not return with a picture of the leaning tower seems impossible. the same adheres to iconic buildings and statues globally: the proof of a successful visit is a photo of the landmark associated.

because we're often taken on predetermined tours and given mere moments to capture the images we wish to catch, it hardly comes as a surprise that the results staining our films - or the pixels on our screens - share a significant resemblance to each other. so much so, that one may start to wonder whether sometimes we're consciously attempting to recreate photos that we've seen in other people's photo albums and streams.

to put it more bluntly: we'd feel somewhat awkward if a friend showed a set of pics from pisa and the only shot of the tower was taken from an angle that did not showcase or accentuate the tilt – unless there was some other artistic merit to the snapshot, that is. right?

this observation inspired photographer corinne vionnet to arrange images she found online via search engines on top of each other. the resulting photos are dreamlike, impressionist collages which challenge the idea of personal memories and, moreover, the role recognizable icons play in our understanding of the cultural landscape which weaves imaginary with the real.

in the series photo opportunities vionnet's photos portray some of the world's most illustrious landmarks via our collective perspective and proves that we very much see as one.