Arttu Merimaa

THE AUTOCHTHONIC FANTASY
2015
Video / Public art project

The video witholds video footage depicting a “storyline” that has a starting point in a historical situation in the town of Pori (a small industrial city in Finland) when the city burned downed in 1852 forcing people to travel to the outskirts of the city and to dig holes on the ground as their dwellings creating a so called Finnish slum (named Holetown). This kind of living lasted for many decades and the area inhabited so much as 500 people the most. The video itself consists of various texts and narrations as well as visual documentation of the building of a recreation of this kind of “house in a land hole” in the area of the town where they originally used to exist which had then turned into a more traditional working class housing area and more recently a picturesque bourgeoise neighborhood. In addition to that there are dramatized scenes where a resident of this dwelling looks at an erotic animation from a phenakinestoscope (19th century looking device), goes through and cleans tools and gets haunted by modern house electronics at night. An epilogue brings us to future dystopian society where people are living in underground disaster shelters due to years of economical and political upheavals. The project functioned as a public art project during the summer of 2014 when the reconstruction of a hole dwelling was left in the park as a sort of a monument and place for discussions and lectures.

Installation at Pori Art Museum, spring 2016.

Installation at SIC Space , Helsinki, March 2016.

Hole house during night time 2014.

Hole house during day time 2014.

Still images from video.

IT'S NOT WHO I AM UNDERNEATH BUT WHAT I DO THAT DEFINES ME
2014
Videoinstallation

An exhibition that consists of a video projection that documents an attempt to recreate a small “cave” sculpture made as a child but currently lost with the help of a hypnotist and again by using contemporary 3D softwares and printers as well as three videos documenting various object making processes.

Installation view from The Finnish Museom of Photography 2014.

Still images.

OF SIMULATION AND DISSIMULATION
2012
Videoinstallation

The work consists of following things:

Excerpts of Francis Bacons text Of Simulation and Dissimulation (1624), a montage of nude statues from The Finnish Parliament House made by Wäinö Aaltonen, a video scene where a statement for the media is being prepared, special effects that are breaking the stereographic flow.

The work is built to space to resemble a 3D viewing device invented by Charles Wheatstone - the Wheatstone’s stereoscope. The video can be viewed either in the space through the two projections or as 3D image through the mirror device placed in between the projection screens.

Installation view from the Spring Show of The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 2012.

Desynchronized 3D image from the mirror of the Stereoscope.

THE LOVESTORY OF 1000 DECADES
(A girl jumping on a bed with a radioactive dildo in hand in front of nuclear power plant animations)
STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL FISH CHOKING
(A girl inhaling to a flute in front of a cellar dungeon discovery)
2011
Videos

Combining found footage and bluescreen acts.

Top: The Lovestory of 1000 Decades. Bottom: Strange and Beautiful Fish Choking. Video stills.

Installationview from the Kasarmikatu gallery of Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 2011.

MEXICAN OIL SPILL IN HEAT
(Underwater oil spill videos projected on triangular screens with a pornographic soundscape)
2011
Videoinstallation

Found footage videoinstallation, rear projection plexiglass, loudspeaker- and vibrator device.

Installationview from the Kasarmikatu gallery of Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 2011.

OEDIPAL PERSONAL TRAINER
(A variation of LCD-screens and other outlets displaying a guy running in front of a blue screen with some images inserted)
2011
Still image installation

Installationview from the Kasarmikatu gallery of Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 2011.

REPEAT: END OF THE WORLD
2011
One channel video with music score / Live concert video piece

This is a moving image work made in collaboration with a composer Markku Klami and a flute player Johanna Kärkkäinen.

"REPEAT (End of the World) combines flute with recorded sound and video image and is constructed around a scene where members of a cult get together to welcome the end of the world."

Still images from the video.

Live concert photo from Sibelius museum, Turku taken by Jan Virtanen.

NONCHALANT 1 / PIER
2010
Videoinstallation

The video presents a scene of a young mens sauna night in a Finnish summer cabin. The scene starts from the boys boastful conversation and hanging out in the yard and culminates in a fencing of two of the boys in a pier with daggers in their mouths while the rest of the guys are rooting from the bank of a river. As an epilogue there are five individual portraits of the men separated from the group standing in the darkening summer night facing the camera. The piece is installed in three pieces so that the beginning is in a separated monitor, the fencing projected on a wall or a screen and the epilogue divided into five different displays, one for each person. Friendship between men holds in sometimes even a violent physicality and a weird preferring of the illusion of indifference. However, there is always some sort of feeling of togetherness and a wordless agreement of camaraderie in an essence of the relationship.

Still images from the video.

Installationview from Kluuvi gallery of Helsinki Art Museum 2010.

NONCHALANT 2 / FIREPLACE
2010
Video

The video represents the classic “lovers in front of a fireplace” scene in which a man and a woman lie relaxed in front of a blazing fire. A young man lies on his side on a blanket reading a magazine while a woman behind him in a furry beast outfit is crouching and rubbing herself to the indifferent-seeming man. In the end the man turn on his stomach and reveals his ripped and bloody back and the beast woman gently licks the back of the neck of the man. The concept of “the beauty and the beast” has been constructed and reconstructed countless times so that the flipping of the gender roles in this context has itself turned into a convention of some sort. However, in a relationship one or the other has to occasionally play the part of the monster. It is just a question of which one can play the part better, If you want to hurt your partner you can either choose from extreme indifference of monstrous psychological or physical violence. The idea of either of those strategies being pinpointed into a gender is as a thought ridiculous and purely based on the culturally learned models.

Still images from the video.

Installationview from Kluuvi gallery of Helsinki Art Museum 2010.

NONCHALANT 3 / MIRROR
2010
Video

In the Mirror two inflatable dolls take the place of the actors. The dolls, dressed in underwear, lie in each others arms alternately inflating and deflating from air in a sorrowfully slow pace. On a couple of occasions in the video a human hand is visible as a sign of some sort of human-like touch.

Still images from the video and installationview from Kluuvi gallery of Helsinki Art Museum 2010.

21ST CENTURY CASANOVA
aka A Cosplay According to Yoo Young-Cheul
2009
Video

"The video work is based on the story of a Korean serial killer Yoo Young-cheol. It carnivalizes the common argument that men always want to destroy the objects of their desire. Here, the male desire is not directed to an object rather than the males inner perceptions about himself - the desire is subjective and something from within. Through this scenario, the video presents a situation where the subject - during the process of destroying his inner desires - always destroys something potentially real and honest about himself as well. In this piece of work I don’t use actors like normally. I perform the parts of the killer and the female victim myself. I’m also shifting towards even trashier subject matter than before. In my visual style I embrace the TV-movie clichés, the crappiness of homemade videos and the sleaziness of sex chats. World is a bland and emotionless place that offers loads of fast impulses and affections."

Still images from the video.

SCRATCH OF LOVE AND LOSS
2008
Videoinstallation

If life is seen as drama that can be viewed from outside, the grand outbursts of emotion achieve a certain status of climax in the circle of drama. A person may find satisfaction and fullfilment in the feeling of grief and detachement brought up by the ending of a relationship. The drama of loss is contrasted into the Hollywood-like sense of definity and illusion of reformation. Love or hate or compassion are roadwork-like structural fractures that disappear as the new more “intact” identity takes over in the society of simulation.

Installationview from Gallery Jangva, helsinki in 2008 and still images from the video.

KISS AND KILL
Suukotan puukotan sua
2007
Videoinstallation

The piece builds up on three scenes arranged in a gallery space. The scenes, recorded on video, present three different temporal fragments of a relationship: falling in love, drifting apart and the violent ending. Thematically, the piece deals with the uneasy counter-reaction of affection, the abuse of power structures and the denial of love. In the center of the work is a relationship between two young men. The acting of the boys in the videos is conventional, it repeats the common laws of cinematic drama. It can be said that the piece itself focuses in the ways of presentation: the drama that itself replaces the reason of action. Relationship can be seen as a culturary pre-written choreography, of which conventions no-one can deny. Violent eruption can be an attempt to break the convention or it’s pinnacle.

Installationview from Mänttä Art Festival 2008.