Earlier I wrote a few lines about Lapua (here and here.) Most of my time in Lapua I spent hanging up pictures in the gallery, but I did have some time for snooping around, too. I don’t know why it took three years before I managed to put the result online. Anyway, here they finally are: a full set of 10 postcards from Lapua!
While waiting for the summer, I made some picks from my 2002 archives: pictures from the Haku Päällä love festival, where you can for example follow (or attend) the Finnish Kissing Championships:
The annual festival takes place in Kurikka, the hometown of the world-famous ex-cross-country skier Juha Mieto:
In the small town the jolly atmosphere easily extended well beyond the festival tent and its fenced surroundings. Two boys were loitering around the square on their fabulous tandem bicycle.
These girls demanded I take their photo. A well-rusted Opel was parked behind the same bush.
More of the festival audience:
A billboard at the town border reads: Kurikka – Your chance…
Last weekend saw the presidential election (2nd round) and a mountain top barbecue (-20˚celsius). Herttoniemi, Helsinki.
Let’s see how things will be in midsummer. Below is the remaining snow mountain in mid-June 2011, also in Helsinki’s Herttoniemi.
Candidates’ posters in Helsinki while the presidential election day (first round) was just a snowball’s throw away.
Salo Art Museum opened their summer exhibition last Friday. Among many other artworks commenting farming, there’s a selection from Hay on The Highway – a joint project I accomplished with Yrjö Tuunanen in 1993.
Hundreds of free journalists protested against Sanoma News in Helsinki yesterday. The media house says they stop collaboration with free lancers who won’t sign the dictated new agreement. Sanoma News aims to take all known and unknown usage rights with syndication, selling further and manipulation rights to texts, photographs and illustrations for the price of a single publication, while leaving the free lancers alone juridically responsible.
Sanoma News is part of the Sanoma Group. The corporate altogether (with a 300 million euro operating profit) publishes over 300 European magazines and Finland’s two most read newspapers along with above ten other newspapers. They own the leading picture agency in Finland. In book publishing they are the Finnish market leader and significant europe-wise too. They have five TV stations and three radio stations in Finland. In the Baltics and Finland Sanoma Group is the market leader in press distribution, kiosks, cinema theatres etc.
It seems as the Finnish media emporium’s first aim is to deliver maximum profit for shareholders and to gain maximum grip over production and distribution of information – free journalism comes only after that. What else can you make of it?
In my previous post I told a few words about Lapua. Aside from the exhibition installation work I had some spare time to walk around the city; it must have been some twenty years from the previous time there. This wall arrangement in a flea-market was zealously preserving the core values of the White Finland: home, religion and fatherland. For those who don’t recognise the man in the framed print below Jesus: he is Marshal of Finland, C.G. Mannerheim. I felt like time had stopped long-ago, and I don’t mean just the antique clock on the wall. I had to double check that my own watch was running: it was indeed, and so I went out into the fresh autumn air.
Last week my exhibition If Nokia were a place… was opened in Lapua, at Ostrobothnian Photography Centre. This is the ending for a year of touring Finnish venues. Lapua city is 200 km north from Nokia city.
Lapua is known as a make of ammunition, a bit like Nokia is known as a mobile phone brand (and was previously known as a make of rubber boots). The factory in Lapua was the primary supplier of ammunition for the Finnish army during Winter War and World War II.
In 1976 a serious accidental explosion happened at the factory, killing 40 people. After this the factory has been moved away from the city centre, and the former plant converted to a cultural centre and named as Vanha Paukku (The Old Bang / Explosive Charge). That is where my Nokia series is now hanging.
When I had settled in Lapua, this sweat braking mural greeted me in the chill out room of my hotel sauna: two wrestlers locked in an embrace and large caliber gun cartridges lined up along the beds of Lapua river.
Lapua sits in the South Ostrobothnia flatlands. The region has played a big bang whenever the classes have clashed. During the 1918 Civil War (while Nokia was Red) the White army stronghold was up in the flatlands. In 1929, the violent anti-communist Lapua Movement started from here, eventually aiming for a fascist rule. In 1596 the Club War, the last peasant revolt in Europe started – from South Ostrobothnia. The peasants, armed with clubs, marched the 200 km to Nokia where they were defeated a week later. The school tableau below illustrates the peasant encampment in Nokia.
Picture above was taken in Nokia city, 2002.
Again Finland woke from a slumber into a nightmare. Less than 11 months after the Jokela school shooting a similar tragedy repeated in Kauhajoki.
STAKES (National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health) reported in July 2008 Dialogi magazine that the state has not taken responsibility of formulating a comprehensive national account of school curatorial and psychological resources.
The need for more resources was recognised in 1973 and a committee proposed that by mid-80′s in Finland should be established 500 posts for school psychiatrists and another 500 for school curators. But professor Matti Rimpelä from STAKES states that the general interest in resources for children and youngsters died out already in the early 80′s.
Rimpelä has tried to find the data for 1980′s but all of it has disappeared which, he says, well describes the attitude. Since then, only two questionnaires were carried out: in 1990-91 Finland had 201 curators and 123 psychiatrists, in 1993-94 just a tad more. During the 90′s the burden on the resources grew a lot. After 1994 no studies have been made: no-one knows the numbers of today.
Meanwhile, Finland has been internationally shining for its success in the PISA studies. Thousands of experts have traveled to Finland to learn from the educational wonderland. It goes without saying that, a study of the “PISA tourism” has already been carried out.
So, has the country been dreaming about unlimited marvels of the uncontrolled economy while making of decisions has been handed over to the business world? Has it been a dream where everyone takes care of themselves only? Also within families.
This is the first landscape (seascape) after returning to Finland, taken at the tip of Porkkala peninsula. Of the mainland, this is the closest point to Estonia and only about 37 km from Helsinki centre. The area was leased to the USSR during 1944-56. This is a great place for observing migrating birds–something I am not specialised in. A few days after taking of this picture two Estonians swum across the Finnish gulf, starting from here.
Our garbage house in early spring. By now it has been replaced by cylindrical deep tanks made in Nokia city.
My exhibition was installed and opened on June 10th in Nokia city backed up with three accordions and triangle sandwiches. Meanwhile in the city centre, the Vietnamese owner of the Chinese restaurant had served their Buddha statue with tea and bisquits.
A couple of weeks ago we spent a night in Hanko, the most southern city of Finland. From our freshly red-lit room we made our way to say hello to the Baltic Sea.
