MY LATEST ARTIST'S FILM, "TIDES"

My film project "Visible/Invisible" has finally been completed, after some delays. The (independent) third part, "Tides", was no doubt the most difficult one to put together. I collected clips throughout the summer and autumn and finished it all just after the holidays. The clips were mostly ones that I just felt like staging, not entirely sure how to put together in the end. Others I collected as I saw something that I thought could be interesting material. Then I had to figure out how to use filters and when to create my own colours and effects (all colours are mixed by me).

The sounds took a while to edit. As I have explained in previous blog posts, they were based on some material I recorded on my camera while in London, as well as the sound of some carillons and church bells and my own voice expressing disturbing sensations (which left my voice damaged for six weeks!). On top of that I used a vintage copyright-free recording of Verdi's Ave Maria, which I tinkered with to give it a personal and contemporary feel. 

Synopsis:

In "Tides", the third and concluding part of the trilogy, the contrast between objective and subjective reality come to the forefront. There is an almost unbridgeable gap between a person's subjective experiences and their objective reality. Jean-Paul Sartre stated that humans come into being in the eyes of the other. This fundamental truth is one I have carried with me all my life. Very often, the environment remains unaware of the agony of the inner self, but it is also often asked to remain hidden because of shame. Sometimes distress brings on a desire to cover up and to present a pleasing facade. Paradoxically, this facade also acts as a wall that can be hard to surmount, especially if there is no one there to assist. The film aims to raise questions to do with imprisonment inside the body and mind, identity, connection and social adaptation - issues many disadvantaged people face in today's society. How can society help its members overcome shame?

Perhaps the imagery doesn't seem to correspond with the idea of being disadvantaged, but that is actually the point. It's about invisible illness and inner distress. The issues of physical pain and not feeling comfortable within one's body regardless what it looks like, are crucial aspects of the film. It's also about trying to connect with nature, animals and other humans. The sense of connection is one of the most vital things about our existence - if not even a condition for life. Though establishing good connections isn't always very successful in the world today, it's still what helps us survive and overcome some of our fundamental loneliness. There is a looming sense of the finality and ephemeral quality of life that we can only overcome through acceptance.

Tides refer to the idea of the rhythm of life and the contrasts; imprisonment versus freedom, quaint versus dreary, beautiful versus ugly, emptiness versus fullness, connection versus lack of connection, togetherness versus loneliness, pain and illness versus health, sanity versus insanity... inner and outer, claustrophobic and open... in short, many of the fundamental dichotomies that define our dual experience of life. The repetitive music also underlines the rhythmic, cyclical quality and "eternal return" (or "eternal recurrence") of our experiences and affects.

"Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. - Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, - a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:- and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon". (Friedrich Nietsche, 'Thus Spoke Zarathrustra')

Stills:

Before Christmas I shared this project with a young person who was unable to understand why I would want to make films. Why make films when my collages are already personal and intriguing? As this person hadn't seen the complete films and was only judging a few images, it was an especially hurtful (or thoughtless) remark. The imagery and sounds make sense only when stringed together. Even then you sometimes wonder how people in general perceive this kind of thing. Perhaps they also fail to see the point. Learning how to do films was a big challenge but it opened me up. I felt that I had more means of expression, as more dimensions (moving image and sound) helped me create something that seemed to encompass more of life. Now I quite feel like making something in 2D again.

Some people also feel prejudiced against the tools provided by software, however I (along with my photographer parents and my husband) feel that they are just as valid as tubes of acrylic paints are for a painter, and how you use them is dependant on your talent and creativity. As I have said before, less choice (i.e. simpler tools) can be a good thing as it forces you to try harder and think your project through a great deal more.

I put my heart and soul into it and would hope that the message comes across, and does touch somebody out there. It's all done with simple means that come nowhere near the kind of gear that some people have. That certainly bothers me, however I do not wish to believe that this fact would be in the way of true, heartfelt expression. What defines an artist is surely their desire to keep exploring themes and media, and the wish to expand one's expression.

All three films are now available as a DVD!
For a sound artist who uses her voice in creative ways not unlike how I have been imagining using the voice, check out Iris Garrelfs.
The distressed voices may also bear some resemblance to Wahn by Tangerine Dream (from the album Atem)

SOUND MEETS VISUAL ARTS, ARCHITECTURE AND MORE + NEWS

Paul Rogers: "The media machine, a real-time, performative, sound and object based installation"
during the Noises of Art conference in Aberystwyth, September 2013.
This piece was a beautiful use of junk sounds.
I believe a video will be available on the internet some time soon.

Martin and I didn't decide to go to the conference "The Noises of Art" at Aberystwyth Arts Centre until just about ten days beforehand, when Martin managed to sell some older art and made just enough money for us to attend. As a university driven conference, it was subsidised and not especially expensive, but our situation is dire right now so this was a questionable expense nonetheless. When we heard about this conference we both felt driven to take part, hoping that in some way or another it would help us air our stuffy brains and that just getting out there into the real world among intelligent people with an interest in art for a bit would be inspiring. This venture required a massive effort from myself, as I had to get up several hours earlier than usual, try and make sure I got to sleep at a reasonable time (we commuted back and forth, as it's about 40 minutes by car), and put up with three really long days of stretching my attention span somewhat unsuccessfully and sitting down for most of that time.

Aberystwyth - photos copyright by Vivi-Mari Carpelan

The atmosphere was great and I think everyone enjoyed this conference a great deal (someone hinted that they had never been to one that was so interdisciplinary and interesting). Obviously I can't say too much about the contents of the 20 min talks as many are preparations for doctorates. Most participants were presenting papers (many of them being PhD graduates), either in the real or virtually, or offering artist's talks or sound art installations. I think we were the only ones who were there for the whole time and only to listen and observe. As expected, a few papers were as dry as the paper the words were written on, others were suitably entertaining. A potential problem with research into the arts is that by the time this becomes possible, the art in question is already quite old. Thus we heard quite a lot about Paul Klee and his influence on musicians, John Cage, and a couple of names that were unknown to me - Terry Fox who amongst other things, recorded the purring sound of cats (compare with my "production logo" at the end of The Title) and the disturbing art of voice of Vito Acconci. Especially Acconci's performances resonate to a degree with my "Insomnia", as self becomes objectified and manipulative of the imagined "other" through the use of obsessive speech, especially here in a performance called Claim Excerpts from 1971. 

'A documentation of one of Acconci's most notorious performances, Claim Excerpts is a highly confrontational work, an exercise in self-induced, heightened behavioral states, and an aggressive psychological exploration of the artist/viewer relationship. During the three-hour performance, Acconci sat in the basement of 93 Grand Street in New York, blindfolded, armed with metal pipes and a crowbar. His image was seen on a video monitor in the upstairs gallery space. Staking claim to his territory, he tries to hypnotize himself through language into an obsessive state of possessiveness: "The talk should drive me into a state where everything is possible." He becomes increasingly tense and violent, threatening to kill anyone who tries to enter his space. Acconci has written, "If during the first hour, I had hit someone, I would have stopped, shocked, horrified; if, during the third hour, I had hit someone, I would have used that as a marker, a proof of success... a signal to keep hitting." (from the description on Ubuweb)'

'In the 1970s, he produced a remarkable body of conceptual, performance-based film and video works, in which he engages in an intensive psychodramatic dialogue between artist and viewer, body and self, public and private, subject and object.' (From Electronic Arts Intermix)

Generally speaking the conference offered a great cross section of all sorts of stuff, though tiring as it was for my brain to process. I felt really privileged to find out what people are researching or working on artwise (though art practices were less represented and many of the theoretical papers were rather impenetrable, at least to my sorry brain). As I have a MA degree in humanities from 1999, I certainly felt reasonably at home, but it was also quite obvious to me how far removed I now am from the world of academia and the active world of working life. It left me feeling nostalgic. After my graduation my health declined quite rapidly and the start up of my PhD came to a halt quite soon after. I had to concede that the university years were behind me, and had to try and get on with my life in other ways. Some might even say that I have really moved on, i.e. gotten on with "real life", as a friendly person pointed out. Having now experienced this kind of conference, I feel that I might want to submit a talk myself if a similar opportunity came along, but I would have to consider the stress that this would put me under (if accepted of course). I want to fight the position of a complete outsider but we'll have to see how it goes. Martin on the other hand would love to pursue some serious studies in fine arts, and I know he'd be perfectly able to if an opportunity were to arise. It's an annoying fact that higher education is so expensive in the UK - if this was Finland, he'd already be doing it.

Andrew McPherson:
"The Magnetic Resonator Piano: Electronic Augmentation of an Acoustic Musical Instrument"
at Aberystwyth School of Art in September 2013.

Artwise, I think the conference confirmed the ideas about sound and multimedia that have already been brewing. My two previous multimedia projects will see a third part and I will thus end up with a trilogy, something to do with natural vs unnatural, control vs abandonment... The first part, Insomnia, has sound elements that I created through recordings of events in space as well as my own voice. I have thought some more about what it all means (and if it's still a bit hazy, I shall attempt to work on articulating it even better):

In this video performance, self becomes objectified through the use of voice art. A subjective experience goes through stages of expressions as thoughts become vocalised and then recorded as a token for the direct communication that would never take place in real life. Here, the body gains a semiotic quality because of carrying a potent message of distress, and it can only be a signifier through the process of art.

The second part, The Title, has some recordings of events but also introduces classical music as a symbol of history and the past (apart from being a mood enhancer, of course). Being faced with the problem of not wanting to use copy-righted music and thus not being able to claim full ownership of the work, I have been ruminating about creative ways of creating my own sounds. Perhaps attending local choirs has given me some self-confidence in this area, too. I have also been very adament about the importance of silence and of course, this was confirmed as well. Sound and silence are to me yet another undeniable dichotomy of negative and positive, and therefore of equal importance.

Next up, in the third part ("Visible/Invisible"is the working title), I will be experimenting with more ways of using my voice in an even more expressive way. I hadn't quite realised just how well tremor and feeling really does come through in the recordings, that I have done with free software on my laptop, and Martin's good quality Sony mic. However, this is partly apparent in The Title, in the laborious breathing sequence. Martin has been enhancing my soundscapes but I think that it's time for me to try and get my head around the editing of sounds through some free software called Audacity. This way I feel freer to experiment and create multiple layers without having to wait until Martin has a moment to improve the recordings. What would I do if Martin wasn't informing me about the technical side of things! As it is, I have a great opportunity of adding a new and wonderful dimension to my body of work. As John Harvey, a pleasant professor at the School of Art in Aberystwyth said to me; a lot of artists are starting to employ sound as a medium inspite of not having any formal education in music. It's obvious that this is absolutely the right place for me to be right now, and it feels quite natural. In the end, almost anything goes, and it's simply up to the individual to put their creativity to good use.

What really inspires me is that I can combine sound with my visual material, as this to me is a beautiful marriage. I almost feel that there's a bit lacking when visuals or sounds are presented on their own - this feeling was certainly reinforced by the conference. We have multiple senses, and visuals without sound could perhaps seem a bit like being deaf but have good vision, and vice versa. For this reason I have started to warm up to the idea of video art, which I used to sneer at. In fact it just occurred to me that I've always felt precious about sound, but was unable to do much about it. I used to play music at my private views and later on when I got ITunes, started to create playlists with selected songs for each exhibition. Sadly, playing this music during the exhibitions was rarely possible.

Please read more about my current sound art projects. You can find examples on SoundCloud or my website.

~~~~~

A few weeks ago I received a letter that my art work didn't make it to Shape Open at the Nunnery Gallery on Bow Street in London, but a week later someone wrote and said they thought I might not have been told one of my two pieces did get in! I really hope there's a way of attending the private view in November. Shape Arts is an organisation for disability arts and the exhibition was open to both disabled and non-disabled artists on the theme "disability re-assessed". I'm sure that the main objective is to present disability in a positive light, as 2012 was a year of many developments in this field (mainly through the paraolympics in London). My piece is, however, direct and confrontational.  Unfortunately they didn't want my confrontational statement for the catalogue, so it had to be rewritten. Funny that, as it's really the sort of censorship that I'm trying to fight through pieces like this!

Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "Your Indifference is Breaking My Heart".
Mixed media collage with
artist's photograph, moral poetry from the 19th C, and vintage engraving.
Copyright 2012.

In this piece, I'm suggesting that the conservative government (and the Atos system of disability assessment in particular) has a very Victorian moralist attitude towards those who are disabled and/or afflicted with chronic (long term) illness (a reason there's Victorian moral poetry in the background - nothing much has changed in terms of moral codes...).

Original version: "This is personal. Look me in the eyes and stop giving me moral BS about contributing to society on your terms. You feel you have the right to assess my abilities, but what does that even mean? I am ME, a unique human being. Do you care about that? I need your support and compassion, not parenting! We're in this together, you know.” 

The rectified version: This work suggests that the accepted moral codes of society are still “Victorian”. It is about the fundamental right to assess my own abilities and the ways in which I feel I can contribute to society on my own terms. I want to evoke questions about the validity of assessing people’s abilities from an emotionally indifferent point of view – is my value solely dependent on my economic productivity?

Another happy piece of news is that I sold "The Impossibility of Sleeplessness and Damien Hirst Doesn't Exactly Make it Better" at Outsidein West in Taunton. I'm so glad someone appreciated my hangman's humour! In both pieces, I have used photographs of myself, and feeling this is really the way to go for me.

Vivi-Mari Carpelan: "The Impossibility of Sleeplessness and Damien Hirst
Doesn't Exactly Make it Better",
Handmade photomontage, copyright 2013.

"In a general sense, this piece is about the fear of a sudden fall into a state of despair and depression, and how difficult it is to remain balanced and “on top of things”.

More specifically, this piece is about insomnia, which in severe cases involves constant threats of medication not working any more, while one is being pumped up with habit forming medication in the first place, of the fear of going insane with severe cognitive and physical impairment and physical flare ups due to lack of sufficient good quality sleep... and never getting any really useful help from the medical establishment. On top of this there's the sleep schedule which always goes wrong, ie. something disturbs one's routines and tips the wagon so you end up sleeping/dozing/lying around well into the afternoon and always feeling the day goes by while you're simply useless. Managing a condition that happens when you're not looking, is like walking a tight rope, knowing you could fall any time. This piece is part of Project X. When I thought of the name including the word "impossibility" it became a reference to titles by Damien Hirst and his somewhat doubtful financial success.ow difficult it is to remain balanced and “on top of things”.

THE TITLE - A SHORT FILM WHERE THE TITLE IS THE TITLE

Thumbnail picture for the film "The Title" 

This multimedia project wasn't all clear from the start, but I filmed a few bits that I thought I might like to use, and added other video clips and stills as I was going along. Martin helped me with the theatrical scenes where I'm dressed in black, in a Victorian style. There must have been a thousand little bits in the end. Premiere Elements isn't really designed to cope with so many layers and general complexity. The uploaded version still has a few faults in it, but I will leave it for now and fix it later. I spent a few weeks with this project and really need to get it out there and out of my mind!

This short film is a collaged conglomerate of fragments from my own life as well as my family's history - stills, moving images, performance, a poem I wrote long ago back in 1985 - the only poem I ever wrote! In the film a part of it is performerd in the original Swedish, with the English translation overlaying the imagery. And last but not least, there are many of my handmade collages. It's packed with symbolic imagery and the narrative (a kind of journey) is really an explanation to the art work. However, as this may not be immediately obvious, this multi media show can be taken in intuitively as well. It's an emotional life story, and I hope that comes across as the main objective for this project. Ultimately, the idea behind the quote "All the World's a Stage, and Men and Women merely Players" (Shakespeare) is once more one of the main themes of my work.

Ggenerally speaking I'm leaving it to people to make their own conclusions about this work, but of course I hope, as always, that there is universal appeal as it speaks about entitlement, loss and restoring a sense of dignity. The title "The title" refers to the idea of being "entitled", either physically (health, money, and other good things in life), or emotionally (having a sense of worth, dignity and spiritual stature).

The idea of using a journey as the narrative that pulls it all together is of course not an original one, but one that makes a story easier to watch and tends to keep the audience's attention. I decided on this format because "the journey" is a deeply archetypal metaphor or "monomyth" (Joseph Campbell) that is present in all cultural traditions, speaks to everyone on at least some level, and because it helps making sense of the fragments.

I think this representation of a heroe's journey should be taken with a pinch of salt, but
it can offer some viewpoints that clarify the concept of a journey through life that
is full of hardships but also some sort of benefits and rewards.

I also used the old film effect quite a bit because it helps create a sense of the past (which is an important element in this project), as well as providing great texture. I ponder each effect quite a bit, as it needs to support the symbolism or message that I want to get across. 

I think you can't make a long film with this much symbolism, there's a point where it overwhelms the brain. Recently, we watched some older Ingmar Bergman films and I was thinking how they were always said to be deeply symbolic. I saw them when I had just entered university and loved the atmosphere and the way Swedish was spoken, but I didn't get the symbolism. Now I realised, there is hardly any there at all! In my favourite, the tender "Wild Strawberries", there's a dream sequence that has some symbolism in it, notably in the clock without hands. Sometimes the weather is moody, which is meant to enhance the melancholy in the story, but that's not really symbolism, it's just mood. Of course, as a Cancerian I can recognise another Cancerian's flair for moodiness! The empty streets... oh so de Chirico, who was also Cancerian! Strictly speaking, Bergman's strength lies in conveying mood, but not really in the use of symbols - in fact, some of his movies are actually just nonsense. Anyway, this medium allows a lot of imagery that speaks to people as if they were symbols, because the performance in 3D can convey so much in so little time with the help of props, environment, music, temporality and other attributes.

The dream sequence in Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" ("Smultronstället")

The classical music for my film was taken from a site with copyright-free classical music, Musopen, which I can highly recommend. Youtube suggested that I had nicked some music called "Tranquillity" from someone else's album, but the performer whose piece I used has never participated in any project called "Tranquillity". My guess is that someone else also took the Baroque piece, which obviously wasn't originally called "Tranquillity", and used it on their CD! Let me guess... with added birdsong and water splash... I have therefore debated Youtube's suggestion with a clean conscience. Oh and of course, Martin did some wonders to some of the recordings that weren't really up to scratch.

And of course, I always wanted to be movie star! I remember in the distant past, that a good friend of mine said about me that I'm always quite theatrical - and she meant it as a compliment, rather than in the sense of "drama queen". I think I have an imbedded sense of the theatrical, and it feels good to get some outlet for this side of my creativity.

I would love to hear comments!

INSOMNIA - MY LATEST MULTI MEDIA PROJECT AND MESSAGE

Thumbnail picture for "Insomnia"

So here it is finally, the multi media project that was supposed to only take a couple of days... in fact, the biggest issue was the sound, as my original recordings weren't really good enough. Martin has a mike that borrowed, and I used some free software to do the recording with. The quality wasn't fantastic. After a lot of fiddly tweaking in Premiere Elements I had a soundtrack that Martin then worked on to remove crackle and other disturbing elements with software that he already has, since he's recorded his own music in the past and enjoys creating soundscapes. He also added a bit of ambience to the words.

Martin said he was surprised I tackled this subject matter intuitively rather than literally. I guess I feel a different kind of freedom to be expressive through this medium. I think it's liberating and makes a change from the fixed nature of a 2D image. I do get very tired from editing, but hope that in time I will become more fluent in using this and find it easier. Martin encouraged me to go on when I was being despondant, feeling it wasn't good enough. I realise I can't compete with people who have been to film school or are being paid a lot of money to create fantastic moving images with expensive software. My projects have to be about the atmosphere and the message. I want to talk about things that I really know about, through and through. That's my excuse for making art.

I put my soul into this project, it was really a "gut feeling project". Someone said it reminded them of a scene from "Fight Club", in which it's being said that with insomnia, nothing is real; everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. That was an interesting view point, because it's true that there are reverberating echoes going through your mind when you start panicking about not sleeping, everything is magnified and there's often a kind of terror that becomes a waking nightmare. I think most people can relate to this feeling of layers of anguish and a distorted sense of reality. I think I instinctively decided to go down that route rather than talk about it more literally from my own experience of a medical disorder (which is very real). This I tried to do in my biopic "Vivi-Mari in a Day" (though I still feel I may not have been succesful in getting the message across sufficiently well).

This is no longer "just" a slide show, but uses both video clips, stills and my own sound. It really is a lot like collaging! I voted for simplicity rather than adding too many effects. Effects for the sake of effects is just empty. I ask myself, is this effect really adding to the message, and only use it if I think it is. I was using some old film effect here, part of it is to cover up the garishness of indoors photography (I use floodlights). But on the other hand, a touch of vintage is in line with my other work so I think it's justified in many ways. In some ways, when you're lying awake, you exist in a kind of timeless space that I wanted to enhance with this effect. It's not easy to convey a sense of horror without cheap effects these days... movies are packed with such effects. The aim is instead to portray a very personal experience and hope that has a different tone that captures other people's imagination in a different way.

This short 4 min film in which I have staged myself, is an evocative artistic expression and vision of insomnia, which is sometimes part of serious health conditions, or one all on its own. Though it's not meant to be just a medical document, but also a vision of despair in general, the medical aspect and my concern is obviously at the forefront. The lack of good quality sleep also leads to many other medical problems such as the worsening of the primary health issue (e.g. fibromyalgia and ME/CFS), depression, anxiety, cognitive problems and memory loss, inability to cope with life's normal challenges, and to focus during the day. With this video I've sought to create a representation of the kind of problem that about 25% of the population allegedly experiences in one form or another, though mostly only periodically. I hope and believe that most people can identify with this situation at least on some level, and that it also helps understand what serious insomnia can feel like. 

This is a document, but not a literal documentation, and shows only part of the problem as I experience it myself, as in reality there's more to it than this. It seemed more important to me to create a film that might strike a cord in most people who watch it. It's about the emotional response to a problem, rather than the problem itself.

I'm no doubt influenced by minimalist music, notably Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and some of my inspiration may very well come from them. 

"Managing an illness that's happening when you're not looking is like walking a tightrope" (From the description of "The Impossibility of Sleeplessness and Damien Hirst doesn't Exactly Make it Better"). It's a problem that is hard to cure since sleep happens when we're not in control.

P.S

I got the old film effect here. There are a few options. They work but you will need to be able to unzip them first.

Read how I found that this work resonates with Vito Acconci's work from 1971 in this article.

TRAILER FOR TRACES, A MULTIMEDIA PROJECT

I seem to have failed to post about the trailer Martin and I finished a while ago! I created the visual show and Martin the soundscape. This is in preparation for the complete project, which should be about 20 mins long. If I have an opportunity to go and collect more material, i.e. abstract photos from the original source in Finland, there may be two parts. I would love to, as I would like to have more images to play around with, but at the moment we can't afford to eat, let along pay a visit to my home country.

Please choose the highest resolution for viewing, and view it full screen!

TRACES

Trailer for a multimedia show based on abstract images by Vivi-Mari Carpelan and music by husband Martin Herbert. This project idea is based on the use of koans in Asian Buddhism.

The work should disrupt so-called "functional fixedness" in the viewer, breaking old cognitive patterns and helping the brain make new connections. "Mind-wandering" that is neither too focused nor too slack is beneficial to a receptive state of mind, conducive to creative thinking. This is not really meditation, but rather an exercise in "a fresh look on life".

The gently flowing yet dynamic feel of the multimedia show should lull the viewer into a contemplative state of being. Inspiration has been derived from the ancient Japanese tradition of the koan, a story or statement that is ultimately absurd, offered to Buddhist disciples as a way of breaking old cognitive patterns, i.e. the mental "rut" humans get stuck in. The statements are meant to help the disciples drop their rational minds and become susceptible to the greater mystery of life.

Ideally, we want this shared subjective encounter to inspire people to question the rationale behind the frantic process of dashing about the planet in a state of semi-functionality.

The title references the marks that people have left behind while simply doing their job. Successive layers of paint, repeatedly stencilled or painted signs and lettering and the corrosion express the convergence of cultures, communication as well as the universal concepts of decay, the passing of time and the echo of history - all of surprising aesthetic value.

My fascination with creativity, the many forms of linguistic expression in different cultures as well as belief systems around the world were at the core of my MA at Helsinki University. This, as well as my very personal and first hand concerns with the psychology and physiology of stress, are all behind this artistic venture.

The finished multimedia show will be about 20 mins long.

David Drake of the prestigious Ffotogallery in Cardiff has offered personal comments on the photos, and encouraged taking the project further.

This project is in line with my research into fatigue and invisible illness, notably the category that holds solutions rather than just problems.