Wilenius, Annu (toim.)
Bare House
Pori–Rotterdam–Ulaanbaatar
100164
The book is only available as PDF. Download it below.
The Bare house project emerged from another exhibition exchange project, Mongolia: Perception and Utopia, realized between 2005 and 2008, also in Mongolia and Finland. While the first project focused on the merging of experiencing the ‘real’ Mongolia with the ‘ideal’ images both Mongolians and Westerners held about it, the current project focuses on the built environment, and especially on the tensions created by the recent urbanisation processes in Mongolia. The artists and architects featured in the project come from Finland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada and Mongolia. Most of the works were created during artist residencies in Mongolia, the Netherlands and Finland between 2008 and 2010. The exhibition took place at Pori Art Museum, Poriginal Gallery, and The Old Cotton Mill in Pori. In this publication, the works of the participating artists and architects are presented, through visual documentations and texts, a DVD publication is included with video material, or excerpts thereof, from several of the pieces. The works are ordered, not alphabetically according to their authors, but in an overlapping and looping thematic way. Four essays follow this presentation of works. The first two of these, by Uranchimeg Tsultem and Saara Hacklin, discuss selected works in the exhibition. Uranchimeg Tsultem references them to the contemporary Mongolian art scene and Mongolian history and traditions, while Hacklin’s text explores the ideas of appropriation, mimesis and re-enactment as methods of contemporary art through the works of Christian Mayer, Oula Salokannel & Annu Wilenius and T. Enkhbold. In the third essay, Taina Rajanti writes ‘against utopias’ and presents the ways we can better deal with being in this world. In the final essay, Annu Wilenius summarises some of the ideas she has gathered through the years in this project, about how and what it could be that we might learn from (urbanising) nomads: an oxymoronic ambience of chaos and grace.