place: Helsinki, Finland

Minna Tarkka 1960 – 2023

Saddened to receive news from Andrew that friend, colleague, artist, researcher, producer, and facilitator Minna Tarkka had passed, far too young, on 27 August after a very brief illness.

Researcher Minna Tarkka received the state award for media art in December 2017, Helsinki, Finland. Photo credit: Martti Kainulainen / Lehtikuva.

I arrived in Helsinki, Finland, gritty-eyed, after an early morning flight from Reykjavík, in late August, 1994, on the first of many visits, sojourns, gigs, workshops, and residencies. After dropping my luggage at my friend Visa’s print-making studio on Jääkärinkatu, I made my way to Arabianranta and the University of Art and Design Helsinki (Taideteollinen korkeakoulu, or TAIK, now the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture), located then in the old Arabia porcelain factory on Hämeentie. I was in Helsinki for the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) and, later, for an international performance event (Fax You) at the Akademie Bookstore on Helsinki’s Night of the Arts with the Finnish artist, Visa Norros and others. ISEA was being hosted that year by the Media Lab at TAIK and directed by Minna Tarkka, a person who did things, who showed up, and who inspired others to show up and do things.

I first met Minna later that morning at the TAIK Arabianranta building on the 3rd Floor at the Media Lab—actually we collided in the hallway—auspicious and a bit embarrassing! She was dashing from Point A to Point B as Director during the very hectic symposium registration. After both of us proffered sheepish apologies and introduced ourselves, she took me around, introducing me to some of the media arts luminaries attending the symposium and to staff at the Lab. This was the first of many examples of her unsparing generosity. It was during the symposium that I fully entered her energized sphere of influence there in Finland, where we had a number of memorable dialogues around the ethics and creative possibilities of the rapidly expanding field of electronic media in which she was a thought pioneer. As Associate Professor at the Lab, she later facilitated my return in the spring of 1995 to teach a four-week course. And a few years following that, she was totally supportive of the course netculture that I developed and taught at the Lab in 2000-2001. Her parallel trans-disciplinary course, “Cultural Usability,” critically examined new media design that was inclusive of sociological, cultural, and technological perspectives. Years earlier in 1987, she was the founding Director of MUU, the ‘alternative’ arts organization that has since been a major international player in new media arts. And two years later, she was a founding member of AV-arkki yet another power-house media arts resource and artists’ association there in Finland.

In those earlier days of our acquaintance (and of the WWW itself), her research and art work around spatial metaphors in virtuality, the aesthetics of immersion, and the dynamics of interaction and consumption were of special interest to me, as she explored the fundamentals of human relation as mediated by this ‘new’ technology. She made some highly original and deep dives into the aesthetic and ethical dimensions in the design of spaces for interaction. And all the while, she worked as a facilitator of human encounter, organizing, producing, and participating in many subsequent events, culminating with the formation of another cultural NGO, m-cult in 2000. Right up to the present, m-Cult has exerted a strong influence on the international critical engagement of culture with technology, leading with a profound sense of humane social activism. Yet another influential expression of her energies.

I never made a portrait of her and there seem to be only a handful of poor digital traces. She was a bit shy and soft-spoken. I have a vague memory of the epic RinneRadio concert at ISEA and a huge crowd dancing away, Minna included. She knew how to have an expansive time! That she is gone is yet another loss to many of us who are still pacing about this stage. Minna you will be fondly remembered and deeply missed.

[ED: I will add any reflections and comments from others to this posting as they surface. I’ve been reaching out to friends and former colleagues from those former life-changing times.]

19 : April : 19956 : January : 2017

place: Reykjavík, Iceland

Fax You catalog

Night of the Arts @ the Academic Bookstore, Helsinki, Finland, 25 August 1994

In the spring of 1995, I was back in Helsinki teaching and UIAH/TAIK (University of Art and Design) — CAP (Computer-Aided Photography) Lab, and with help from Visa and funding from FRAME, I produced a 200-page photocopy documentation (pdf download) in an edition of fifty from the incoming and outgoing works at the Helsinki end of the performance. It was distributed to all the participants as well as a number of pertinent archive sites around the world including the ArtPool Research Center in Budapest and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. If you are interested in a copy, please contact me — I will pass one of the two or three copies that I have left along for U$D 500.00 postage-paid.

25 : August : 199431 : December : 2023

place: Helsinki, Finland

Fax You essay

Project: Classic Fax

an essay by Jan Kenneth Weckman

Complying with the well-known maxim of McLuhan, that “the medium is the message,” nearly one hundred years of Modern Art has sustained the idea of a progress towards the self-referencing of the art object.

By sending pages chosen by the public behind the window of the academic bookstore from the drawing book of my son, Jason, I have acted out this slogan as a gesture of good-will towards those artists and writers who believe that through some event where “you take something, do something with it, then do something else with it,” you will reach a new level of conceptuality and artistic energy.

There are, of course, several complications to be analyzed in this event. Since the “now” of the avant-garde transforms into other moments of “now” in materials, vehicles, models, and codes, I see the medium in this case (the material and the vehicle of the fax transmission) as a remnant of the manipulative act of painting as an art. This same manipulative act it shares with photographic, lithographic, and photocopy working.

Images are produced by different configurations of material and vehicle. Meaning is produced through an agreed-upon common medium. The agreement is a sensual as well as a conceptual (historic) precondition to communication.

As I am only responsible for the decision to take my son’s drawings and use them as eligible imagery, separating the images transmitted from the vehicle transmitting gives a visibility to the classical notions of medium and message. That all this takes place within a larger field, that is, the World of Art, is not approachable for analysis within the event itself.

Any carrier of meaning which becomes an argument through its function of displacing something from one medium to another, resides within this classicism of the avant-garde.

The event could consequently be considered as a continuation of the tradition and craft of image-making that began in the ancient times of the cave-painters, and continued unaltered through Poussin, Cezanne, and Warhol.

In this context, writing is seen as evolving from the vast resources of an explicitly apprehended world, developing into a symbolic and systematic way of producing events and meaning. Human vision and human imagery is the facade of this relatively unlimited resource, a proof of which is pointed to by the technologic event of the fax-transmission.

The historic commonality of image-making and writing is well presented with the electronic techniques of the Fax. Thus is gives a thrust towards another angle: the non-classic fax project.

25 : August : 19946 : January : 2017

Fax You performance

Night of the Arts @ the Academic Bookstore, Helsinki, Finland, 25 August 1994

The Fax You project, sponsored by The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange and the Academy Bookstore, took place in the front window of the Academy Bookstore in Helsinki and the HERE Art center associated with the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theater in New York City. One evening at the end of August is a special one in Helsinki called “The Night of The Arts” where there are a variety of cultural events, Fax You was one of them. I was invited to participate by Visa Norros, the artist organizing the Finnish end of the event. Visa is an old friend who I first met when he was a visiting lecturer at the Icelandic College of Art a few years back.

Night of the Arts audience for Fax You are engaged and intrigued by the content filling up the windows of the Academy Bookstore in central Helsinki. Starting around 1700, we established contact via fax and telephone with the folks New York and at 1800 began the project with the first documented trans-Atlantic I CHING casting. (Well, as a late post-script here, I would defer this honor to a performance arranged by Roy Ascott for the Ars Electronica Biennale of 1982 where artists in a number of locations in the US and Wales were linked with terminals. They then did a casting which signified “CHU” or “”Difficulty at the Beginning”…) We, on the other hand, alternated cities for each consecutive cast of the three coins, generating the hexagram “The Power of the Great” which energized everyone during the next six hours of hectic activity. Some of the photos below done at the Helsinki end of the event show the situation as we worked in the windows of the Academic Bookstore. In my view, one of the more important outcomes a project like this is the establishment of some kind of lasting connection — else the electronic performance be simply an act of artistic spectacle.

Participants List

Curators: Julia Kauste (New York), Visa Norros (Helsinki)

New York
Julia Kauste, Steven Johnson Leyba, John Reaves, Emiko Saldivar, David Factor, Dayle Vilatch, Christopher Barker, Adrian Klein, Patricia Tallone Orsoni, Steve Bradley, Genie Nable, Marilyn Mullen, Cynthia Pannucci, Paul Pierog, Lotte Kjaer, Sandy Spreitz, Miran Kim, Jeff Severtson, Bob Laluey, Lisa Roberts

Helsinki
Visa Norros, Andy Best, Johanna Gullichsen, John Hopkins, Anders Tomren, Jan Kenneth Weckman, Anne Tompuri, Annu Vertanen

24 : August : 199411 : October : 2024

place: Helsinki, Finland and New York City, New York

Fax You announcement

The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (FRAME), in cooperation with the Academic Bookstore, will organize a fax art happening with artists in Helsinki and New York.

Concept and Theme

A trans-Atlantic happening in which artists based in Finland cooperate with artists based in New York with the help of telefax as a medium of communication during three hours. The goal of the happening is to promote interactive art and communication beyond the boundaries of space and place, to experiment with the communication media, and to study alternative applications of telefax.

The act of making art is part of the happening: works are to be created during the happening. Artists add on top of each others works and comment on both the individual works and the surrounding environment. Photographers, who document the happening in both cities transmit impressions of the situation and atmosphere over the Atlantic. Authors and poets who present their works during the Night of Arts are welcome to participate in the fax happening. The artists work collectively in small groups. Trans-Atlantic working groups are encouraged.

Time. Place. Context.

Thursday the 25th of August, 1994 is a special night in Finland. The Helsinki Festival organizes together with the Academic Bookstore the Night of Arts. Most galleries, museums, theaters and shops in the city center keep their doors open until late into the night. Painters, graphic and performance artists, sculptors, singers, musicians, authors and poets perform for free in the streets and in the places mentioned above. In Helsinki the Fax Art happening is organized in cooperation with the Academic Bookstore from 10 pm to 1 am. Respectively in New York the happening will take place between 3 pm and 6 pm in an artists’ studio house.

Participating Artist

Novelists and poets, photographers, and 8-9 visual artists in each location.

The Medium and Necessary Equipment

Three telefax machines, two copy machines, two overhead projectors and a computer with a fax modem. Basic equipment will be provided by the organizers, however, artists are welcome to bring their own materials.

Bulletin

FRAME will document the happening in the form of a bulletin. It will be printed in five hundred copies and distributed to selected museums and galleries all over the world. The bulletin will consist of graphic, literature and photographic art works created during the happening.

Curators

In New York: Juulia Kauste, M.A. in Sociology of Art and Culture, M.S. in Urban Studies. She works as an Executive Director for the Finnish Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York.

In Helsinki: Visa Norros, graphic artist. Studies at the A. Tuhka Printmaking School in Helsinki; and at the Graphic Studio in Jyvaskyla, Finland. Internship at the Lithography Studio of Auguste Clot et Bramsen in Paris, France.

Sponsors and Organizing Parties

FRAME, The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, was founded in 1992 to make Finnish Art and photography better known abroad. FRAME operates under the Fine Arts Academy Foundation. The Foundation’s board consists of twelve members. Three are appointed by the Ministry of Education, one by the City of Helsinki, three by the Fine Arts Association of Finland, and one each by the Artists’ Association of Finland, the Finnish Painters’ Union, the Association of Finnish Sculptors, the Society of Finnish Graphic Artists, and the Union of Finnish Art Associations.

FRAME works in collaboration with the key art museums and galleries, art organizations,and individual artists in Finland. FRAME also carries out special projects in collaboration with foreign exhibition organizers.

The Academic Bookstore is characterized by large figures: a sales area of 2,800 square meters on three floors, 8,000 meters of shelf space, some 140,000 items, a stock of over 400,000 book titles from 23,000 different publishers in the computerized register, over a dozen different languages, more than a million books in all … All of this is managed by four hundred people. These figures make the Academic Bookstore one of Europe’s largest and most diverse booksellers.