Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski
Do you miss living in Stockholm?
Not at all. I miss Stockholm, but not living there.
What are the differences/similarities between London and Stockholm?
Hm to start with, both are cities. That’s one similarity. Apart from that pretty much everything is different between them. And I think most of it depends on their different sizes – London is big, Stockholm is small. Stockholm is more centralized, London more fragmented. London is super heterogenous, Stockholm is homogenous as hell, if I may generalize. Also Stockholm has swimmable water and London does not. Stockholms parks don’t close, Londons parks close.
What and where do you study?
Fine art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
How does social media allow you to portray your art?
I would say it comes with three main conditions, possibilities or circumstances or whatever to call it.
First of all, as mentioned in my first email, social media can function both as space for contextualization of work, as well as a space for the actual work. With contextualisation I mean that content that isn’t art give clues and cues to what theoretical framework, what cultural motion or social setting the work is touching with or springing out of. This leads to a layering in the understanding of the subject matter of the work.The context is present in the art and the art is present in the context.
It can also provide a framework of limitations and conditions which one has to work with, circumcise or can play with, regardless of which channel you are working with. In instagram these are practical limitations, conditions and options like geotagging, captioning, cropping, editing, apps available in the phone, the quality of the phone camera, the maximum length of videos, the time one decides to post, the frequency. These conditions steer the expression and aesthetic and are also part in creating a larger visual culture which the work can reference.
That larger visual culture, lastly (though it’s not really a question of ONE culture ofc) also gives a web of themes and questions that implicitly or explicitly are being dealt with. These the art can be in dialogue with. The themes and questions are not explicitly stated, but are implicitly dealt with, embedded in the way that people engage in the activities around self representation, commenting, liking, re-posting and sharing, composing images, editing them, staging or capturing. And they can be found as underpinning the motives, styles, topics or expressions that are in motion at the moment.
How do ensure your Instagram page stands out?
I don’t post anything that I don’t FEEL something for.
Do you have a particular Instagram theme?
Mostly I only know half a year or so afterwards what was going on at a certain time on my Instagram.
How is digital media the perfect mix of introverted and extroverted?
If one uses a computer or even better a phone, one can create in the most introverted setting, being completely drawn in to the little portal that is the screen. But then when it’s done, you can just smash the work out and it becomes and is read as super extroverted.
Describe the themes within your research.
Hmm maybe the initial description of the themes is how deep I can go in this context without being boring haha? I mean this:
Themes that underpin my research are: consciousness, body in relation to consciousness and the way that philosophy, psychology and sociology seem to touch with each other as theoretical fields. I’m interested in how everything in the world, and especially the knowledge of those fields could be reached by a different language than their own – through art. At the same time as sometimes art can be accessed through the language of those fields. At the same time as art sometimes is best understood intuitively, as a complete and closed language of its own. In social media you get quite a lot of space to play around with the cultural ideas and attitudes that prevail in different communities or cultures. I love it.
Image courtesy of Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski
interview KARDELEN YUCE
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