Still lost among the suomalaiset
I am still in Helsinki at this microbiology and public health conference. It has been 4 days and I am near ready to get the hell out of here. Tomorrow I give my talk and then I will be flying back to Berlin in the evening. Finland has been a trip. Totally quiet and small, a bit Scandinavian but not in a Viking kinda way, mostly a weirder mix of very blonde, eastern Europeanish, forest dwelling, sea-locked people. Anyway, I did manage to venture out and find a pretty good Museum of Contemporary arts, with mostly Finnish artists. And one exhibit was smashing. It is called (Un)naturally and explored men, the idea of men through gender stretching, role shifting and questioning norms. Sounds pretty standard. A reverse feminism if you will, but without dissing feminism and almost employing the same critical structure. Looking further, in a place like Scandinavia where women’s rights are a long time here, reexamining men and men’s roles is actually quite interesting. So a piece spoke out to me called Fall of Man by a guy called Kalle Hamm, about various gays or queer-related figures throughout history. Either with a quote or a relevant historical reference to their relevance. Each man is allocated a rough screen-print poster in black and white and presented next to one another. It was very effective and I found it to be one of the most poignant and vivid I’ve seen in a while - while still remaining politically neutral. And this where one of the figures featured is a blindfolded “Muhammed.” The only thing I could find on the piece was a Swedish site, so for those of you who read Swedish here you go: http://www.kulturstan.se/nyheter/museum/?idart=3705&SEO=Fall%20of%20Man%20på%20Finlandsinstitutet For those who can, well, maybe a glimpse at the picture will speak out.
Peace.
