'Where is Where', 2008
produced for the exhibition at Jeu de Paume, 6 x approx 45 minutes, DVD installation
'Fishermen (Etudes, no 1)', 2007
5 minutes 34 seconds, DVD installation
The retrospective exhibition of Eija-Liisa Ahtila's works, co-produced by Jeu de Paume in Paris and K21 in Düssseldorf (where it shall be shown from 17 April this year), includes nearly all the artist's works in film, photography and sculpture over more than 15 years -- this is not an exhibition to visit in a hurry.
Ahtila first came to prominence for works such as 'Me/We, Okay and Gray' from 1993, using video and employing the narrative language of film, then breaking with film and other screen conventions to confront the viewer by jarring the implicit framework. These works, shown at Jeu de Paume on small monitors, function in relation to television as a quotidian institution, the everyday forms of soap-opera or minor drama. Figures respond to their narrative cues, then slip out of character to address the camera or voice unspeakable thoughts. Ahtila's genius in these videos was to portray the unsettling ambivalence that exists within relationships, the unreliability of emotions and how identity is created in relation to the people one is surrounded by.
In the late 90s and this century, Ahtila has honed her filmic vocabulary and extended her media to project onto several screens. Her early gestures, such as humans that lose command of language and bark like dogs, recur, while characters are often catalysed or physically possessed into unnatural movements by the dynamic of their emotional environment or their own psychosis. Thanks to inclusion of works such as 'The House and Consolation Service' in Manifesta, the Venice Biennale and the major Tate exhibition in 2002 this language has become familiar, with Ahtila applying ever more confident dramatic strokes to her films. Yet the medium remains strictly controlled by the artist, as 'Fishermen' shows; what she calls an 'etude' shows fishermen struggling against relentless sea waves to put rude craft to sea, the water capsizing and undermining their efforts. Here no dramatic conceit is necessary, and the camera work is spare.
Latterly, Ahtila's gestures have moved beyond a Finnish setting; the new work 'Where is Where' is a moving interpretation of an event in Algeria in the 1950s, when during the colonial war a young French boy was murdered by two Algerian classmates. Where is Where stems from contemporary notes found by Ahtila, written by a doctor investigating the psychological disturbances caused by the war; the film composes an emotional portrait of the context and the event from the perspective of a modern-day researcher, whose consciousness is populated by spectres of pillage, violence and a climate of fear. Immersed in the film environment divisions of past and present become indistinct, but irrationality and helplessness are constant.
Aoife Rosenmeyer
Eija-Liisa Ahtila : une rétrospective
Until 30 March 2008
Jeu de Paume
Place de la Concorde
Paris
Aoife Rosenmeyer is based in Zürich after several years as a curator with Artwise in London. In Switzerland she is doing all manner of work art related and contributing to publications including Art World Magazine.
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