Pause

Gallery Hippolyte Studio
2020


Places are what we do for them, but places are also what we don’t do.
Places are there when we are not.
This gallery space is not illuminated at night, either.

What is a speaker when it is not plugged in?
What is the minimum requirement for quorum, relinquishment, or listening?


Pause is a combination of a campfire site and a makeshift church, a sketch for a performance and a stage without actors. The spatial installation invites the visitor to focus on the silence between words. Shared silence is heavy. At the same time, silence can also reveal an opportunity to consider, hesitate, procrastinate, or rest.

The modest installation includes flowers in a vase, one photograph, a bench, text, a microphone and an amplifier. Many spatial decisions in the  exhibition are based on observations on how gallery exhibitions are experienced. Pause ponders notions of communication, sadness, and the limitations of human presence.

The exhibition’s themes of grief and silence run side by side. Pause approaches grief as a non-linguistic, non-conceptual emotion—one which escapes words. As such, it also offers an opportunity to relate to other similar ineffable uncontrollable and incomprehensible affects. Is exposing grief ultimately the courage to admit one’s vulnerability and thus a chance to build empathy for all beings?

The small Risograph printed publication on display in the studio space contains excerpts of text by Milla Alina Martikainen, Petra Vehviläinen, Lotta Djupsund, Tekla Inari, and Kastehelmi Korpijaakko. They relate to Korpijaakko’s performative work Time and Place for a Sermon, which took place in the gallery space on Sunday, October 18, 2020. The authors seek alternatives to traditional forms of a sermon and look for new possibilities regarding communication.

Links to the performance documentation (IG live @hippolytegallery):
Milla Martikainen, 15 Minutes on Doing Nothing & Tekla Inari: On helpompi kuvitella maailmanloppu (kysymyksiä 2020)⠀
Petra Vehviläinen: Turritopsis Dohrnii – A Presentation on Mortality and Immortality⠀
Lotta Djupsund. Sea Sermon
Kastehelmi Korpijaakko: Notes on Grass, Roots and the History of Control