The process according to my sketch book
Simo Brotherus, Feb 2005

I faced a challenge; if the initial set up was to base work upon visits in Helsinki and London by turns, I was focused on contrasting urban living with nature. I had recently had some great experiences in the nature that strengthened my plans to move to the country. So for a period I was reluctant to city cultures as such. I had less interest in talking about any specific cities. Still I wanted to join the project.
There was a set of thoughts I was juggling with. I will present the central ones here along with related drawings from my sketch book. This includes also a few non-verbalized ideas, which I find important for the process.

Firstly, I wanted to find a concept that would take a similar form in both cities but change in content due to the different backdrops - as the indicator, the grey square, changes in appearance in this example. This was harder than I thought. My first attempts were to displace elements of nature in the city.

I couldn’t figure out how to make this so that it would interestingly differ from stepping into a park, as park life is already an existing part of city culture since day one. So I turned my attention to how the cities perceive themselves (the inhabitants’ identification with their city), which is how the cities will continue to exist until they reinvent themselves based on some paradigm shift.

Placing a rack with brochures taken from the tourist office in the gallery (brochures of Helsinki would be shown in Helsinki) would be an easy-to-access mirror of how a city likes to view itself - the image aimed for quick tourism is of course overly simplified. What I was trying to reach was a way to suggest a structure explained in metaphysics as “outer experiences reflect inner reality”.

A mouse with a London print shirt on gives a different feel from one with a Helsinki print. In the mouse I had a possible indicator, something that could reveal relative changes.

A text that says “A dream come true” sprayed on a wall suggests what a dream could be seen as, that is, in its conscious and unconscious forms dreams are what create our physical experiences and that which is subjectively understood as the reality.

I’d take a bunch of tennis balls, spray a bit red on them and spread them around the city.

‘City as a sculpture’ – the marking of angles.

A piece of tennis court let into the cobblestones.

Thinking in terms of paradigms; here the city is likened with a parlour game, the ‘Monopoly’.

Using different types of games to signify London and Helsinki changes the image: it doesn’t try to be as definitive about the nature of the game but still makes the comparison.

The nature as a competitive construction.

In the end I wanted to clearly use my own voice. There is some self-irony in this piece: sprayed slogans in the cityscape have often a preachy tone when they have a political or religious message.

More about the Stencil Writings

For the Helsinki show at MUU I did this what I find an optimistic and a rather utopian proposal for a public monument: A group of people are becoming ecstatic, or some are and some are less. But whatever the intensity of the experience is, it is felt both independently and in togetherness.

Become Ecstatic (A proposal for a public monument)