J. A. Juvani (FI): Tanatologia
Tuesday 10.9. 7.00-18.00
Wednesday 11.9. 7.00-18.00
Thursday 12.9. 7.00-18.00
Friday 13.9. 7.00-18.00
Saturday 14.9. 10.00-15.00
University of Eastern Finland, Snellmania building’s lobby | Yliopistonranta 1, Kuopio
Accessible Event
This is my book of the dead. Things I’ve figured out so far. I kept a distance to it by writing in English and not in my native language Finnish. It has helped me to study this subject in a more in-depth way. Writing in English has been a tool for digging deeper than I originally wanted to. Life is a tough lesson to learn. There is no doubt about it. I hope you will find the same comfort in emptiness as I have. That nothing, really isn’t that bad. At least my experience of it isn’t.
It has been a ride. Sometimes I have felt that I am an astronaut floating in space and trying to understand what it’s all about and at the same time keeping and eye on my spaceship, so that I don’t float too far from safety.
Studying death is like watching a white paper underwater. You can see only shadows of water, but really there’s nothing there. Tanatologia is eventually just that. Reflecting life on to nothing. Because everything that is, is life and everything that isn’t, is death.
Death isn’t something we can know, but nevertheless, it is our destination.
Tanatologia is a book and a site specific disappearing installation made with piles of books that are stacked on top of black stools. Eventually the stools are left empty and are free to use.
You can take a copy of the book from the installation.
J. A. Juvani (b. 1988) is an artist from Lapland, whose main tools are video, photo, sculpture and text. As a child, their idol was Ursula from the Little Mermaid.
At the core of J. A. Juvani’s work are themes such as queer, feminism, death, lust, poetry, love, anger, stereotypes, exhausted clichés and general confusion. Juvani works with video, photo, sound, objects and text, all of which have features of performance art.
They currently live and works in Helsinki.