Collection of Undoings
16 Nickholson Street gallery, May 2022
Fine Arts Work Center, February 2023
Pinni47, June 2023

‘Undoings’ was a video project that compiled selections from a crowdsourced archive documenting ‘useless’ activities. 

Installation view of Undoings
as a part of Server error occurred while getting Cemetery (2023) by Georgia Dickie and Tinja Ruusuvuori
Single-channel video installation with cardboard, found objects and PAYDAY Peanut Caramel Bar

Undoings (2021)

text by: Nell Cardozo and Tinja Ruusuvuori

‘Collection of Undoings’ shows selections from a crowdsourced archive compiled of ‘useless’ activities. Together these speculate on new collective ways of being on the sidelines; of slipping through the cracks; of skipping around and pausing in opposition to the constant forward march of capitalism / progress.

I created the project in dialogue with friends.  Together we responded to adrienne maree brown’s encouragement to “Ask yourself, how do I break my relationship with capitalism today?”, and to a research study (1) that found that people who’d experienced burnout and exhaustion in the workplace reacted by creating small everyday acts of resistance. These ways of resistance were hardly visible or organized but appeared as small, personal not-doings - retreats from the burdensome demands of their work lives. We wanted to take this further and create a video archive that could be used as a resource for anyone seeking a way to a different value structure. There is almost a paradox to it: How can we do this in a way that it doesn’t just become another coping mechanism with the purpose of enabling more productivity?

By undertaking informal video correspondences with friends, originally with Lori Frazer and Liina Kuittinen, I started to recover from my own burnout, and to find a path to more joyous ways of making art. These shared ‘undoings’, that were no longer goal-orientated, became like break-up rituals from individualist thinking and valuing productivity. Making mistakes, procrastinating, play, pleasure, daydreaming - when done with others, these actions manifested new kinds of belief systems on a small scale. Nose wiggling, when repeated in stressful situations, becomes an inner reminder to stay away from a certain kind of thinking. Avoidance becomes a-void-dance; an active strategy to find our way around systems that no longer serve us or nature (a concept created with Niamh Moloney while walking in nature and talking on the phone between two countries).

J. Halberstam writes in The Queer Art of Failure about picking up "discarded local knowledges that are trampled underfoot in the rush to bureaucratise and rationalise an economic order that privileges profit over all kinds of other motivations of being and doing." ‘Collection of Undoings’ taps into a language of resistance that is absurd and gestural, asking how we can build on these idiosyncratic belief systems. How can things have meaning without ‘value’ or ‘purpose’ in a capitalistic sense, and embrace an embodied language of collective pleasure?

1) Suvi Salmenniemi: Kiinnittävät ja kuluttavat siteet: Vieraantuminen ja vastarinta työssä (essay in Tiede & Edistys 1/2021)

Collectively sourced videos: Liina Kuittinen, Lori Frazer, Jonna Lehto, Matilda Matsi, Lada Wilson, Miina Puolitaival, Tinsel Edwards, Natasha Lall, Nikki Jääskeläinen, Edward Bruce, Oktavia Schreiner, Raila Mar, Gunilla Sjövall, Opri Kangas, Karkki, Bella Bellatrix Pirata, Madde Edlund, Jonna Lehto, Minta Metteri, Heather O’Donnell, Anasse Elhasnaoui, Hanna Marno, Venni P, Aleksi Pihkanen, Dexter Stokes-Mellor, Ali sha Sha, Hemn Hussein, Kate Theodore, Kerttu Ojalehto, Jan Ahlstedt, Sisko Pikkumäki, Irina Ruusuvuori, Aapo Sandberg, Heta-Maria Pyhäjärvi, Jane Sharkey, Emmi Hughes, Suzie Eggins, Anna Seppälä, Arto Patrikainen, Aga Paulina Młyńczak, Van Maltese, Elsa Delage, Clarisse Baleja Saïdi, Kim Coleman Foote, Siennie Lee, Gothataone Moeng, Hannah Perrin King, Elizabeth Flood, Sichong Xie, Vicky Tomayko, Georgia Dickie, David Simpson, Susan Blood, Tinja Ruusuvuori, Strange Nature collective, anonymous


2023


Installation view, Undoings (2023)
chalk on a found chalkboard in a demolished office building
Dimensions 300cm x 123cm


Installation view, Undoings (2023)
single-channel video installation on a found dish drainer in a demolished office building




2022

photos: Bart Urbanski/16 Nicholson Street gallery and Nat Hairsine

Collection of Undoings (2021) as a part of “Flock Circumstances” at 16 Nicholson Street Gallery
Three-channel video installation with rope, spandex, fluorescent light


The project was first time developed within the framework of 16Nicholson Street Gallery's 2021 curated programme and shown as a part of 'Flock Circumstance' group exhibition by Madde Edlund, Aga Paulina Mlynczak and Tinja Ruusuvuori, curated by Aga Paulina Mlynczak.