Time Machine

Mika Taanila’s Time Machines exhibition showcases key works from the artist’s oeuvre. In works that blend fact with fiction, Taanila revisits technological utopias and future visions and dredges technical designs and scientific experiments from the past.

In his film installations and films, Taanila often uses found footage from archives or other sources, such as amateur films and advertising and educational material. His films have in fact been referred to as media archaeological excavations.

In his work, Mika Taanila investigates the growing presence of technology in our society from different perspectives. The three-channel video installation The Most Electrified Town in Finland (2012) is a poetic observational documentary about the construction of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant in Eurajoki, Finland. Premiered at dOCUMENTA in Kassel last year, the film investigates the relations between technology, man and nature, and also “life in a nuclear village”. For Taanila, the work is not a direct statement either for or against nuclear power, but rather a speculative reflection on the theme.

One of the most recent works in the exhibition is Six Day Run (2013), a film about ultrarunners in New York that also serves as a kind of paraphrase of the biblical story of the creation over six days. The main character of the film is Ashprihanal Pekka Aalto, a Finnish ultrarunning champion for whom running is a form of continual self-improvement and examination of his own values.

The show in Kiasma also includes works by Taanila previously unseen in Finland, such as the photographic series Black and White Movies (2013). The photographs document the destruction of the artist’s VHS video collection: each photo shows a video cassette destroyed in a manner that fits the plot of the movie in question.

Until March 2, 2014
Mika Taanila
Time Machine
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki, Finland