LAURI ASTALATwin Cities 29.10.2016 – 20.11.2016

 The lights of the city hide from me the light of other worlds but not the knowledge that the starry firmament arches over me.

- Leena Krohn, Tribar, 1993.

Twin Cities was photographed from the top of a high skyscraper in the South Korean capital of Seoul. The panorama is made up of a combination of 24 video images and evolves into two city planets which rotate around the viewer on two screens so that the viewer appears to float like a satellite between the planets.

The Korean sound track examines the urban experience from different angles, the reality of the observer and its relativity. The short stories are as if picked up from the radio aether. The texts are edited quotes from Leena Krohn´s works Tainaron, Tribar and Doña Quixote and other citizens. My warmest thanks to Leena Krohn, who kindly gave me permission to use her texts.

In my Twin Cities work, I ponder how to picture or describe a city, to view it as an outsider, alienated by a strange place and culture. At the same time, the work examines the relationship between reality and the cinematic.

Lauri Astala

Lauri Astala's (b.1958) output comprises of sculptures, videos and computer-assisted video installations. He draws on concepts and experiences of space and the cultural structures that shape them. Astala has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in collective exhibitions and film and video festivals in Finland and abroad since 1989. He was awarded the State Prize for Visual Arts in 2007 and the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland in 2013.

Thanks to: Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse and 1Store.