http://areena.yle.fi/1-2979951
Invisible Friend at Helsinki Contemporary
PILVI TAKALA
Invisible Friend
27.11.-24.1.2016
Helsinki Contemporary
Bulevardi 10
invisiblefriend.fi
Invisible Friend is a free text message service for anyone who wants to have an anonymous, personal conversation with someone who will always reply. You simply send a text to the Invisible Friend phone number and a writer on call will text you back. You lead the conversation, and a dedicated group of writers work collectively to give you their full attention. They don’t know who you are or what your phone number is, and the details of your private conversation will remain between you and the writers. The service runs from 16 November 2015 until 10 January 2016, with writers on call daily from 8am until 2am.
Text messaging as a medium is conversational and intimate, but it can also be completely anonymous and private. The simplicity of the text message leaves maximum space for imagination, and the potential for a real-time response makes it alive and immediate. EachInvisible Friend is created in the mind of the user with the support of a team of writers. The writers enter the conversations without any agenda of their own, and their improvised replies are based upon the user’s input. Invisible Friend fosters an intuitive form of thinking that doesn’t require an ultimate goal, a problem that must be solved, or a specific structure. The user does not have to name a purpose for the conversation or please or impress anyone. All they have to do is text whatever they want, and continue for as long as they want to.
The idea for Invisible Friend came from Takala’s experience in working at a text message service in the US, where the users pay for having a pretend girlfriend or boyfriend texting them. Takala was fascinated by the potential in the fictional space created in the text message exchange, but like many of the other workers, she was frustrated by the inconsistencies and lack of quality in the existing service. The video at the back of the gallery is based on conversations on a discussion forum between the writers working at this US service, trying to figure out together how to be an invisible partner.
Invisible Friend takes Pilvi Takala’s performative and narrative practice to a completely new territory, where each user’s story is unique and personal. It is presented in the context of a gallery exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary. This exhibition is her first solo show at Helsinki Contemporary and the first solo to be exhibited in Helsinki since 2009. Invisible Friend does not take place in the physical gallery space, but it reaches out from the space.
S'WONDERFUL
The exhibition S'WONDERFUL, curated by Beatriz Escudero at La Casa Encendida (Madrid), will open November 19 at 8 pm. The project was selected in the last Inéditos 2015 open call.
Jordi Ferreiro will offer two unique sessions of his performance Hyperconference at 8.30 and 9 pm.
Artists: Rita Ponce de León, Pilvi Takala, Pedro Torres, Dora García, Rafel G. Bianchi, Jordi Ferreiro, Priscila Fernandes and Tomaž Furlan.
ineditos.lacasaencendida.es/ediciones
Office Space
Office Space
Nov 7, 2015 - February 14, 2016
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
United States
Office Space cleverly subverts contemporary office
culture as a means to explore labor practices in the 21st century
post-industrial economy.
As offices become mobile, the nine-to-five becomes a nonstop 24-hour cycle, and the service and information economy predominates, this exhibition reflects on the rise of "immaterial labor" in developed countries. Through video, sculpture, painting, and installation, the artists in Office Space interrogate universally recognized aspects of office architecture, design, aesthetics, and protocols as a means to understand the shift toward immaterial labor practices.
Stay tuned for details about the opening celebration on Sat, Nov 7.
Artists include: Cory Arcangel, Mark Benson, KP Brehmer, Joseph DeLappe, Alex Dordoy, Harun Farocki, Bea Fremderman, Idle Screenings (with works by Stephanie Davidson, Jacob Broms Engblom, Manuel Fernandez, Paul Flannery, Kim Laughton, and Jasper Spicero), Joel Holmberg, Josh Kline, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Julien Prévieux, Laurel Ptak, Sean Raspet, Mika Tajima, Pilvi Takala, Ignacio Uriarte, Andrew Norman Wilson, and Haegue Yang.
www.ybca.org/office-space
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