This Is This Wall, Look!

Vappu Jalonen

This Is This Wall, Look!

Installation and text

Group exhibition Outotalo 1, Autotalo (Car House), Pori, 2008

The car house, which has changed into a music shop and after that into an artists' workspace, is labyrinthine, full of corridors and walls built at different times. Only the outer walls of the house have a feeling of permanence. It is a rare lightness of space. What you run into here only in abandoned factories (although they simultaneously spread out above heavy and potentially dangerous, deceptive), in recently squatted houses and what loft construction perhaps aims to do but often fails at because of its readiness, in Deleuze's terms, because of its tree-ness.

Some parts of the car house are more dense than others. The corridor is not dense, it is something one goes through (and lately, things such as vacuum cleaners and abandoned paintings have been stored in it), one is not supposed to stay in it.

The corridor has a wall (a corridor always has a wall?). I take pictures of the wall. I print the pictures the way they are. I cut them into four pieces and copy each piece into an A4 size. I cut them into four pieces and copy each piece again. The size is quite close to the original. I attach the pieces to the wall, to the same place where they were taken from.

Why? To experiment. To rough out my thoughts. To celebrate the almost-nothingness of the corridor with almost-nothing. To dispose of and to increase information. To make a map.

If information is a series of commands, the picture of the wall is the following command: “this is a picture of a wall”. The closer to the original, the more effective the command. Although at that point the picture has of course already been framed, shot from the height of the 160 cm tall photographer and so on. By printing and copying and copying, the information of the picture fades away, the stains and paint on the wall become the white noise of the copy machine. Simultaneously though, the picture approaches the wall, by enlarging the picture it comes near to a 1:1 size with the wall. The copy escapes and approaches the original (or a moment) at the same time.

By attaching the pictures to the wall on their “right” places, by covering a part of the wall with copies, the information (and the command) becomes stronger again: “this is this wall, look”. Still in between there is the action, the simultaneous washing of the picture of information and forcing it to its place, to order and control.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, a map is contrary to drawing or photographing. In contrast to tracing, a map is rhizome-like: diverse and always changing. Although it is difficult for me to separate the concept of a map from maps defined by governments and given from above, from land surveying and control (and from a recently read article about how the Israeli army uses Deleuze's theories in order to become more effective, in other words, more lethal), I am still fascinated by the definition of a map. A map must be produced or constructed and it can always be annulled or assembled, turned upside down and changed. It is similar to a car house where the railing is removed from the way of the car. A corridor one does not only go through. A wall to which a wall is stapled (but really an action).

Translation: Johanna Koskinen

Literature: Gilles Deleuze: Autiomaa: Kirjoituksia vuosilta 1967–1986. Eds. Jussi Kotkavirta, Keijo Rahkonen and Jussi Vähämäki. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 1992 and Gilles Deleuze: Haastatteluja: Gilles Deleuzen ja Félix Guattarin haastatteluja ja kirjoituksia. Finnish translations from Pourparlers (1990) and Dialogues (1977). Eds. Anna Helle, Vappu Helmisaari and Jussi Vähämäki. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto, 2005