PARVEILUITIÖ TAKES A LOVE – Leena Pukki
Leena Pukki’s exhibition includes two video works featuring the slime mould, or slime mold. The exhibition is the premiere of the work “The swarming mother in search of love”, which deals with the search for love, relationships, sex and reproduction. The exhibition will also feature Time and the Cycle of the Slimeball, completed in 2021.
Classified as amoebae, slimebugs are macroscopic cellular organisms living on the surface of decaying trees, among other things, that are able to move even though they lack muscles, brains or a neurosystem. They are not plants, fungi or animals. Different species of mucosae have different colours and move in different ways and at different speeds.
More about the works:
A swarm of butterflies looking for love, 2024
Digital video, 10 min 30 sec.
The swarming dragon in search of love is a video work about the search for love, relationships, sex and reproduction. The protagonist is a slime mould or slimefly.
The work shows symbols of love, reproductive cell diagrams and gender markers, along which the slime moves on a breeding platform. The patterns are made of oatmeal, which the slime eats. Oatmeal is also animated in the work. The work is shot in time-lapse. The soundtrack is a poetic text.
In love and sex, we often act on instincts and hunches. These phenomena can be treated in biological, psychological or cultural terms. I am interested in the mechanism of love and infatuation and sexual “chemistry”. These phenomena are governed by different rules from normal polite human interaction. One can think of these aspects of life as taking place at the cellular level. What actually happens when a very attractive cellular formulation comes along? Is love a biological process based on finding suitable cells?
In the piece, I also reflect on my own experiences of looking for a partner. The randomness and unfairness of love life, mating and emotions are things over which the individual has no complete control, which is perhaps why they provoke such feelings of disappointment and sadness.
Limpets reproduce sexually from what are known as parveilus cells, or flagellates. They have rather complex sexual relationships. A sperm and an egg are needed for a human being to be born, but the parvovirus cell of a slime moth must meet the opposite parvovirus cell, which has a particular combination of genes. Reproduction with others is not possible. For example, in Physarum polycephalum, there are 720 different gene variants and therefore sexes.
Thank you:
Arts Promotion Centre
Avek
The Time of Limako, 2021
Digital video, 9 min. 9.9 sec. 50 sec.
The Time of the Slime is a video work in which the movement of slime ducks, or slime, is combined with motifs selected from Karelian quilts, or picture bags. The work explores themes of individualism, self-sufficiency, time, circulation, ecosystems and decomposition and decay.
The work draws on the traditional patterns of the Luumäkelä pictorial quilts. Picture-bags, or quilts, were used as bedspreads and were woven, for example, into capias. The patterns used in the work originate from quilt patterns of the Puk and Pätär families, which were woven in the early 20th century according to old patterns.
The age of the patterns or designs cannot be determined, but it is known that picture quilts were woven in Karelia as early as the beginning of the 19th century. Similar patterns also appear in Karelian embroidery patterns. The patterns have different names related to life and living, such as rabbit’s foot, rabbit’s foot, rabbit’s foot, edge-hanger, tree of life, image of the world, or sieve-like.
Similar patterns are used in many different cultures because the patterns are partly determined by the weaving technique.
Karelian picture-books are a preserved pictorial tradition. I feel that the patterns on the quilts carry with them the culture and world view of a bygone era, or at least parts of them. As the climate crisis approaches, it seems necessary to change collective thinking and perceptions of, for example, the good life or things worth striving for.
The limbo is a metaphor for the circulation of everything and its transformation into another form of existence, collectivism and post-humanist thinking. The relationship with nature should, in my opinion, be changed from a one-sided relationship of utility to a relationship of mutual interaction.
The slimy age seeks to shift the focus from the human experience to the other and
to question the individualistic view of life. We are not as individual as we assume, but we are dependent on each other, on microbes, amoebas and animal communities, whether we like it or not. Unnoticed decomposers play an important role in the nutrient cycle and will one day decompose us too.
Thank you:
Finnish Cultural Foundation
The Finnish Fund for Culture
More about the artist:
Leena Pukki (b. 1984) is a visual artist whose work explores interspecies relationships, history, alternative realities, emotions, colours and single-celled organisms. Pukki’s techniques range from media art to large-scale murals, bio-art and installation.
He graduated with a Master of Arts from Aalto University in 2015 and a Master of Fine Arts from the Lahti Art Institute in 2007. Pukki’s works have been shown at the Venice Biennale as part of the Miracle Workers collective, in Helsinki Art Hall, Pori and Lappeenranta Art Museums and at film festivals in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Indonesia, Canada and Ukraine.
Pukki is a founding member of the Route Couture artists’ group, a member of the Miracle Workers collective, MUU ry, AV- Ark and Biotaiteen seursa. She lives and works in Helsinki but is originally from Luumäki in South Karelia.
www.leenapukki.com