Iona Roisin

COMPLIANCE is a poetic examination of how trauma reverberates through the years. A voice speaks, sometimes sings, sometimes fails to say. It is trying to address the points at which various confusions meet and link, in an articulated chain or a ripple. When a discussion of trauma isn’t centred on its origin, the aftermath can play out. Here, the water facilitates a looking across time, mirrors and windows, as well as gaps and blank spots. A sort of portal, upon which bodily evidence materialises. The voice is sense-making, it maps and unpicks, it looks to teenagers, to suburbia, to middle England, to queer futures, to healing. COMPLIANCE exists both as a kind of haunting, and as a means of dealing with being haunted.

The Stroker refers to the nickname Pilvi Takala received during her two week intervention at Second Home, a trendy co-working space in East London. She went around lightly touching people as part of a cutting-edge well-being programme. The nuances of movements and looks demonstrate how people negotiate 'acceptable behaviour' in the workspace.

COMPLIANCE is a poetic examination of how trauma reverberates through the years. A voice speaks, sometimes sings, sometimes fails to say. It is trying to address the points at which various confusions meet and link, in an articulated chain or a ripple. When a discussion of trauma isn’t centred on its origin, the aftermath can play out. Here, the water facilitates a looking across time, mirrors and windows, as well as gaps and blank spots. A sort of portal, upon which bodily evidence materialises. The voice is sense-making, it maps and unpicks, it looks to teenagers, to suburbia, to middle England, to queer futures, to healing. COMPLIANCE exists both as a kind of haunting, and as a means of dealing with being haunted.

COMPLIANCE is a poetic examination of how trauma reverberates through the years. A voice speaks, sometimes sings, sometimes fails to say. It is trying to address the points at which various confusions meet and link, in an articulated chain or a ripple. When a discussion of trauma isn’t centred on its origin, the aftermath can play out. Here, the water facilitates a looking across time, mirrors and windows, as well as gaps and blank spots. A sort of portal, upon which bodily evidence materialises. The voice is sense-making, it maps and unpicks, it looks to teenagers, to suburbia, to middle England, to queer futures, to healing. COMPLIANCE exists both as a kind of haunting, and as a means of dealing with being haunted.

COMPLIANCE is a poetic examination of how trauma reverberates through the years. A voice speaks, sometimes sings, sometimes fails to say. It is trying to address the points at which various confusions meet and link, in an articulated chain or a ripple. When a discussion of trauma isn’t centred on its origin, the aftermath can play out. Here, the water facilitates a looking across time, mirrors and windows, as well as gaps and blank spots. A sort of portal, upon which bodily evidence materialises. The voice is sense-making, it maps and unpicks, it looks to teenagers, to suburbia, to middle England, to queer futures, to healing. COMPLIANCE exists both as a kind of haunting, and as a means of dealing with being haunted.

Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ”other” places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, An Uncountable Number of Threads is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.

Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ”other” places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, An Uncountable Number of Threads is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.

Travel films have an established format with their own conventions, history and baggage. It is a medium that has all too often sought to control, define and dictate perceptions of ”other” places. Comprised of footage shot while travelling on group excursions across Russia in 2019, An Uncountable Number of Threads is an attempt to draw out the ethical restrictions of a travelogue, while questioning how (and why) to make one. At times there is an awkward tourist-gaze, aware of its outsider position. But as a self-reflexive work that considers its own creation, it ultimately unravels, as the artist rationalises themselves out of a particular way of working, inviting the viewer into their uncertainty.

The Stroker refers to the nickname Pilvi Takala received during her two week intervention at Second Home, a trendy co-working space in East London. She went around lightly touching people as part of a cutting-edge well-being programme. The nuances of movements and looks demonstrate how people negotiate 'acceptable behaviour' in the workspace.

In 'Muistatko (a method)' a singer attempts to decipher a song they are singing in a language they do not speak. The 1955 song 'Muistatko Monrepos’n’ was the first Finnish record to go gold and is still the fourth best selling single in Finland. The location it refers to occupies a specific place in Finnish cultural memory, as somewhere that was ‘lost’, and as such the waltz is highly loaded. What meaning remains, when the music is stripped away? At present, the nostalgic is not a neutral territory, it can be hard to separate weaponised nostalgia from its more well-intended forms. When its affective qualities are combined with notions of national identity, a potentially difficult space opens up. Muistatko (a method) is about trying to feel the weight of this context, from the outside.