The True Nature of Things
The True Nature of Things (Finnish title Asioiden todellinen luonne) is a two-channel video installation that consists of two apparently independent parts. They interact with each other, or wage a stealth war, perhaps.
The footage mixes self-photographed and found material. The left channel round image began as an individual video performance but ended up as an integral part of this work. The soundtrack builds itself around a conversation recorded on a found cassette tape and concludes with a quote of C.G. Jung on similar subject matters.
The True Nature of Things studies the indescribable: an individual’s personal experience of existence, which may not necessarily match the objective reality. Simultaneously experiences become mediated – vicarious, objectified, distorted. Events are experienced through the screen of a smart phone. Pics or it didn’t happen!
Virtual networks shatter consensus reality. Trusted media sinks into mush, where supposed delutions, speculations and conspiracy theories appear equally authentic. The infodeluge shapes a person’s identity and drives him to, by fear of drowning, attach to any driftwoods encountered. One forgets that all matter is constantly on the brink of decay. The true nature of things may only reveal itself once the overcovering structures collapse.
2014
2-channel video installation
06’15”
2x HD 1080p, 16:9 / round, color
Audio 2.0
Concept, images, sounds, edit NIKO SKORPIO
Studio session:
–Camera and lights TIINA LEHIKOINEN
–Special effects MIRJA KURRI
–Special effects consultancy SATU KARHUMAA
Production PARAFERAL
Above: Freeze frames.
Below: The True Nature of Things installed at TR1 Taidehalli, Tampere, Finland 2014. Photos by Anni Waris.
“I was tormented and on edge; everything irritated me;
everything was too material, too crude and clumsy,
terribly limited both spatially and spiritually.
It was all an imprisonment, for reasons impossible to divine,
and yet it had a kind of hypnotic power, a cogency,
as if it were reality itself,
for all that I had clearly perceived its emptiness.
Although my belief in the world returned to me,
I have never since entirely freed myself
of the impression that this life is a segment of existence
which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe
especially set up for it.”
– C.G. Jung
