IRKI – Three Sound Visions

Equality between Art Forms

Is it possible to see music? And what do images sound like? Three years ago a group of artists of different fields started to ponder these questions. The usual way is that a musician is given a finished score, or a composer is hired to write the soundtrack for a film that has already been shot. Would it be possible to create both sound and image simultaneously and have them play equal parts in the finished artwork?

Nine unprejudiced artists – musicians, composers and video artists, seven from Finland and two from Poland – set out to search for the answer to the aforementioned questions. Through their quest, IRKI – Three Sound Visions was born. “Irki” is the name of a small village in southern Poland and also signifies a quiet distorted sound. In Finnish south-western dialect, “irki” means letting go. All this made IRKI the perfect title for an international mixed-art project that was created by sharing ideas across language barriers and letting go of traditional working methods.

IRKI – Three Sound Visions premiers at the Sibelius Museum in Turku on November 4, 2011 and consists of three independent mixed-art pieces.  These pieces are Sonnenschände. Sonnenwende. by Laura Pawela, Maria Kallionpää and Kimmo Rahunen, REPEAT (End of the World) by Arttu Merimaa, Johanna Kärkkäinen and Markku Klami, and Still Life with Mary by Milja Viita, Juho Laitinen and Aleksander Nowak. Each piece is the result of equal collaboration between a video artist, composer and a musician.

Sonnenschände. Sonnenwende. is composed for electric and classical guitar, shot on video and was inspired by the ever-expanding darkness of winter solstice. REPEAT (End of the World) combines flute with recorded sound and video image and is constructed around a scene where members of a cult get together to welcome the end of the world. Still Life with Mary depicts encounters and a language-barrier-crossing moment in the Polish village of Rajcza through black-and-white 16 mm film, cello, sound technology and recorded sound.

IRKI – Three Sound Visions will be re-performed at the Pori Art Museum on December 2, 2011 as part of the See Music! event and more shows are planned for 2012. IRKI has been produced within the Musicam Video project that was initiated by the Mixed-art Association Poike. Poike was founded in the city of Pori in 2009 and its mission is to encourage mixed-art activities across artistic boundaries. Musicam Video by Poike was the only independent production from the Satakunta Region to be featured in the Turku 2011 programme. 

The night before the IRKI premiere, on November 3, Poike’s collaboration partner Pori Sinfonietta will play at the Sigyn Hall in Turku. The literature-inspired Great Tales II concert features soprano Helena Juntunen, and the orchestra is conducted by Jukka Iisakkila. 

 

Anna Niilekselä