IRKI Aims at the Kernel of Creativity

Friday November 4th marks the premiere of IRKI – Three Sound Visions, a video art concert at the Sibelius Museum in Turku. IRKI challenges the ways of performing classical music, questions the conceptualism of video art, and stirs music video mannerisms, as nine young artists demonstrate what happens when video image and music are created simultaneously to play an equal role in the finished artwork.

IRKI – Three Sound Visions is the fruit of the Musicam Video project initiated and coordinated by mixed-art association Poike from Pori. A group of up-and-coming artists – musicians, composers of new music and video artists – were invited by Poike to participate in Musicam Video. Seven of these artists came from Finland, two from Poland, and what they had in common was the interest in mixed-art and the desire to push their professional boundaries. The artists got to know one another during a four-day workshop in October 2010, where they formed three groups that each consisted of a video artist, a composer and a musician. Now, a year later, the pieces created through this exceptional mixed-art collaboration are ready for their premiere.

Between light and darkness

One of the three pieces that premiere in IRKI is Sonnenschände. Sonnenwende. by visual artist Laura Pawela, guitarist Kimmo Rahunen and composer Maria Kallionpää. The title Sonnenschände. Sonnenwende. refers to winter solstice and the piece pursues the moment of fading sunlight and ever-expanding darkness. The black-and-white, almost dance-like images of Laura Pawela and the classical guitar played by Kimmo Rahunen over rough and flat soundscape comment each other. Composer Maria Kallionpää wrote the piece for guitar, electric guitar and electronics, which she herself plays at the performance.

Maria Kallionpää (born 1981) is pianist and composer from Satakunta Region. She graduated from Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences in 2006, from the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2009, and in 2010 she completed a postgraduate composition course at the Univärsität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna. She has also studied music technology and piano at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki as well as at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. Currently Kallionpää is working on a doctoral thesis on composition at the Oxford University.

Her music has been performed at various festivals. In January 2010, Hommage a Schumann-Zusammenbinden. Winden? – an electroacoustic piece for piano by Kallionpää – premiered at the Musikverein Hall in Vienna. In 2011 Kallionpää was one of the finalists for Tenso Young Composers’ Award. She has participated in several mixed-art projects and performs regularly with the group PianoNow. At the IRKI concert, Kallionpää will also play her new piano composition Raindrop.

The two other pieces featured in IRKI – Three Sound Visions are 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. 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 random 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.