2024
Portrait of a Poet (mutual support)
Portrait of a Poet (staccato)
Portrait of a Poet (glissando)
Portrait of a Poet (Taneli Viljanen)

suite of four 4K videos, shuffle play
endless duration

'Lately, I have been particularly interested in portraiture as a form of dialogue. I suppose, as something inherently reciprocal and mirroring, that can potentially dissolve boundaries between self and other, but also, on the other hand, as a point of contact, where the very same boundaries can diverge, only to recede further apart. This multi-directional and fluctuating movement seems to interest me. My inquiries seem to be intrinsically tied to specific material questions, as well as to methodologies deeply rooted in the making of moving images.

How to destabilize a set of binaries so innate to portraiture? These ostensible divisions between subject and object, self and other, maker and subject, portraitist and sitter, or the gaze and its object. Can also the camera be approached dialogically? And how? So that it becomes a tool of exchange, that only heightens the unfixity of its subjects; allows images to be porous, elastic, uncontrolled, and thus, endlessly fluid. Could a camera, or lens based media in general, not freeze or capture? Or relinquish trying to find ”a soul”, ”a core”, ”an essence” or ”truth” about its subject, but rather acknowledge something else entirely, and not even function on the axis of empowerment/exploitation.'

(Excerpt from 'The Uses of Not', an email conversation between Jani Ruscica and Taneli Viljanen 2023-ongoing)