Mox Mäkelä: Andjust

Mox Mäkelä: Andjust (2020). Please click on the images to enlarge them.

Abraham Tervaluoto: Saloisten vaivaisukko / The Wooden Pauper of Saloinen, 1866. Saloisten kotiseutumuseo, Arkkukari, Raahe. Photo: Wikipedia.

Raahen vaivainen / The Wooden Pauper of Raahe. "Raahen vanha kirkko paloi vuonna 1908, mutta sen tapuli, jonka seinustalla ukko oli, säilyi. Tapuli purettiin uuden kirkon tieltä vuonna 1909 ja ukko vietiin varastoon. Se saatiin Raahen kaupunginmuseoon ilmeisesti vuodenvaihteessa 1911–1912. Ukolla on mustat silmät ja kulmakarvat sekä Prinssi Rohkean tapaan leikattu tukka. Ukon kiinnitysraudan ylä- ja alapuolella on jälkiä, joita voisi tulkita maalatun kirjoituksen jäänteiksi. ”Kirjoitus” vaikuttaa fraktuuralta, ja silmä on erottavinaan numerot 1691. Jos näin on, ohittaa Raahen Prinssi Rohkea iältään Hauhon Bartimeuksen ja olisi näin Suomen vanhin vaivaisukko. Pituus 81 cm, hartiat 20 cm." Photo: Mox Mäkelä. Data: Kirjastovirma.

Andjust. A long audio play movie.
    FI 2020. P+D+SC+DP+S+ED: Mox Mäkelä. Sound studio: Taajuusvarjostin. Narrator: Frank Boyle (English version), Martti Suosalo (Finnish version).
    With: Anders Anttila (Andjust), Ari Arvilommi, Terttu Erdmann, Aulis Junes, Osmie Järvinen, Katja Kiuru, Antti Mäkelä, Petri Kiviniemi, Anna Koskela, Rami Rusinen, Toivo Kamutta, Raakel Kamutta, Raija Anttila, Juha Mäntynen, Leo Martikainen, Martti Suosalo.
    104 min (Finnish version), 110 min (English version)
    English translation: Kristian London.
    Corona lockdown viewings.
    A private Vimeo preview link.
    The English version (narrated by Frank Boyle) and the Finnish version (narrated by Martti Suosalo) viewed at a forest retreat in Punkaharju on a tv screen, 16–23 July 2020.

Wikipedia: "Pauper statues (Finnish: vaivaisukko, Swedish: fattiggubbe) are alms boxes in the form of carved wooden statues on the outside walls of Lutheran churches in Finland and in Sweden. The statues represent poor and often disabled men or veterans begging for alms. The figures usually have a small metal box inside and a slot in the chest for inserting coins. They were used from the 17th to 19th century for collecting money for the poor."

AA: Two years ago Mox Mäkelä released her first feature film Vieras / Strange with the subtitle "Kuunnelmaelokuva" / "Long audio play movie". It is enjoying a distinguished international run including Tate Modern, and is currently on display in the programme of Sacramento Underground Film & Arts Festival, 23-26 July 2020 (online edition due to the corona lockdown).

Mox Mäkelä is a multi-talented Finnish conceptual artist. Since 1978 she has mounted exhibitions, collages, installations, actions and performances. She has pioneered new approaches in moving images and video projections for environment art. She also creates movies, radioplays and short stories.

Andjust is another long audio play movie, driven by a narrator's voice. In Strange, there were several voices; in this movie, only one: Frank Boyle in the English edition, and Martti Suosalo in the Finnish one. It is a stream of consciousness full of allusions, associations and references.

Again, the visual approach is the opposite of minimalism. Andjust is a work of imagist excess based on collage, bricolage and a collector mania of objets trouvés. It is a Dadaist visual poem based on superimpositions, installations, collisions, animations, reflections and negative images. From sober observations it switches to low angles and majestic landscape views. Mox Mäkelä's cinema emerges from original conceptual ideas of hers. At times I have fleeting associations to others, like Harry E. Smith's occultist Heaven and Earth Magic, but in the approach to animation only.

William K. Everson analyzed the visual approaches of two masters of the Western. In William S. Hart's movies the land is dominant and the skyline is high in the frame. In John Ford's films the skyline is low, and the wide open sky is the dominant motif. Mox Mäkelä is Fordian. The cloud motif was also prominent in Finnish mainstream cinema of the studio era, particularly cumulus clouds, also central in Andjust. A recurrent contemporary image is the wind turbine.

The wabi-sabi aesthetics is another hallmark: the attraction to objects with a patina of time. The wabi-sabi dimension is one explanation to the collector mania of objects that have lost their usefulness. In the cinema the philosopher of this aesthetics is Tarkovsky (Запечатлённое время / Versiegelte Zeit). Mox Mäkelä brings this theme to the extremes of dilapidated houses, mold-ridden conserves and lichen-covered objects.

The vision of the collector mania is seemingly the opposite of Marie Kondo's Konmari discipline, but the overflow of useless things brings us to a parallel parodical viewpoint of the consumer society.

Like in Vieras / Strange, Mox Mäkelä offers a point of observation outside everything. This time the protagonist is not a creature from outer space. Andjust is a war invalid. Like the protagonist of Dog Nail Clipper, the novel by Veikko Huovinen and the movie by Markku Pölönen, he has been hit by a bullet in the head in the war. A piece of metal has stuck in the brain, and he has become an eternal outsider. A village idiot if we want to call him so. The movie is a reflection of his delirium and a catalogue of his obsessions including paranoia and a fear of radioactivity. In him we can look at our reflection in a twisted mirror.

A recurrent parallel figure is the pauper statue, a presence in Nordic Lutheran churches from the age of Queen Christina to the 19th century. They were also often reminders of war invalids who needed our help.

The musical collage has been created with loving care. The compilation score opens new dimensions to what we see. The Narva March is Finland's revered military funeral march that refers to the Great Northern War over 300 years ago. There is a rich mix of classical music from the Baroque (Couperin, Lully) to Romanticism (Saint-Saëns) and Impressionism (Debussy). There are old hymns and popular evergreens (the serene "Sunday Morning", the risqué cuplé "The Cursed Melody"). The music's wabi-sabi flavour is also essential in Mox Mäkelä's time machine.

Andjust is a barrage of sounds and images. Caught in a time warp, the protagonist, lost in his own world, makes us see otherwise. In order to digest everything, I need to stop the overflow from time to time and see this exceptional work in periods of 20–30 minutes at a time.

Like Vieras, Andust is self-financed, made outside all support systems of the establishment, and again the result is a rich, rewarding, ambitious, assured and professional achievement of contemporary art.

Toivo Särkkä: Vaivaisukon morsian / [The Bride of the Wooden Pauper] (1944) with Ansa Ikonen.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SOUNDTRACK, PHOTOGRAPH AND ARTWORK LISTING:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SOUNDTRACK, PHOTOGRAPH AND ARTWORK LISTING:

When the Saints Go Marching In, trad. (instrumental)
Porter Heaps, hammond organ

Léon Jessel: Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
Ken Griffin, hammond organ

Tiroler Knappeltanz, trad.
The South Tyrolean Dance Group

Josquin Des Prés: Instrumentalstück, Vive le Roy – Adieu mes amours – Basies moy – De tous biens (Canon: Petrus et Johannes currunt in puncto)
Concentvs Mvsicvs Ensembke Für Alte Music

James I. Russell: Where the River Shannon Flows
Ken Griffin, organ

Johan Sebastian Bach: Prelude G-dur
Venni Kuosma, organ

Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold
Orchestra of the Germain State Opera, Berlin
Dir. Rudolf Kempe

François Couperin: L’Arlequine (Harlekin)
Ingrid Heiler, cembalo

François Couperin: Le tic-toc-chok ou les Maillotins (Spiel der Hämmerchen)
Ingrid Heiler, cembalo

François Couperin: Les Barricades mystérieuses
Ingrid Heiler, cembalo

Ba Dilbar (Uzbek Song), trad.
Yaikhel Sabzanov, dir. Yakut Bobodustov
Shoista Mullodzhanova, solo

Rez (Tadzhik Dance Rhytms), trad.
Avner Aminov, Doira

Niccolò Paganini: Violinkonzert Nr. 1 in D-dur, op. 6
Symphonie Orchester Radio Genf, dir. Gianfranco Rivoli
Ricardo Odnoposoff, violin

Jean-Baptiste Lully: Menuet du Bourgeois gentilhomme
Lyrics: Molière
M. Denis D’Ines, Societaire de la Comédie-Francaise,
Orchestre sous la direction de Raymond Charpentier,
Directeur de musique de la Comédie-Française

Johann Sebastian Bach:  Matthäus-Passion
Münchener Bach Chor, Münchener Bach Orchester
dir. Karl Richter

Mox Mäkelä: The Compositions and Improvisations

Georges Bizet / Pablo de Sarasate: Carmen Fantasie op. 25
London Symphony Orchestra, dir. Pierino Gampa
Ruggiero Ricci, violin

Narvan marssi, trad.
Laivaston Soittokunta

Веники (= Brooms), trad.
Государственный Академицеский Русский Хор СССР
Dir.  А. Свешников

George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra
Raymond Lewenthal, piano

Giacchino Rossini: Carmen, Finale
Renato Zanelli, baritone

Встань, пройдись!, trad.
Lydia Ruslanova

Claude Debussy: Clair de Lune, No. 3 of ”Suite Bergamasque”
José Iturbi, piano

Leo Delibes: Coppelia Ballet, No. 1 Valse
L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, dir. Ernst Ansermet

William Henry Monk: Abide with Me; Fast Falls the Eventide
Lyrics: Henry Lyte
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, dir. David Willcocks
Simon Preston, organ

Jeremiah Clarke: Interlude / King William’s March
The New England Brass Ensemble
E. Power Biggs, organ

Henry Purcell: Trumpet Tune ”Martial Air”
The New England Brass Ensemble
E. Power Biggs, organ

Gioachino Rossini: La gazza ladra
Philharmonia Orchestra, dir. Guido Cantelli

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto G-dur, ”Alla rustica”
Zagreben Solisten, dir. Antonio Janigro

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (arr. Rachmaninov): The Flight of the Bumble-Bee (from Tsar Saltan)
Vladimir Horowitz, piano

Giacomo Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots: Nobles seigneurs
Sigrid Onégin, alto

George Bizet: The Pearl Fishers: Mi par d’udir ancora
Heddle Nash, tenor

James I. Russell: Where the River Shannon Flows
Ken Griffin, organ

Johann Sebastian Bach: Badinerie
Fedor Grigorev, Glass Bottles instrument

P. J. Hannikainen: Suojelusenkeli
Lyrics: Immi Hellen / Sakari Topelius
Lapsikuoro Satulaulajat, dir. Sirkka Valkola-Laine
Kai Pahlman, piano

Hjalmar Backman: Sunnuntaiaamu
H.M.V. Konserttiorkesteri, dir. Martti Similä

Kirottu sävel, trad.
Lyrics: Rafael Ramstedt
J. Alfred Tanner, singer

The Lancers, Quadrille, Trad.
Paper disc No. 92/1
Ariston music box

Music of New Guinea, Wahgi and Chimbu, trad
&
Music of New North Japan, Hero Narrative Poem, trad.
&
Music of North Japan, Ceremonial, trad.
Primitive music of the world

Haussun Pekon masurkka, trad
Historical direct disc recording of Finnish Folk Music 1935–1954

Emil Kauppi: Soitin pillillä (instrumental part)
Väinö Sola 1909-1944

Johann Sebastian Bach: Concerto for Piano & orchestra No. 1,
In D minor, BWV 1052, II. Adagio
Columbia Symphony Orchestra, dir. Leonard Bernstein
Glenn Gould, piano

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Les tendres plaintes
Huguette Dreyfus, clavecin

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Gigues en rondeau
Huguette Dreyfus, clavecin

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Cinq pièces, La Timide
Huguette Dreyfus, clavecin

Sergey Rachmaninov: The Story of Three Loves,
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini – 18th variation – No. 14 Hit
Jerry Murad (harmonica), with Richard Hayman & his Orchestra
 
Lowell Mason: My Faith Looks up to Thee
Bert Jones, pipe organ

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Suite des Indes galantes, Air des Incas
Orchestre de Chambre des Concerts Lamoureux
Dir. Louis de Froment

Franz Gruber: Silent Night
Viola Turpeinen, vocal with organ

Fredrik Pacius: Suomen Laulu
Polyphon Musicwerke

Michael Corette: Vous qui désirez sans fin
Albert de Klerk, small organ

Johann Sebastian Bach: Concerto for piano & orchestra,
No. 1 in D minor, BWV 1052, II. Adagio
Columbia Symphony Orchestra, dir. Leonard Bernstein
Glenn Gould, piano

Camille Saint-Saëns: Dance macabre
The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra,
dir. John Barnett

...

The Picture Collections of the Finnish Heritage Agency:
from photographers:
Reino Ala-Kulju
Antti Hämäläinen
Martikainen & Kni
Viljo Pietinen
Matti Poutvaara
A. O. Väisänen
I. M. Wartiainen
P. O. Welin

Artworks:
Artturi Mettiäinen, paintings
Lauri Kallio, sculpture

Wooden paupers / Pauper statues from:
Pyhäjoki
Saloinen / Raahe
Kaarlela / Kokkola
Liminka