Lasse Vairio: Delade drömmar / Shared Dreams

Lasse Vairio: Delade drömmar / Shared Dreams (FI 2021). A black and white photograph showing a cliff, the sun and a ship.

The artist Lasse Vairio was born in 1966 in Helsingfors.

FI 2021. Artist: Lasse Vairio. Single channel video, stereo sound, shot on 16 mm b&w print stock.
    23 min
    Kuvan kevät 2021: MFA Degree Show of the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki.
    Exhibition Laboratory (C), Merimiehenkatu 36 C, 00150, Helsinki
    Viewed on 1 June 2021, with a meeting with Lasse Vairio.

Lasse Vairio:

" Något föll ned
Något gjorde ett märke i örat
Medan jag diskade en bottenlös kastrull

från väster till öster
(vänster till höger)
Mellan de höga tallarna
och ner i Havet

utan att stiga över tröskeln
håller jag andan
för att inte bli del av "

...

" Something came down
something made a mark on my ear
while I was washing a bottomless saucepan

from the west to the east
(left to the right)
Between the tall pines
and down in the Sea

without climbing over the treshold
holding my breath
not to be part of  " (Lasse Vairio)

AA: A lyrical poem, a personal film, a documentary journey of memory and free associations. Shared Dreams also belongs to the current of artists' films relevant to the philosophy of perception.

I enter in the middle, facing a terrain vague view that to me somehow evokes the opening of Georges Franju's Le Sang des bêtes or vacant spaces captured by Antonioni. It is a scene of emptiness, charged with mystery.

Memories include a caged child, an early humiliation by father. Time lapse footage catches a crescent Moon crossing the night sky. Several objects are imbued with what Andrei Tarkovsky called "sealed time", with affinities with the Japanese wabi sabi aesthetics.

The sky and the sea are major elements. Personally, I was reminded of my earliest childhood memories: the sky and the sea of the harbour city Vaasa. A child cannot make sense of bigger contexts and continuities, just the immediate experience of the elements. Jellyfish is examined in close-up.

A lighthouse is glimpsed, with a Fresnel lens such as was highlighted in Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse, and what I believe is a radar. We travel far North to the land of ice and mountains. We visit a construction site. We pause to meditate on estranged details of autumnal nature. Embers are glowing in a brief colour footage in a black and white film.

The non-stop screening proceeds to the terrain vague anew, and I start re-watching the film. The images now reveal new depth and density. This impressive, lyrical movie gains in strength when revisited.

The title of the film reminds me of Jean Cocteau's opening words in Le Testament d'Orphée:

« Le privilège du cinématographe, c'est qu'il permet à un grand nombre de personnes de rêver ensemble le même rêve."

" It is the film-maker's privilege to be able to allow a large number of people to dream the same dream together. "

The digital presentation succeeds in conveying the sensitivity of the photochemical 16 mm stock on which the film has been made.