Have you seen any of Pilvi Takala’s work? On Discomfort, her largest solo exhibition to date, is reaching the end of its run at Goldsmiths CCA and it’s one of the most thought-provoking yet amusing afternoons I have spent in a gallery or museum.
One reason is that I am forever curious about human nature, and to what extent we do or don't get on with one another. The latter is often for silly reasons. Another appealing aspect is that so much of the social interaction she investigates is face-to-face, which I rarely see in art practice these days. At least in the institutions I have visited.
Takala uses camera footage (as well as text message conversations and other recorded exchanges) in her experiments to take us into specific environments. Each with their own codes of conduct and unwritten rules of engagement.
Then, in a process akin to what sociologists call “breaching”, she bends and breaks those rules to test their validity, and “to touch the grey areas between the rules” as she explained in an interview for Prix de Rome in 2011.
What is normal? What’s not acceptable? What are the benefits of conformity and the consequences of dissent? How do people (re)negotiate these unusual situations that the Finnish artist has created by pushing the boundaries (sometimes at risk to her own personal safety)?
Breaching is a way to open up a discussion and create a narrative fiction that she can share with the public. Take The Trainee (2009), for instance. With Deloitte’s blessing, she spent a month in their marketing department on a research project. Her new colleagues are confused and unnerved by her aloof behaviour as she stares into space and rides the elevator up and down all day. What’s she doing? A little “brain work”, of course. Cue, several flustered emails calling for answers and swift action.
For Close Watch (2022), Takala’s contribution to the Venice Biennale in 2022, she went undercover for six months as a security guard at one of Finland’s largest shopping malls. This time, it was Securitas who agreed to allow her to carry out research – as long as she completed the induction course.
The project “takes a critical look at how power is exercised in public spaces through the private security industry”, her website reads. Through a multi-channel installation of role-playing and discussions, we see how workplace culture and camaraderie form around the extreme views, inappropriate actions and exaggerations of dominant characters in the group.
In the interviews we discover that certain employees actually share concerns about excessive use of force, snap judgments and situations that could quickly get out of hand. Bringing these reservations out in the open is what makes Close Watch so compelling, encouraging the introverts and perhaps less experienced ones to break rank and question what should be tolerated.
Out of that comes a greater awareness of relationships between employees and interactions with the public, and the opportunity to progress. According to The Guardian, Securitas “has since instituted diversity and unconscious bias training for all employees, which may or may not be a result of suggestions [Takala] made after working there”.
The Stroker (2018) was the one that really had be chuckling. Takala plays Nina, wellness consultant and founder of a start-up called Personnel Touch – big lol. She’s been hired by Second Home to lend a reassuring hand, shall we say, around their East London co-working space. What follows is a serious of awkward interactions where some members get into the spirit of things while most others – you’ll be shocked to hear – swerve her and/or recoil in horror.
An email complaint from one of Second Home’s members in The Stroker (2018)
“I was interested in non-verbal negotiation – how people moved their bodies to escape me as I came towards them,” Takala told The Telegraph. What we are watching on the two screens is actually a “remake of reality”, re-enactments based on a script that drew from transcriptions, details of complaints and notes.
Elsewhere, don’t miss Takala confusing the hell out of security staff and officials at Disneyland when she turns up in full costume and make-up as (The Real?) Snow White (2009). Much to the delight of kids and their parents, however. Another opportunity to probe the limits of control and bounds of acceptable behaviour.
“Disney’s fantasy is extremely well produced and the park is tightly controlled to create a specific image,” she told Art Monthly in 2016. “But your fantasy has to be in line with Disney’s, which might be completely different from your relationship to the character in an animated film.
“I picked Snow White because her look in the original film is so recognisable and exists in so many variations that she seems to be in the public domain. I was interested in how we transform into consumers at the gates of Disneyland. How adults, who wouldn’t mind anyone dressing as Snow White elsewhere, can claim that there is a ‘real’ Snow White in the park.”
How we dress, to a certain extent, dictates whether or not we are accepted in certain places and that’s something Takala has been exploring since her days at art school. It’s not on show at Goldsmiths but in 2004 she created a book called Event on Garnethill while on an exchange programme in Glasgow.
There was a clear divide between the art school and the Catholic school in the area. Her goal was simple: wear the school uniform and see how she was treated differently by each ‘side’. “What happened was very minimal, but it shifted the whole social world on the street,” she said.
“When the art school students saw me wearing the uniform, they wouldn’t recognise me. If I greeted them they were horrified and told me I’d go to jail. There was this fear and suspicion that there must be something wrong with it.”
To you and I, feelings of awkwardness and embarrassment might be like hazard lights – and sign to tread carefully or think again. To Takala, there are confirmation that something is working. “And that is a skill I still use in my practice: my ability to resist social pressures and codes,” she explains. “Some people know how to draw, but that’s the tool I use.”
Aside from her audacity, what I most admire about Takala is her ability to, time and again, find unexpected ways to challenge the social order and to question why so many of us fear the unknown. Discomfort is her space. “We accept control because we want to be safe, but what it means to be ‘safe’ should always be reconsidered.”, she says.
“The feeling of being afraid doesn’t necessarily mean that the situation is dangerous. I try to disrupt points where I see that there is a lot of fear grounded in places where we could afford to reconsider. For example, when I am wearing the school uniform, the first assumption is that it is some kind of predatory disguise, but then what else is there about that uniform?”
Whether it’s Securitas, Deloitte or Frieze, the artist also manages to maintain the integrity of her work, despite having to ask permission for her intervention, leveraging her position as an insider-outsider to maximum effect.
Type her name into the Google search field, press return and you will see a biography that describes Takala as a “performance artist”. I think that’s doing her a disservice. To me, her practice is more about slow interrogation and up-close examination than entertainment.
The approach feels so instinctive and impulsive, open to chance, it belies the rigour that underpins it. It might amuse you. But this isn’t candid camera or Trigger Happy TV. There is no big reveal or punchline. No script, only a loose set of rules or guidelines provided by a character that she then improvises around.
Nevertheless, the work is often funny and I wanted to know how big a factor humour is in her process. Is it a by-product of her practice or does it hold greater potential? I'm thinking about how stand-ups use comedy as a portal to personal realisation or insight for their audience.
Takala was kind enough to respond. “I don’t intentionally use humour in my work or plan it in, but the tension and awkwardness created in the interventions make the viewers laugh,” she says. “It’s not funny to anyone in the situation, but a way to release tension for those who get to watch it safely from a screen. Also people laugh at quite different things often.”
Whether you laugh or not, this is bold yet relatable work. I can’t wait to see where Takala goes next.
On Discomfort is at Goldsmiths CCA until 4 June (FREE).