Pilvi Takala. Portrait courtesy of the artist
Finnish artist Pilvi Takala is a master of infiltrations. Her videos often feature her performing subtle acts of disobedience, never crossing legal boundaries but causing confusion and confrontation nevertheless. In “Real Snow White” from 2009, for example, Takala tries to enter Disneyland in a full Disney Snow White costume, and gets herself banned from the premises. Only children or adults employed by the park are allowed to wear costumes, security guards strain to explain while fans, oblivious to the fine difference, crowd her to get a photo.
Takala is this year’s winner of the Emdash Award, which funds a project by a young artist at London’s Frieze art fair. Here she discusses preparations for a workshop with children, which is at the heart of her project.
Interview by Hili Perlson
Sleek: Why did you decide to work with children, and what are they supposed to do exactly?
Pilvi Takala: They’ll decide on how to spend the money. The award money is allocated for a presentation at the fair, and to me it felt constrained: it reaches a wide audience, but mostly from the art world. It’s a huge event, but also a closed bubble. So my initial thought was that it has to have a meaning outside the fair. I decided to hand over the decision over this budget to someone else, and I find decision making in a group an interesting theme. Then I decided it should be a group of children because children are never in a position to decide over budgets. This is an unusual opportunity, it’s not your usual “if you could, what would you do” but a chance to actually realise a project.
Who are the children?
They’re kids between the ages of 10 and 12 from a youth club in Hackney Wick. It’s beneficial that the kids have some kind of common ground. I’m working with educator Polly Brannan, who’s experienced with children and knows the hardships, and there are legal issues to consider… She’s the practical side. If it were adults we could sit in a room for five days and talk, but here we need to be more active. The proposals must come from them. That’s the most challenging thing – making them understand that they can do whatever.
And you won’t interfere no matter what they decide to do with the money? Whatever the money will be spent on, it’ll be very meaningful for these kids. Hopefully, it will also be meaningful for a larger community, and the process itself will be meaningful for many. There are no requirements the project has to fulfil. It’ll be art whatever they do, as it’s presented at Frieze with the Emdash money. The only rule is that they have to decide collectively. That’s the challenge. There are many models and methods of how to reach decisions in a group, and all of them have advantages and disadvantages. At the workshops, we’ll explore different methods so they can pick the one that they feel is the most fair and useful. If it’s a lesson in anything then it’s a lesson in collective decision-making.
Are you trying to find some intuitive relation to money by working with kids? I guess. As an artist you can’t plan everything and be in control because you end up with something closed and boring. That’s my feeling. I guess its more natural for kids to be more intuitive. We will explain to them that they’re part of the project, and that the money didn’t fall from the sky. But they don’t have this selfawareness of being watched by the art world.
How do you convey the abstract idea of value to children? What if they just want to buy £10,000 of ice cream?
What are the important things for them? There’s the decision-making strategy that will be developed, and then there’s the intention – what do they really want. That’s how artists always have to work: some ideas are just too expensive so you want to do something cheap that’s as good or even better. You have to find the core of the idea. If they propose something huge that’s not in the budget, like going to the moon, we’d tell them this could be impossible. That’s a big part of the group decision – seeing what’s valuable.
Are you prepared for chaos?
I’m not worried about that. I’m sure they have a lot of urgency to do a project and use the money.
Pilvi Takala’s Emdash Award project is at Frieze London, Regent’s Park, London, October 17–20 2013