Return, Return | Anu Pennanen & Eugenia Lim

Join us for a special two-person screening of new and recent films exploring place, labour, futures and limits to ‘growth’ by Helsinki-based filmmaker Anu Pennanen (FI) and Naarm-based artist Eugenia Lim. Eugenia and Anu will be joined by Amelia Wallin to tease out the various points of connection in their works (Anu will join via Zoom). A parallel event will occur in Helsinki at PUBLICS.

Arrive 4pm for 4.30pm screening

5.15–6pm Post-screening talk with Eugenia Lim and Anu Pennanen chaired by Amelia Wallin

Screening program

• Anu Pennanen, Sortir de cette image (A way out of this image), 2008, 8 minutes
• Eugenia Lim, ON DEMAND, 2019, 14 minutes
• Eugenia Lim, Shelters for Kyneton (triadic transfer), 2022, 7 minutes
• Anu Pennanen, 5, 10, 100 YEARS FROM NOW, 2023, 17 minutes

About the works:

Sortir de cette image (A way out of this image), 2008, Color 35 mm, Color S16 mm film and Color 8 mm film transferred to digital file, stereo sound, 8 min, dir. Anu Pennanen

Sortir de cette image (A way out of this image) is a film which is part of a group of works which all attempt to describe the biggest commercial and transportation complex of Europe: the historical Les Halles in Paris. Les Halles is much more than a shopping centre or commuting point: it is a dense intersection, where images are constantly projected upon individuals and groups, imposed, exchanged, traded, and renegotiated.

Sortir de cette image contemplates on its subject through various forms and strategies. Archive images of Les Halles, architectural drawings, super 8 films shot by employees, passer-byes and pensioners who used to work in the old trading market, are articulated with an original film sequence shot with locals who circulate around an architectural model. The model actually merges three epochs of Les Halles: its past, present and future form. In the market of images, a redistribution is always necessary.

Director, screenwriter and editor: Anu Pennanen

Voiceover: Ariane Arana

Music: Fred Bigot

Architectural model: Marie Corbin

Production: 104 Paris / Sister Productions / Anu Pennanen

ON DEMAND (2019), 4K video transferred to HD, sound, 14 minutes, dir. Eugenia Lim

Five workers of the gig economy (‘independent contractors’ for companies such as Uber, Airtasker and Foodora) answered the artist’s call out for ‘worker–performer’ collaborators. The worker–performers have diverse backgrounds: a family history of union and labour politics; a privileged upbringing in Pakistan; a degree in psychology; volunteer work with asylum seekers; a member of a death metal band; and artistic practice in photography and writing. Each worker–performer was interviewed by the artist, and their words and experiences appear in edited form in the work’s voiceover, as do the worker–performers themselves in the video. Lim paid each worker–performer the Australian Miscellaneous Award 2010 rate plus a provision for superannuation for their time – a gesture towards fair work conditions not generally a guarantee for gig workers and independent artists alike. This video work is the result of their collective negotiation – of stories, histories, movements and bodies. Lim finds a space for herself within this negotiation, inspired by work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles and her pioneering ‘work ballets’ and ongoing work as unsalaried artist-in-residence with the New York Sanitation Department.

Director, writer, editor: Eugenia Lim

Worker–performers: Cher Tan, Alberto Vescance, Benjamin Pitt, Wasay, Darren Tan, Eugenia Lim

Cinematographer: Alex Cardy

Choreography: Nat Cursio

Composer: Becky Sui Zhen

Gaffer: Hannah Palmer

Camera assistant: Bonita Carzino

Colour grade: Chris Tomkins

Studio angel: Roslyn Helper

Production advisor: Alex George

Installation technicians: Paul Welch and Nathan Moore

Voiceover: Eugenia Lim

Shelters for Kyneton (triadic transfer) (2022), HD video, colour, sound. 7.40, dir. Eugenia Lim

“It’s not a very glamorous site and it’s on the industrial-outer of the town. It fascinated me because every household in Kyneton has some interface with it, either through their landfill or their recycling. Or they might go and get mulch for their garden, for example. It’s somewhere that probably isn’t considered part of daily life but actually connects every household to the life-ways of the town. So, when I went out to the Transfer Station, that’s where the idea really sparked! How could this site on the periphery, but also very much at the centre of the cycle of Kyneton’s systems be celebrated as somewhere where work and life is happening.”

Filmed on Taungurung country in Kyneton, Shelters for Kyneton (triadic transfer) is a video work documenting a series of performative interventions into the town's transfer station, or ‘tip’. Inspired by the 'work ballets' of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, triadic transfer considers maintenance, care and ecology in the settler-colonial context of contemporary Kyneton, and the knowledges and learned choreographies different bodies hold. The work features Lim alongside two key members of the local community, Kyneton mayor Cr Jennifer Anderson, and Transfer Station worker Steve Boulter, activating wearable 'shelters' as sites of collective action, flows and ecology.

Artist, performer: Eugenia Lim

Cinematographer: Tim Hillier

Movement consultant, editor, sound: Zoe Scoglio

Costume designer: Ellie Boekman

Performer: Jennifer Anderson

Performer: Steve Boulter

KCAT producer: Angela Connor

Production assistant: Kent Wilson

Metal fabrication: Dale Holden

Commissioned by Kyneton Contemporary and NETS Victoria.

5, 10, 100 YEARS FROM NOW, 2023, (Original title TÄSTÄ 5, 50, 100 VUODEN PÄÄHÄN) 4K video, colour, surround sound, 17 minutes, dir. Anu Pennanen

5, 10, 100 YEARS FROM NOW is a short experimental video essay about the future in an era of resource-based conflict and global environmental crisis. The work is based on petrol-station customers wild reflections on what they imagine the future will look like seen from the window of a Neste- gas station in Helsinki: the development of transport and technology and climate change, colony on Mars, human consciousness replaced by machines, street sides heated by burning barrels of rubbish, or information giants supplanting nation states. The video weaves together people's imagination with associative imagery, where the circulation of cars and the filling of petrol tanks, the endlessly rotating fossil economy’s movement, is associated with Maurice Ravel's Bolero, echoing the same inexorable, massive progression as the fossil-fuel economy that was deemed necessary — until coming to an abrupt halt.

Project credits:

Director, Screenwriter, Editor, Graphic Design: Anu Pennanen

Cinematographer: Kerttu Hakkarainen

Sound Designer: Salla Hämäläinen

Sound recordist: Jonne Järvinen

Colorist: Hannu Käki

Production: PALO Art Productions

Producer: Stéphane Querrec

Production assistant: Leena Nuorteva

Production runner: Kasimir Eskola

English translation: Patricia Chen

Music: BOLÉRO, Written by Maurice Ravel. Performed by Louis Frémaux and London Symphony Orchestra. Courtesy of Collins Classics under license from Phoenix Music International Limited.

Thank you:

All the anonymous interviewees

Neste Munkkiniemi gas station staff

Terttu, Pentti and Jani Pennanen

Hanna-Kaisa Korolainen, Salme and Ilja Goursot

Tellervo Kalleinen

With the support of:

AVEK Media Art / Milla Moilanen

PUBLICS Helsinki / Paul O’Neill

Biographies:

Anu Pennanen’s work explores the way we deal with urbanisation and the effects of globalisation on the way we live. At the intersection of visual art, film and architecture, it features people who question the built environment they are part of. Pennanen’s creations always start with a concrete and real space, a territory close to her: it allows her to practise something very close to life, which has to do with history, anthropology, archaeology and existential problems. Her works have been exhibited extensively: CCA Glasgow (UK); Frankfurter Kunstverein (DE); White Box New York (US); Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, Auckland (NZ); Grand Café Saint-Nazaire (FR); KunstenFestivaldesArts Brussels (BE) Frans Hals Museum (NL); Liverpool, Istanbul, SCAPE, Manifesta, Momentum and Moscow Biennials and Kiasma Museum Helsinki (FI) among others.

Eugenia Lim is an artist of Chinese-Singaporean ancestry who works across body, lens, social and spatial practice to explore how migration, capital and encounter cut, divide and bond our interdependent world. Based in Melbourne, Australia, on unceded Wurundjeri lands in the Kulin Nation, Lim has shown at the Tate Modern (GBR), LOOP Barcelona (ESP), Recontemporary (IT), Kassel Dokfest (DE), Museum of Contemporary Art (AU), ACCA (AU), FACT Liverpool (GBR), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK) and EXiS (KR). She co-founded CHANNELS Festival, co-wrote and hosted Video Becomes Us on ABC iView and is a former co-director at APHIDS. Lim has been artist-in-residence with the Experimental Television Centre (NY), Bundanon Trust, 4A Beijing Studio, and Gertrude Contemporary. Lim is a 2022 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow and winner of Charlottenborg Spring’s 2022 Deep Forest Art Land Award. Eugenia is represented by STATION, Australia.

Amelia Wallin is a curator and writer, living on Djaara in regional Australia. Across her career she has collaborated with renowned artists, festivals and organisations to commission and deliver ambitious performances and exhibitions in Australia and the USA. She is curator at La Trobe Art Institute, formerly Director of West Space and has held positions at Biennale of Sydney, Performance Space and Campbelltown Arts Centre. She is a graduate of the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and current PhD candidate at Monash University.

Header image: Eugenia Lim, Shelters for Kyneton (triadic transfer), 2022, 7 minutes