Pasi Autio
An Unusual Step
14.11. – 2.12.2012
Galleria Huuto Uudenmaankatu
The starting point for my exhibition An unusual step was the wonder of walking. How do we walk without falling? My attempt to answer the question through logical reasoning only ended up in confusion after noticing how little my consciousness understands my own body’s functions.
As part of my work, I use walking as a tool to express the complexity of the body’s functions that we take for granted as well as the complex relationship between the functions and conscious thinking. If you try to control your body consciously when walking, you may notice that walking becomes difficult and changes from slowly falling forward and slowing down to extremely slow balancing.
The connection between body and mind has fascinated me since I experienced hypnosis a few years ago. I fell into the hypnotic episode through relaxing my body and in a way I wandered into my mind, resulting in a strong loss of body control. The loss of control bothered me and raised some questions afterwards. What controlled my body during the last stages of the hypnosis? What kind of information does my body have? How does the information differ from the information that our minds process and that is often expressed verbally? Our bodies seem to have skills that are beyond those recognized by the conscious mind and that the body just “seems” to master through doing rather than thinking. Maybe my experience of hypnosis was actually about the appearance of the unconscious through my body.
I explore my themes through a body that looks like a planet, windows filmed in a dark house and a person walking on the street extremely slowly. My aim has been to approach everyday things from a new angle and to present them in an unusual way.
“Clearly, a self is much larger than the internal narrator. Around and beneath the island of what self-conscious storyteller is a vast sea of unconsciousness, of what we don´t know, will never know, or have forgotten.”
Siri Hustvedt: The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves
I wish to thank Svenska kulturfonden, the Arts Council of Finland, the Arts Council of Uusimaa and Visek for their support.
