Patrocolos

2008
Patrokolos
Plastic protectors from various sport uniforms, aluminum, LCD screen
& Combination with the media work Contest of epilogues
Programming based 3D animation, 9 min loop

Competitiveness is always bound up with death- in a sense it deals with what happens after death. In the Iliad- the first sporting contest to be described --we can find this element most prominently.
Within the unraveling tale the protagonist Achilles honors his brother in arms Patrokolos, that
had been killed in the battles of the Trojan War. Achilles organizes the games in memory of his friend and accordantly to this everything is measured in terms of the deceased. Achilles hands out prizes and gifts honoring Patrokoles and in fact organized the whole event in order to force everyone for a time to use Patrokoles itself as system for measurement of its own inconsolableness.

The sculpture Patroklos now sits silent and contemplating-staring at the video screen, and while the reason of his lifelong performance came to a screeching hold, his activity still continues behind reason. Deprived by life he can now start to play for real, with no further need of awards, he has no need of anything except for the dark defining lines that coordinate his epilogue.
In the projected 3D animation the dead players are animated to endlessly run on field without purpose. The characteristics of a game have vanished. There are no rules, no ball, not even a team, just a tireless activity of performance.

The programming based animation has been created in collaboration with the finish media artist Ilpo Jäskilainen.

Contest of epilogues

Contest of epilogues
2007
Programming based computer animation
9 min, looped DVD- or in infinite variation mode in connection a computing system

I am a great admirer of the writings of the Russian artists Yuri Leyderman, which himself tends to
regard sport as a spiritual field of human activity and has been writing a lot concerning this subject. I was inspired by his writings regarding the creation and concept behind this animation.
The following quote is a extract from Leydermans text “Dead teams”, which was published in the collection Imena elektrokov (Names of the electrons, 1997) -“Football teams die in airplane disaster”, writes Leyderman. “-Its common to say of all sudden death that it is senseless; but can you really call senseless the death of an entire football team? Is there not here a hint of some gleaming victory, an aftertaste of an exact hitting of a mark, the click made by a possibility slamming shut…?”
(Add. Info-Airplane Crash- English Manchester United in 1940, Russian Pakhtakor-Tashkent in 1978, African Zambia national Team in 1993) White -yellow –black. Ironic?
In the projected 3D animation the deceased team is resurrected to endlessly run on field without purpose. The characteristics of a game have vanished. There are no rules, no ball, not even a team, just a tireless activity of performance.
The animation “ Contest of epilogues”-was produced for the Exhibition Performance principle at Muu Gallery in 2007. The work was realized in co-operation with the Finnish Media artist Ilpo Jääskelainen that helped me with creating the 3D modeling and the necessary programming work. The animated players are modeled in relation to a series of sculptures.
“Contest of epilogues”, was never mend to be shown on its own but always combined with a sculptural component. Within this exhibition it was shown in combination with the installation “Performance principle”- a group of eight sculptures made of hard-shell protection parts and nowadays in the work “Patrocoles”, a sculpture in which the work was integrated to be displayed on a LCD screen.