To the lighthouse

Hyrynsalmi, Finland

June 15 - 30, 2024

 

Presented in the exhibition 'Hill of Spirits' curated by Porin kulttuurisäätö.

Materials: Charred wood, mosquito netting, UV-light, solar panel.

'To the lighthouse' is a rumination on the buildings we spend bracketed time spans within. What responsibility do we have for what comes before and after us? Who inhabits our architecture when we are not there?

While taking inspiration from local deserted houses, I also wanted to create a surface of interaction between visitors and the largely invisible cohabitants that surround us. A literal lighthouse, with a UV-gleam summoning the spirits of the Finnish summer night. During the exhibition I spent one night in the installation, documenting each moth and fly that visited it.

For the exhibition catalogue I also produced the text 'The architecture of the visit'

"And now in the heat of summer the wind sent its spies about the house again. Flies wove a web in the sunny room; weeds that had grown close to the glass in the night tapped methodically at the window pane. When darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse, which had laid itself with such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding gently as if it laid its caress and lingered stealthily and looked and came lovingly again. But in the very lull of this loving caress, as the long stroke leant upon the bed, the rock was rent asunder; another fold of the shawl loosened; there it hung, and swayed. Through the short summer nights and the long summer days, when the empty rooms seemed to murmur with the echoes of the fields and the hum of flies, the long streamer waved gently, swayed aimlessly; while the sun so striped and barred the rooms and filled them with yellow haze."

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse