Sampsa Pirtola

Finnish Video artist Sampsa Pirtola has created a video installation for Lightforms Art Center, 743 Columbia Street, Hudson NY. The installation “Forms of Light – an Ode to the Passerby” can be seen Friday through Sunday nights in the front window at Lightforms.

 “At the present moment I work with fictive documentary, video collage and abstract video art.

I am interested in the psychological and sociological dimension of video art and the "humanistic" stream that it carries, together with experimental film, in contrast to the commercially and politically occupied movie and TV industries.

 We are slowly moving towards a situation where nearly every human being is a potential videographer through the accessibility of phones and other technology. Although the capacity to create technically high quality film is sometimes dependent on socio-economic factors, many people do find their inner artist through pressing the REC button and showing snippets of their life in public. The rapid consumption of ancient minerals needed for the development of these technologies is creating what may be the most short-lived form of art in our history. But as we look through the camera, do we truly see anything? The term video comes from the Latin word videre - to see. Despite the potential temporality of the medium and the virtual spaces where it’s often displayed - the question is: through this rapid and seemingly endless stream of videos, can the medium itself help us to see something profound and lasting? After we have looked through the viewfinder or a camera screen, can we see better what is in front of us?

I have been actively occupied with the idea of Total Artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk) that Wassily Kandinsky brought in the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the thoughts of Andrei Tarkovsky concerning the unique tasks and possibilities of cinema as a contemporary form of Total Artwork. I believe that Total Artwork is something very simple, light and minimalistic - despite the weight the title holds. I see it as a center of all forms of creativity: the true soul of creation. I believe it is so obvious that we refuse to see it and therefore look elsewhere - often looking through the camera into the void.

For years I have been studying the ideas of Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement that saw the possibilities of art and artists through the "extended concept of art", where anything could be seen as art and everyone as an artist. Around the world now people are constantly filming, documenting “the artist” that is potentially in each individual, bursting out spontaneously at times, and in some cases present all the time - helping others to experience the essence of the medium; ‘to see’ ".

Sampsa Pirtola