Interview: Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Hour of Prayer(installations foto), 2006. Video

For your exhibition in Copenhagen you combine film, photography and sculpture. Can you comment on the choice of works for the exhibition?

The core of my works is the moving image installations - Time and again I am fascinated by the challenges and possibilities the moving image proposes. But it happens that sometimes the subject matter I work with also shows itself in other formats like photos or sculptures.

The choice of the works is usually done together with the curator having in mind a possible theme and the nature of the spaces available. For this exhibition The House was a starting point and then I tried to think about the two floors as somehow forming two separate but interlinked wholes.

It would always be great for me to be able to show a new work - it would make it more exciting. But since I work slowly and tend to do time consuming projects it is seldom possible.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: The House(Still), 2002. video

Especially in regard to the video installation The House, the house sculptures and the photos there is a considerable connection between the works even though they represent very different medias. How do the works interact and how do these works touch upon the house and the home as a frame or a setting - mentally and physically- for our life?

The works done with different media may show different aspects of the same theme, or take it further. For example in the sculpture series the idea of a house or someone's internal house is represented with the help of aluminum, Plexiglas or plywood material. These materials give a different aspect to the idea. In the house sculptures I wish to not only tell about the concept of a house, but to make it concrete and then see what the idea looks like, which is very different from how the idea of a house is treated in the installation The House.

A house and a home are two different things to me - there is almost no home in the house. A house is a very individual thing - a home is more a shared thing - and I don't think of how many people live there but the idea itself. A house is probably more a definition of a space with a structure. And a space is a setting for words - which are related to distances - which all have to do with death.

Death - in what way?

Death comes before everything and after everything - framing a space where distances start to occur, that movement actually gives the shape for the space. The words measure the distances and form the structures and ask about the things and about the living - not understanding the absolute, the death.

This is intuitive and not very informative, but I try to perform it in a piece that I’m working on now.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Hour of Prayer(Still), 2005. video

The House starts out as a seemingly realistic description of a country house, but then everything falls apart for the young woman Elisa. This schism between realism and fantasy – the way reality turns into some sort of imaginary dream world - runs throughout your work. Will you touch upon this and how you see the main characters and the mood of the work going from one state to another?

The House tells a story of a woman's mental breakdown, and the breaking down of her house is a metaphor for that. With the use of fantasy elements made with special effects I try to run side by side the realistic settings and logic, and the unfamiliar or the imaginary.

In the beginning the main character is observing her surroundings - her perception is equivalent with the world around - she is stating the facts. Later this connection is broken, she is kind of let loose - there's no gravity left.

This mixture of seeming realism (in the moving images etc.) and fantasy/insight into the mental state of the characters is also prevalent in The Wind, Today and other films. However in the Hour of Prayer there seems to be a change in the overall mood? Fx. the film is extremely beautifully filmed. Can you tell a little more about this work?

It has been difficult for me to accept the work. But now I’ve got over it. I’m not really a person who likes to make autobiographical works - even though I write about things I see around me and experience.

When I was about 12-years old, I wrote a short story in a Finnish lesson after reading the book The Hound of the Baskervilles. I wrote the story imitating the style of that book. I was so fascinated by it and could not resist in doing so. When we got the short stories back from our teacher she had not given a grade for me but instead written ”I wonder if this text is your own?” with a red pencil in the end of my story.

I have a little bit a similar feeling with the Hour of Prayer. There’s a subtitle for the work: ”A short story from the year 2004”. In my works I aim at breaking the usual chronology of events and try to structure things in a new way. Suddenly the things that took place in my own life during the year 2004 presented themselves to me very chronologically, like a chain of pearls - one event being linked to the next and explaining it. Again I could not resist and I wrote the story imitating my life. And I put in it the sunset I once shot at my summer cottage because it was so unrealistic and unbelievable. I thought I would never use it because it was like a terrible post card. But then against death these things really don’t matter - they’ve lost their gravity and place in the value system. And the topic of the piece is death and loss.

Now later, I see many things and questions in that work which interest me. For example the use of images is different from many of the earlier works. When I looked through several stills for the catalogue I realized that in the Hour of Prayer the images are not so subordinate to the story events as for example in Consolation Service - but are more open and carry information of their own. In the Hour of Prayer you can’t show the story through ”action” because the protagonist is dead and everything has already taken place. What is left are empty spaces and landscapes and the camera’s distance . It is then perhaps the space that comes to be the protagonist. - And I’ve always preferred long shots where the eye can wander.

It seems that I’m getting back to the issues of distance, being and death...

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Hour of Prayer(Still), 2005. video

Contrasting emotions and emotional instability seems to be a prevailing feeling within the characters of your films. You have yourself referred to your work as ”human drama”. Can you touch upon your interest in the psychological state of mind within people - often in fragile periods of their life, e.g. in Today, which deals with the death of a father and grandfather and in The Hour of Prayer where the main character loses her dog because of bone cancer?

This is a difficult question to answer. I'm working on a new piece and to answer this I need to go back into something no longer so strongly present and hey, I feel a sudden reluctance.

I'm interested in what happens between people, stories about people - emotional logic, but I'm also interested in the structure of a story, the use of time, the elements of space created with moving images and so on. There's often an incident in the story that has taken place earlier in time that the characters return to. Or - like in Today – where the character is in focus, the idea of a character in films. The quidelines for creating characters include the rules that each character should be different - both in regard to their nature and looks, as well as in their motivation in the story. We could say that they need to be created to represent clearly identifiable separate individuals.

This idea of the characters and their separate identities is put into question in Today and instead of that sameness becomes an issue. With the aid of this also the meaning of thechronology of time is wiped out. The daughter, the two fathers and the older woman, who are they really? Are they all separate persons and is the time the same and how can it be so? Maybe sometimes, somehow in a family. That is the theme of Today for me.

As well, in the Hour of Prayer, the main ”event” of the story has happened some time ago and the narrator tells about it. There's no real ”action” with the character taking place in the present tense, which should be the key element of telling a story with moving images .

You also talk about ”contrasting emotions and emotional instability” present in my works. In Consolation Service my aim was to try to tell a story leading from one emotion to another and see how it worked. To be able to be part of the emotional world created in the film the viewer needs to identify with the characters - or know them a bit. That's why Consolation Service should be watched from the beginning on

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Hour of Prayer(installationsfoto), 2006. Video Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Hour of Prayer(installationsfoto), 2006. Video

The long period of research, interviews etc. in the preparation and making of your films and photos are often being emphasized in connection with your work - a work process which brings a close relationship with the actors etc. and thereby also a prevailing intimacy with the characters. What does this mean for your work and what do you gain from the collaboration with the actors?

The long period of preparation is due to three things: to get rid of the previous work and its world, to find material for the new one and to create a structure for it: The last one being the least visible but also the most challenging. All this happens during or before the writing process, which in itself is the core for everything else. So actually there's always too little time for preproduction - unfortunately.

I think about the right actors and do the casting but rehearse only once or twice before shooting. So I don't actually spend a lot of time with the actors. But so far the nature of the works has not required that. But hopefully some time in the future.

Your film works have often been discussed in relation to your education within cinematographic film as well as traditional art, e.g. painting. What do you bring from these two worlds? And how do they effect your position as viewer of your work?

I'm very much a visual artist in the way I work. Just that my medium is moving images instead of - let's say - paints or pencil. I try to find the ways of expression with my medium that will tell the things I want. I do not aim at making a film of a certain length for certain audiences. I don't have to try to make profit for the production company nor does the script need to be of a certain kind, (but certainly the expenses have to be covered and the wages paid).

I'm allowed to experiment with the medium for a certain extent - meaning that I probably wouldn't get the money which is earmarked for the real features because my work is too experimental for the larger audiences - or at least that would be the excuse. I don't think my works are especially painterly - no. What probably comes from the art side is that I trust the audience's ability to see, hear and think •