The Situationists International claimed in the 1960s that social reality consists of visual spectacles: the images produce reality and reality turns into images. The leading figure of the movement, Guy Debord, described it thus: ”In modern capitalist society, life is presented as an enormous accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.” However, Debord did not mean the flow of images as such, but argued that the spectacle is rather an interpersonal social relationship mediated by the images. Later in the 1980s, post-modern theorist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) alleged that reality is hyperreal, there is no original reality behind images or signs but the signs always refer to other signs; for example images refer to other images. Images have become the reality.
These descriptions of the spectacle-like nature of reality and visuality still feel relevant. We continue to live in a visual world where images and signs of all sorts direct, guide and control us. The media keeps presenting us with images. This visual jungle has left its mark on art and vice versa: the barter of signs is a result of this interaction. Artists refer to other images, other texts and engage in a dialogue with the real world we live in.
The strategies used by Finnish artist Jani Leinonen link him to this discussion and to the old tradition of art described with concepts like detournament, appropriation, intertextuality and readymade. Even though it is not possible for us to claim that one definition equals another – with their different emphases, nuances and eras – we can, however, declare that they are connected to the same phenomenon: art is a part of visual culture and the reality we are currently living in. Art connects to its time, reflects it and creates it.
Class distinction – beggar’s signs
Issues on morality and economy A short text written by hand on a scruffy piece of cardboard, frame in old gilded frames: ” POR FAVOR AYUDAME ME ROBARON TODO NON TENGO MÀS DINERO GRACIAS - PLEASE HELP ME I WAS ROBED I HAVE NOT MONEY THANK YOU”. The metal plaque on the frame says: ”Barcelona”.
Artist Jani Leinonen bought signs from beggars around the world and framed them in antique frames. The signs have been collected in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States among other places. The series is called ”I Want to Get Rid of Class Distinction but All I Think and Do Is a Result of Class Distinction”.
Leinonen’s readymade works function as a reminder of increasing global migration and enormous poverty, which afflicts an escalating number of people for various reasons. The issue of beggars has only recently become topical in Finland as the Roma people from Romania have emerged on Finnish streets during the past few years. So far beggars have been a rare sight in cities, and the phenomenon has caused a heated debate on the conditions of the beggars and whether we should help them.
Jani Leinonen often borrows and re-edits commercial and product images in his works. In 2008 Leinonen painted a series of works where the pristine Elovena girl from a Finnish brand of oatmeal was given roles characteristic to our time: she was a terrorist, demonstrator, prostitute and Muslim. This familiar commercial figure and Finnish icon was transferred to current political and social contexts. Leinonen on his relationship to the market: ”I use the market’s own detournement and appropriation –like strategies to reveal the media’s and markets’ unspoken assumptions on right and wrong, suitable and unsuitable, and good and evil.”
The beggars’ signs highlight the complicated relationships of the market and art, and the ethical questions intertwined in them. Leinonen’s ironically tinted purchase of signs points to the injustice but does not try to put it right. When Leinonen makes art of the beggars’ signs, he imitates the mechanisms of the free market economy: he takes control of primary production, processes the product and sells it with profit. The production process also reminds us of modern capitalism’s practices of outsourcing labour. Leinonen proves that art is a permanent part of economy’s structures: a work of art is a product like any other. From an art historic point of view the beggars’ signs are a part of the old tradition of appropriation, to which the artist himself refers. In this tradition, mundane elements, objects and images that are external to art have been brought into the context of art. Leinonen’s signs were exhibited for the first time in the Populism exhibition in Vilnius in 2005 and a part of the money was returned to charity.
”The money earned in the Populism exhibition went to a local
charity organisation. I wanted to make art real through the
money, too, but I only wanted to create an illusion of helping.
[...] Consumerism is born when companies compete with each
other to stand out, and thus ‘helping’ as well as ‘rebellion’
become an effective way to market this distinction. The
value of more and more products is based on exclusivity and
originality – especially if the product is claimed to resist the
evil main stream. As soon as the others start to use the same
strategies, a circle of commercial armament race is ready,
and anyone who lingers is main steam. This armament race
increases marketing and consuming. Therefore helping and
resisting uniformity has for a long time been a marketing
strategy for many companies, especially the ‘alternative’
ones. Instead of really urging people to be anti-market or
alternative, they create effective markets for the anti-market
consumers and keep offering new products that very quickly
become ‘mainstream’. Companies often have an interest to
help as long as it increases their sales.”
Leinonen has taken advantage of the logic and practices of the free market economy in his art – brands, media and networks – and enlarged the concept of being an artist. The artist is not only a maker of concrete objects, but also a creator of concepts, situations and events. For example, Leinonen realised the Art Tuning Shop, where members of the audience brought him artworks and he modified them for a fee. In 2006 he turned an empty supermarket into the Art Super Market Pikasso, where you could pick works by different artists, load them in your shopping cart and pay at the checkout counter on your way out.
Ronald the clown
Jani Leinonen’s work Koulrofobia is an installation “drawn” directly on the wall with an electric cord, in which a clown hangs at the end of the rope. In the attached text the clown tells a doctor about his loneliness, the difficulty of finding a meaning for his life. The doctor encourages his patient to go and see Ronald the Clown who is currently in town. That would certainly cheer him up. “But Doctor, I am Ronald the Clown,” answers the patient.
The clown is a comically tragic figure. It wears gaudy clothes, shoes that are too big and has a painted face. The clown’s task is to make people laugh by being clumsy or playfully silly. And yet there is always a teardrop in the corner of this funny character’s eye. It reminds us of the mask itself as well as of the sorrow hidden behind it and thus makes the role of a clown ambiguous. The clown often performs for children, but it also has darker roles. For example, in the film It, 1990, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same title, a demon hides in the figure of the clown.
According to the author, Wikipedia knows a definition for coulrophobia, meaning an intense fear of clowns. It mainly occurs in children, but young people and adults may suffer from it, too. It is caused by a scary encounter with a masked figure in childhood. This fear also occurs in people in power. The clown can break taboos and take up hidden issues. Leinonen sees Ronald more as a fool:
”Ronald is a fool. The fool balances on a knife’s edge in his
profession. He is the only one who can use comedy as a means
to say things the King doesn’t tolarate. Fools were often
hanged when their humour crossed the King’s limit. Everyone
knows that the clown’s laughter is fake. It contains something
really mean, sad and angry. The audience doesn’t want to
see the clown’s real nature. Lately I have been developing the
backgrounds and everyday lives of comical, very funny and thin
characters. Elovena was the first. In New York I was absorbed
in Cap’n Cruch and Kellogg’s Cornelius. Now I’m working on
Ronald.”
Kidnapping of Ronald
The latest work of art by Leinonen based on the character of Ronald consists of a series of carefully pre-meditated events. The artist and his assistants stole a Ronald statue from a McDonald’s in Helsinki. Then the artist sent ultimatums to the company and published a video in the Internet in the name of a group called Food Liberation Army. In the video, actors dressed as terrorists threatened to execute the Ronald statue if the company didn’t answer the questions in the video by the deadline. The questions concerned the origin of materials used in the hamburger franchise, the quality of food and the company’s ethical principles of operation.
McDonald’s reported the theft to the police and refused to answer the questions. Information on the incident spread like fire all around the world; even news channels in the United States reported the provocation against the McDonald’s restaurant chain. Videos of stealing the statue, the ultimatum and finally of the execution of Ronald became popular in YouTube.
The criminal investigation resulted in Leinonen being arrested for 24 hours. In addition, the police confiscated the artist’s computer and drawings. At the same time, the Ronald statue was returned to its rightful owner.
Leinonen was positively surprised by the massive publicity received by the act but he was also puzzled over the criminal sanctions. He wanted to turn the act and the reactions to the incident into an exhibition. The guillotine, the executed, lawfully purchased Ronald statue, and the videos and documents of the news concerning the incident by different media are displayed in the gallery.
The act and exhibition of Leinonen question the means of social influence and the limits set for art. The artist himself has found the context of art to be boring and powerless; he thinks we need to find new ways of stirring up dialog and for acting in other social contexts. On the other hand, the artist eventually turns the act into an exhibition, thus trying to be both a political activist and an artist in the field of art.
The work of Leinonen allows us to study current topics in terms of consumption, the ethics of corporate activities, the fear of terrorism and the means for online activism. At the same time, the work reveals how to create a spectacle and how it lives on in the social media.
Pirkko Siitari is the Director of Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki.