Urban Fishing Opening of the Online Exhibition 5.7.2015

Online exhibition

Hooked in the net gone fishing

Here's my scholart piece on fishing. I like the title in Finnish, because it is all in: in the net (verkossa), in the hook = hooked (koukussa), in fishing = gone fishing (kalassa).
The piece includes a collection of fishing photos as a youtube video from a period of five years, 2009 - 2014. As I say, fishing pictures are always clichés.

1.     I got my first rod when I was five. The rod was of bamboo, light, shiny and a pale yellow. The bobber was new, plumb and red and white. All the other rods were worn darker and soaked heavier. My grandfather’s rod was all grey.

2.     My first fish was a really big perch, and this is no fisherman’s tale, it became a story they used to tell in my family: beginner’s luck.

3.     I spent my summers in my grandfather’s boat. Or this is how I remember them. We had no summer cottage and we did not go to the countryside.

4.     I knew how to behave in a boat: you don’t shout and you don’t stand up when it’s moving. When you’re fishing you can stand. When you’re fishing you talk in an undertone fishingstuff: I’ll get that perky perch from there; it’s a roach, the way it’s bubbling; now it’s going, take it up!

5.     Women and children sat in the boat in the best place in front in cover. My place was on the half-deck: I lay on my stomach on the deck, held on to the cleat with one hand and my other hand in water. I was the one who jumped first on land with the rope. I was one of the fishermen.

6.     When I was fourteen I could drive the boat alone out of the harbor. My grandfather showed my aunt how to do that the last year he was alive.

7.     Fishing was my first experience of community born from shared skill and knowledge.

8.     Fishing is done together. You can share a fishing friendship with somebody you have nothing else in common with. And don’t need to make an effort to keep the community. Trying to clean up a net all messed up by a pike in -30 with the wind beating your fingers, or making a sudden turn at 3km/h speed without messing up the trolleys sure makes you share stuff.

9.     Fishing is done in something that is lightheartedly called “the nature”. Or a “landscape”. The fisherman feels it as the wind in her neck, the wind beating and the sun burning, the fog to get lost in and the blizzard to disappear in, the still summer water or transparent November mist. The fisherman does not go into the nature, but to Näsinselkä, Tikansalmi, Tuiskavanluoto, Mustakoski; she goes trolling round Big and Small Hornu and fishing on ice to Susijärvi. The fisherman has no separate point out of which to view the landscape, the fisherman is part of the landscape.

10. Fishing is not any supernatural union with an abstract “nature”. Fishing is craft and technology ancient and newest: how to slip the nets under the ice, reeling in the jig, casting the fly, the nodding of the ice-fishing rod, the ultrasound and the plotter.

11. Fishing pictures are always clichés.

12. The essential skill of the fisherman is the ability to do nothing.

How to get to Pori and what we do there:

We will be staying in River hostel: http://www.hostelriver.fi/
The hostel itself will be near the Kokemäenjoki river, in the Karjaranta area.

What we'll be doing?

First, we can use the hostel premises for meetings, also the ARTS space in Pori University center, Puuvilla. At Puuvilla you can use ARTS computers (mac) and work-spaces. We have a work-shop master who can help if help is needed. There is also some equipment, cameras etc tools.

For a daily schedule it would be good to start and end the days with a meeting - to plan the day ahead, to sum up experiences, to see how your works and projects are progressing, to discuss ideas and concepts. We can also use evenings to view films and materials.

Sunday
Arrivals of part of the people.

Monday
Meet at 10 (have breakfast together). Arrivals of rest of the people.
We will use all of Monday to walk - by the river, across the river, also see the city, see Puuvilla - Pori Art Museum and Satakunta Museum are both located by the river on Eteläranta.
Evening we'll meet and talk impressions and make dinner and see films.

Tuesday
At 10 we have a visit agreed to Pori Urban Planning office and meet one or more planners. These people you can also interview to get more information - and they also have contacts with Karjaranta residents' organizations and activists.
Afterwards you can then work on your own - form small groups with similar interest by all means.
Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesaday we can also go to Puuvilla and see the Aalto premises, meet people working there.
End the day with a meeting, dinner, talk, films - oh and one of the evenings a visit to local pub Irkku is a must.

Wednesday
So far no schedules - so, working on your project. Begin and end the day with a meeting.
A visit to Tehdas ry.'s premises "Lyhytaaltoasema" in the suburbs has much been recommended.

And some addresses here:

University Center Pori Porin Puuvilla: http://www.ucpori.fi/

Satakunta museum: (in fact, there is also a natural museum, "Ark Nature Center") http://www.pori.fi/en/index/culture/museum/satakuntamuseum.html

Pori Art Museum: http://www.poriartmuseum.fi/eng/index.php

Urban Fishing, Schedule

The course will study the phenomenon of urban fishing as a productive and diversifying phenomenon in public urban space.  We will look at cultural practices along an urban river: how is the in-between space used, crossed, linked, experienced, made productive? How to plan urban green not just as decorative space but diversifying element in ever-growing semi-public commodified use of space?

Below the schedule as it was in Weboodi. On the right hand side links and lists of sources and sites that appear during the course and that you can use as reference. Note: if you have any links & articles to suggest, please email Taina!

13. – 15.4. We’ll have lectures, readings and discussions about urban space and urban green and “in-between” spaces. Annette Maechtel  will share her experience about projects on the use of the in-between urban space. Also a lecture on fishing as an urban phenomenon by Jussi Vähämäki.

19. – 23.4. a field work period in Pori. Travel and accommodation will be covered. We’ll stay in the River hostel, roam the riverside and interview people, dig into the local culture and practices of urban fishing. Annette will be there too.

27. – 29.4. continuing readings and discussions on urban space. Discussing plans for a final event, production, work, publication.

4. – 7.5 building the final event and works. The works will be presented in Otaniemi – we can also discuss options for presenting something also in Pori.