JANI-MATTI SALO - REORIENTATIONS (2025)
Online publication
Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki
Publication Series of the Theatre Academy 81
The essay collection Reorientations explores how eco-socially sustainable, new media artworks and lighting design for contemporary performances can be realized. These reflective texts examine creative processes that intentionally avoid environmentally harmful technologies and working methods. What new possibilities arise when we disentangle ourselves from these harmful dependencies? Reorientations also captures a moment of transformation in artistic authorship amidst the ecological crisis.
MARK NISKANEN, MIKKO KAUKONEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - ROOM TONE / CRESCENDOS (WORK-IN-PROGRESS, 2024-)
What kind of audio material could activate a visitor to sense the materiality of the room, as if they were inside an architectural sculpture? How can the atmosphere of a room be tuned through a soundscape – and how does it shape our sensory perceptions of place, architecture, structures, natural light, and the relationships between ourselves and objects?
MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - PUU (TREE) (2024)
Temporary public artwork
Sports Hall Window, Helsinki
In the Puu (Tree) installation, a linden tree cut down in front of Töölö Sports Hall haunts through a LED advertisement sign. The tragicomic text is based on the intense tree-cutting discussions that took place on the internet. The artwork interacts with the landscape of the Mannerheimintie renovation.
MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - PILV-CLOUD (2024)
8-channel sound installation in collaboration with Inkeri Aula
Enter Woodland Spirits, European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024, Estonia
In the circular Pilv-Cloud sound installation, a whispering ghost guides visitors on a multi-sensory journey through the four seasons and across time. This metaphorical ghost represents our fragile relationship with our environment, highlighting the imbalance that endangers our coexistence with nature and other beings. The installation’s text, drawn from Estonian Nature Folklore Archive as well as walking interviews conducted in the Tartu area in the spring of 2024, blends humorous and poetic in its fragmented narrative.
JANI-MATTI SALO - UUDELLEEN SUUNTAUKSIA (2024)
Online publication
How ethical, aesthetic, and technological choices are interconnected, leading to challenges in performance and new media art in the era of ecological crisis? How to translate these challenges in a way that is lighthearted, sustainable, and brings new meanings?
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INKERI AULA, MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - AISTILIPUTUS (SENSORY FLAGGING) (2023)
Temporary public artwork
Porin Juhlaviikot, Galleria 3H+K, Pori, Finland
Photo: Jan Virtanen
The whimsical and poetic Aistiliputus highlights the sensory observations of the local residents regarding the changes and impacts of the Kokemäenjoki River, as well as its ghosts. The metaphor of ghosts represents fragile ecological relationships, the imbalance of which threatens our living environments. Aistiliputus celebrates the significance of local knowledge in fostering resilience as one response to the prevailing ecological crisis. Aistiliputus aims to create subtle interruptions, moments of awareness, and gestures of wonder in the everyday lives of city dwellers.
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WAUHAUS - NELJÄN PÄIVÄN LÄHEISYYS (SKY EVERY DAY) (2023)
Performance
Direction, performance dramaturgy and design by Laura Haapakangas, Juni Klein, Jani-Matti Salo, and Heidi Soidinsalo
& Espoo Theatre, Finland
Humans flock to a sunny beach resort, chat mindlessly on the terrace of an oceanside restaurant, and pass time in the solitude of hotel rooms. This beach isn’t a haven of nostalgic idleness, as a wall of dead fish is pushed onto the shore from the murky ocean. The audiovisual performance offers eye-opening perspectives to the human condition and our relationship to nature. In sky every day the stage is inhabited by the multispecies mortals of the seaside resort.
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MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - A SCENE II (2021)
Public sound installation
Helsinki Biennial 2021, The City of Helsinki's art collection, Kaivopuisto, Helsinki
A Scene II is a public sound installation based on the rhythms of sea mark lights in Helsinki harbor. The work can be experienced on the observation deck of the Kaivopuisto observatory via your mobile phone and headphones. On the hilltop, solar-powered sea mark lights are momentarily synchronized with the musical rhythms; they meet for a fleeting moment, and then the connection vanishes, over and over. A Scene II follows the planetary movements, beginning an hour after dusk and running until sunrise. The changing weather conditions also affect the experience and make it unique for every visit. On light summer nights, the work can be viewed for only a few hours; in the winter, it can be experienced from the early afternoon.
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INKERI AULA, MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - GARDEN OF BECOMINGS (2021)
Multimedia publication, co-working platform
Garden of Becoming is both a multimedia publication and a co-working platform moving in the borderline of art and social research. This open-access publication in the form of a virtual 360 environment opens up and shares the accomplished work and the background elaborations of our three-member art/research collective.
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MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - A SCENE (2021)
Site-specific video installation
Helsinki Biennial 2021, Vallisaari, Helsinki
A Scene invites visitors to immerse themselves in a nocturnal landscape in which every sea mark light around Vallisaari Island is assigned a particular musical note. Each light flashes at its own rhythm, creating a musical composition that slowly unfolds apace with the cycle of daylight.
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MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - CLARE (2021)
Three-channel sound installation
Forum Box, Helsinki
Clare is a sound installation that creates intimate moments of hypotheticals. Clare filters thoughts from a 14-year archive of tweets and organizes them according to the psychoanalyst Karen Horney’s theory of inner conflicts.
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MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - MURMURATIONS (2020)
Public sound installation in collaboration with Inkeri Aula and SENSOTRA research project
The FCINY, Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York
Murmurations evokes cultural memory and aesthetics of the past while attempting to expose translocal truths of the present. Murmurations creates a visceral sensation of physical proximity in a time when distancing and division are the forced norm. The work is based on anonymous, fragmentary passages of sensory observations collected during sensobiographic walks with voluntary local participants, conducted near bodies of water in Europe and the United States. The method and part of the material is derived from transdisciplinary research project SENSOTRA that investigates transgenerational changes in people’s sensory environmental relationships. In Murmurations, these observations are divided into three parts – the no longer, the now, and the not yet. These categories refer to the observed metaphorical 'ghosts' of our environment in the more-and-human past, present, and future.
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MARK NISKANEN & JANI-MATTI SALO - OHIKULKIJALLE (FOR THE PASSERBY) (2019)
Public artwork
The City of Helsinki's art collection, Baana, Helsinki
Mounted in a standard advertising light box, the work is based on motion and ephemerality and will appear different to every passer-by. The subtle changes in the work are produced by three superimposed patterns that give rise to a moiré or interference pattern when they move. The moiré patterns appear differently to all passers-by depending on the height, direction and distance of viewing.
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See previous works on Niskanen & Salo’s website