mixed media, water pump, artificial plants, preserved specimen
350 x 350 x 220 cm



Click image to enlarge.


When a system or a technical process is being designed, also at the same time, its erosion and destruction is being designed and build in. This is why it is very strange, that it is difficult for a company, community or a country to first accept that there is an error, and then to react to the failure of a system and deal with the consequences.

This we all were able to see in the spiralling row of catastrophies caused by a recent eartquake in Japan - peaking with a still ongoing nuclear pollution, but also with the current oil leak on the Northern sea and the Gulf of Mexicooil spill on the the British Petroleum Companys' marine oilfield.

The 62,000 barrels per day that were flowing for more than three months to the sea, shores and marshland, is the "worst environmental disaster the US has faced".

The oil leak affects marine and costal ecology in myany ways. Instantly it makes marine animals and plants suffocate and die by drowning and poisoning, but also suffocates the seabed and plankton, and enters the food chain causing cancer, malformation, poisonings and a whole range of other injuries that damage whole ecosystems andwipe out animal and plant populations, even whole species.

Wikipedia: "More than 400 species that live in the Gulf islands and marshlands are at risk, including the endangered Kemp's Ridley turtle, the Green Turtle, the Loggerhead Turtle, the Hawksbill Turtle, and the Leatherback Turtle. In the national refuges most at risk, about 34,000 birds have been counted, including gulls, pelicans, roseate spoonbills, egrets, terns, and blue herons. A comprehensive 2009 inventory of offshore Gulf species counted 15,700. The area of the oil spill includes 8,332 species, including more than 1,200 fish, 200 birds, 1,400 molluscs, 1,500 crustaceans, 4 sea turtles, and 29 marine mammals. Immediately after the oil spill, thousands of dead animals were collected from the sea."

Some fishermen and shareholders may receive compensation on theirfinancial losses caused by the oil spill, but the damage on the ecosystem and the individual animal andplant lives go unnoticed.

Actually, as the daily news of the leaking oil run became a continuous backdrop of global media, and a black, decorative TV-lullaby for billions of homes. And nothing happened for months.

Wasser, das wie ein Lebensborn aus einem Brunnen quillt und sprudelt, einem Ort der Erbauung, Sinnbild eines Füllhorns von Reichtum und Wohlstand, wird bei Tea Mäkipää ersetzt durch Öl, in das sie Wasser an Weines statt verwandelt. Um jenes schwarze Gold, ein gegenwärtig offenbar heiliges Elixier mit symbolischer, fast religiöser Bedeutung, wird in den neuen heiligen Kreuzzügen gekämpft, entsteht eine neue Weltordnung. Inspiriert wurde Tea Mäkipää von Kopenhagens lyrisch-kitschig-bürgerlichem „Storch-Springbrunnen“, den ebenfalls Tiere und Pflanzen schmücken.

Jene 62.000 Barrel Öl pro Tag, die für mehr als drei Monate im Golf von Mexiko in die offene See, auf die Küste und das Marschland traten, sind die „schlimmste Katastrophe, die die Vereinigten Staaten je erlebt haben“. Das Ölleck beeinflusst Meeres- und Küstenökologie auf vielfältige Weise. Es bewirkt, dass Meeres- und Küstentiere wie auch -pflanzen sofort ersticken, ertrinken und an Vergiftung sterben. Aber auch der Meeresboden und das Plankton sterben ab und beeinflussen die Nahrungskette, verursachen Krebs, Missbildungen, Vergiftungen und eine ganze Reihe anderer Schäden, die ganze Ökosysteme zerstören, Tier- und Pflanzenbestände, ja ganze Arten auslöschen. Bereits unmittelbar nach dem ersten Ölaustritt wurden Tausende toter Tiere aus dem Meer aufgesammelt. Einige Fischer und Aktionäre werden für ihre finanziellen Verluste durch das Ölleck Entschädigungen erhalten, die Verluste und Schäden im Ökosystem und beim einzelnen Pflanzen- und Tierleben bleiben jedoch unbeachtet. Die Meldungen vom ausfließenden Öl wurden in den täglichen Nachrichtensendungen der Medien aus aller Welt zur obligatorischen Hintergrundkulisse – ein schwarzes, dekoratives Fernseh-Schlaflied für Milliarden von Haushalten. Und monatelang passiert nichts.

Oilissimo as an Oracle

The Art Center Retretti, excavated deep into the bedrock of southeastern Finland, offered for Tea Mäkipää's Oilissimo a miniature world in which the message of the work became literally true.

As the title of the work goes, it could be coupled together with all the good things that oil, one of the most valuable sources of energy on the Earth has offered for humanity – prosperity and technological progress. A viewer descending into the dimly lit cave of the art center could be in a similarly carefree mood when coming across a burbling fountain erected in a water pool. Water flowed into the pool from a small waterfall insulated by a glass wall. Viewed against the incoming light, the silhouette looked like an idyll, in which the inhabitants – mammals and birds – were living in their own sheltered niche in lush vegetation.

Watched more closely, with eyes acclimatized to the dim light, the work, however, was revealed as a metaphor for the worldwide concern over serious environmental problems. The most dangerous environmental threats are due to creeping trends caused by our own actions and changing; as a result, humanity will run out of space, fresh water and clean air. This trend was simulated by events in the microcosmos of Oilissimo. The structures were still functioning and the surface glimmering, but oil, the staple of wealth, had contaminated the plants, birds, and mammals. The water in the pool had turned black. The conditions and configurations of existence had crucially changed.

But suddenly, the Art Center Retretti, the larger world surrounding Oilissimo, was hit by an unexpected and sudden catastroph, as a consequence of exceptionally heavy rains. The water pools excavated in the caves filled up and flowed over.

Oilissimo crystallized the conceptual dystopia of the exhibition entitled Cave Allegories (1) that leaned on Plato, who came up with his Parable of the Cave three and a half centuries before the common era: Prisoners chained by their hands and feet in place can’t see in their subterranean cave anything except shadows projected on the back wall, created by dolls passing by a fire behind their backs. For the prisoners, the shadows are the only reality, because they have no way knowing of anything else. No one wants to believe the one prisoner who has managed to catch a glimpse behind him and realized that the reality he has known consists of only shadows, and that the dolls behind are more real. But the most severe punishment is suffered by one prisoner who succeeds in breaking free, and comes to understand that in the world outside the cave the dolls are only replicas of even more real things.

Plato’s cave analogy has gained different meanings depending on the prevailing stage in the course of history. As the pace of development has accelerated, conceptions of reality and its reflections have only become entwined into increasingly complex coils.

In our present, increasingly complex world art can, at its best, be a universal implement which through its analogies is able to pin down such aspects of reality that logic and science cannot reach. By introducing new perspectives, art can shift our attention into directions from where we can reflect on some vital questions: What kind of chains in present time make us believe that the entire play of entertainment and consumption that reigns over our visual imagery is actually true? Does the world have any other alternative than to serve as a stage of injustice in favour of those in strong positions, whose actions are primarily based on the values of continuous economic growth? And is it possible that when all this is revealed as a mere reflection, the light outside is too blinding for us to be able see what is outside the cave?

Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago took an excerpt from Book VII of Plato’s The Republic as the motto for his book The Cave (2001): You have shown me a strange image / and they are strange prisoners. / Like ourselves.

Saramago builds his allegory at the threshold of the 21st century around “the Center”. It is a faceless, gigantic social monolith that inevitably keeps extending its sphere of influence. The Center is capable of looking after its inhabitants’ basic needs – homes, jobs, shops, offices, amusements, hospitals, crematoriums – so well that nobody has to ever leave or know anything about the past. But at the end of the book, a family fleeing from the Center discovers that even the cave revealed from the subterranean layers has a new, reversed life planned for it when they see the advertisement emblazoned on the outer wall: “COMING SOON, PUBLIC OPENING OF PLATO’S CAVE, EXCLUSIVE ATTRACTION, UNIQUE IN THE WORLD, BUY YOUR TICKET NOW.”

Oilissimo offered us a sharp vision of the multidimensional reality of our time in the Retretti caves. The art center offered a miniature simile of humanity in the midst of emergency: Natural catastrophs are often followed by economic catastrophes. Now the center has been closed down and new functions have been sought for the caves, in an almost identical fashion to what happened with Saramago's Center. One of the speculations concerned a casino that was supposed to become a unique entertainment center drawing increasing flow of visitors, as it was located close to the Finnish—Russian border. Nobody could foresee one year ago the serious turns in the world politics between the East and the West.

The current situation in the world at large have given new strength to the metaphor of Oilissimo. Latent threats can sudddenly trigger new developments that have unpredictable consequences for the global political order.

Oilissimo is like a creature of nature that becomes reproduced irrespective of human acts. Present humanity, in contrast, enthralled by the industrialized civilization, would soon need a new Planet Earth to be able to “develop” and expand our functioning as a species in its present form.

(1) CAVE ALLEGORIES – Finnish Contemporary Art and Images of Our Time, 9 June – 28 August, 2012 at the Retretti Art Center, Finland. The exhibition was curated by Marketta Haila.

Marketta Haila