Pilvi Takala seeks honesty at Marc Augé non-places: those intentional spaces that we visit but in which we never linger. While a “place” serves as a conscious refuge – a mold for collective identity – a “non-place” hums with transience and anonymity. She shares the French anthropologist’s fascination with shopping malls, though she eschews his airports and train lines for the quiet office buildings. In particular, she studies how these spaces are organized, governed by tacit codes of behavior, controlled by a silent power. Her thesis: that only one maverick can break through the shell – to that end, in “On Discomfort,” this study of six of her video works, she introduces behavioral vortices into these spaces and their flow.
Takala often disguises himself and films his plays in secret; in other cases, she reconstructs her observations after the fact. Casting herself as the protagonist, she attracts (according to the show’s curators, Sarah McCrory and Natasha Hoare) “unanticipated reactions from people with different stakes in the control or use of space”. For Close the watch, 2022, which premiered at the Finnish Pavilion in Venice that year, she spent six months undercover as a Securitas guard at one of Helsinki’s biggest shopping malls. Unable to film on the job, she then reconnected with her ex-colleagues and asked them to join her in workshops where they acted out their experiences, ranging from incidents of racial profiling to confrontations with grumpy drunks. . Patiently probing and nodding, she wins the guards’ admission, on film, that they rarely tell each other and that some have a “power fantasy.” While these words may seem barely revealing, they touch the hearts of the characters the guards inhabit every day. Takala’s approach resembles that of a therapist: you wouldn’t have seen the shame pass over her subjects’ faces if she had directly challenged their power, rather than conducting a masterclass.
Elsewhere, the artist pursues a slightly wackier comedy. In Real Snow White, 2009, she arrives at Disneyland Paris, geographically close to the French capital but aesthetically global, disguised as an innocent princess. However, on arriving at the entrance gates, she is accosted and ordered to leave: “Perhaps you are going to do bad things. . . . There is a real Snow White in the park. Takala smiles and walks away, but parents and children surround him, asking for Snow White’s autograph. as she tries to obey, she is shoved by a guard, who smiles like her. The only subjects without expression, at first glance, are the children who have come here to live out a dream. Takala’s joke becomes sad, its target is no longer clear.
At times, Takala’s actions can seem downright sinister. In The Stroke, 2018, another recreation, Takala plays a “wellness consultant” in a London coworking space. With the same painted smile as everyone else, she wanders the halls, touching people on their arms and whispering, “Are you okay? Judging by the whispers: “It’s so weird. . . . This makes No sense”—she soon gets the place on her nerves. Some begin to avoid Takala; a few physically recoil. More than just a joke about office culture, petting people against their will, it presumably borders on the criminal.
The most promising piece is the one in which Takala acts discreetly. In Trainee, 2008, she joined the accounting firm Deloitte but did not take on any duties. Instead, she rides the elevator all day (“train style,” she says), or stares into space (“does some brain work”). And although the usual complaints begin – “What the hell is that?” barks an email, saying his behavior is “frightening” to “Tax people” – many of his colleagues are, in person, quietly grateful. Not staring at a PC, people whisper, is “very likely”. How long and why have you been sitting at your desk?
