In Admirer Pilvi Takala negotiates the terms of a contract with an anonymous person via email. Though initially the messages were only in response to Takala’s 2015 free text-messaging service Invisible Friend, she quickly began to receive a torrent of unwanted and often aggressive messages from Anonymous, across various online platforms.

Takala proposed a contract which would serve both as the basis of an artwork and as a concrete justification for terminating all contact. This contract is an attempt to define the terms of their communication, and implement clear boundaries and objectives within their interaction. Over the two-month negotiation period, both parties contributed to and commented on the terms of the contract. Working together to formulate it, the process of negotiation itself existed both as a form of emotional labour and as an attempt at self-preservation.

Admirer evidences a certain kind of gendered, online behaviour, one in which the risk of reprisal is minimal. These attitudes are echoed across parts of our society, with the work being both about the themes which surface (e.g. entitlement, misogyny, harassment framed as romantic persistence) and the actual management of these issues. Both parties exercised power in this process, with Takala’s agency stemming from her clear intentions and control over the art-making process, whilst Anonymous’ power lies in the concealing of their identity.

Courtesy the artist
2018 - video installation - courtesy of Carlos/Ishikawa and Helsinki Contemporary

Image credit: Pilvi Takala - Admirer © Pirje Mykkänen Kiasma and Peter Tijhuis

Pilvi Takala
°1981, Helsinki, Finland

The video works of Pilvi Takala are based on performative interventions in which she researches specific communities in order to process social structures and question the normative rules and truths of our behaviour in different contexts. Her works show that it is often possible to learn about the implicit rules of a social situation only by its disruption. Her work has been shown at MoMA PS1, New Museum, Palais de Tokyo, Kiasma, Kunsthalle Basel, Manifesta 11, CCA Glasgow, International Film Festival Rotterdam, HotDocs, Witte de With, and the 9th Istanbul Biennial. Takala won the Dutch Prix de Rome in 2011 and the Emdash Award and Finnish State Prize for Visual Arts in 2013. She lives and works between Berlin and Helsinki.