Interview with Eva-Teréz Gölin — VALOKUVAKESKUS PERI

Interview with Eva-Teréz Gölin whose exhibition Smoke Signals
runs from 16 July to 29 August 2021 in Kunsthalle Turku

Interviewer: Hilla Tuominen
Images: Eva-Teréz Gölin

As a photographer and photographic artist, you don’t always rely on the camera but, instead, experiment with various techniques and materials, such as computer vision, machine learning, found photography, and Google’s map services. What does being a photographic artist and seeing the world through photography mean to you?

While my work is always based on photographs, I also use photography and its conventions as a resistance. For example, photography is often described as a way to capture a specific moment in time, but instead, I try to capture a course of events, something that is underway, in one image. This is perhaps one of the reasons for my interest in Google Maps 3D, where a variety of photographs, captured at different times, have been used to render this simulation of the cities. As multiple exposures have been combined to create each location, lampposts or tree trunks could sometimes be seen to cast up to four shadows each on the ground. The fact that the final image is a result of a period of time, could be reminiscent of photographic procedures in the early days of photography; necessary long exposure times made moving vehicles and people invisible in the image. This is also true for the Google Maps 3D-world; objects that have been in motion between the exposures, have become completely or partially invisible. That’s why it’s impossible to know whether the tire tracks seen in the images are the consequence of something that took place earlier or something that happened in the capturing moment.

To portray people with their coffee-to-go cups Gölin took virtual walks in many cities around the world and could observe people and the culture of coffee-to-go as if being physically present. (Holy Grail at the exhibition For the Want of More in Galleri Duerr in Stockholm 2019)

You’ve wandered hundreds of kilometres in Google map services, inspected the digital world both from a bird’s-eye view and up close, discovering places like the beaches and racetracks that we see in your exhibition Smoke Signals at Kunsthalle Turku. What kinds of recurring patterns and phenomena do you see in our society and on our planet when you explore the world in this manner?

It all started with the work Holy Grail where I wanted to depict the phenomenon of the coffee-to-go-culture and chose to use the imagery available on Google Street View where human faces are anonymised in an automatic process before being published. But unlike other searches we are used to doing on the internet, the visual content on Street View is not indexed and searchable. I had no other option but to walk up and down the streets on Street View looking for the people I wanted to portray. I took virtual walks in many cities around the world, and I could observe people and the culture of coffee-to-go as if I was physically present.

To find the places I wanted to portray for my work Structures of Entertainment and Fuel, I couldn't wander about the map aimlessly. Instead, I searched through Google for the different kinds of places I wanted to depict, such as airports, amusement parks, and shopping malls, which I then visited on Google Maps 3D. I noticed how uniformly these types of places are built around the world. From a bird’s eye view, it also became clear how much space that transportation of people and the goods we consume occupy.

Gölin´s work Selected Subjects has been shown in three exhibitions as an installation consisting of a couple of hundred prints of these fragments, hung from floor to ceiling. (Selected Subjects at the exhibition Note to Self in Galleri KC Väst in Gothenburg 2021)

Smoke Signals is your first solo exhibition in Finland, but there’s more to come. The landscapes you depict are often simultaneously alluring and dystopian, and usually carry symbolic significance, such as the racetracks that remind us of the vicious circles and the rat race that our unsustainable lifestyle has created. Is there any hope of getting out? And is art your way of engaging in activism?

Of course, I hope we can find a way out of the vicious spiral of consumption and exploitation of natural resources on which our society is built. The acute threat caused by the past year's pandemic has to some extent shown that we can change our behaviour. But changing our habits to slow down the ongoing climate catastrophe, unfortunately seems to be more difficult.

I don’t consider my art a form of activism, but on a small scale, it could be viewed as such. When I have exhibited my work Selected Subjects, it has led to several discussions about our unsustainable consumption with exhibition visitors. The work is based on the fact that the consumption of household items, furniture, and money spent on refurbishing, increased by 75 percent in Sweden during the first decade of the 2000s. For this project, I collected and scanned more than 1 000 advertisements from various interior design magazines. Through an automated process, built on machine learning, I had the computer analyse the ads and select the "important parts". However, the software I was using hadn’t been designed for processing these types of materials and yielded extremely fragmented results, acting as a reminder of everything that is thrown away or torn out in this interior design hysteria. The work has been shown in three exhibitions as an installation consisting of a couple of hundred prints of these fragments, hung from floor to ceiling.

You use the Internet as a type of archive and use various automated processes and mechanised techniques in your work. At the same time, you question our trust in what we see online and challenge the visual ability of computers. Could you explain your relationship with the automated and the digital and the role of software and processes in your art?

I became interested in Digital Image Editing in 1994 when I first set my eyes on Photoshop. I immediately knew this was something I wanted to work with. Since 2004 I've been working with image editing and exhibition production for other artists and photographers and have also taught these skills. As a professional image editor, my challenge is to edit the images for a “correct” photographic appearance. Perhaps as a counter-reaction to this, my artistic works are often based on digital errors. By using digital technologies that are at an early stage of their development or using technologies for purposes other than their original intent, I let the digital processes contribute with various inaccuracies.

My starting point and source of inspiration come from the ideas and theories about our vision. For instance, that we only see what is new to us and that our brain adds information based on previous knowledge. The digital processes I use, strip away a great deal of content from the images, which I hope opens new ways of seeing and interpreting them.

These days, we see photographic art everywhere and we have endless opportunities to share and experience photographs. What do you think of exhibitions as a format for presenting photographic art? Do they have a future?

The book as a medium became the first way of working with my own projects and experiencing the artworks of others. But in recent years, when I’ve mostly been working with imagery found online, the exhibition format has become the most important for my practice. This is because of the way materiality and size contribute to the experience.

The way an exhibition is installed in a space; how sparse or dense the pieces are installed and what height they meet the viewer, have a considerable impact on the experience. This is very difficult to convey on a website or on social media. Therefore, I have complete faith in the exhibition as a format for both photographic art and other visual work. I agree with my former teacher and current colleague Annika Elisabeth von Hausswolff who, when my class, were installing our first group exhibition, stated: “a good installation should be felt in the body".