Serious Introspection

The second Serious Introspection episode @ IHME 2016 featured festival director Paula Toppila and IHME 2016 artist Kateřina Šedá. It was a cold outdoor show but we talked about the tram busking project, the approach to art in everyday life, and their expectations for the rest of the festival.

Here is the first show from the 2016 IHME Päivät festival, which took place on 1 April 2016 at Vanha (Old Student House) in Helsinki. We set up these shows outside, on the 'stage' next to Vanha, and throughout the weekend interviewed a variety of festival participants hoping to promote it to the general public. On Friday, the first show was with Pontus Kyander and Aleksi Salusjärvi, discussing Pontus's forthcoming manifesto and the crisis of Finnish art. We also had a drunken heckler who genuinely believed that Pontus was Elton John.

Serious Introspection actually ended awhile ago, but due to general life commitments I've been way behind on getting the videos edited and posted. So with many apologies, here is the belated episode 6 of season two, which actually took place way back on 30 March 2016. I had the flu and almost cancelled the show, but instead I turned up and let Justin take charge, and this turned out to be either the best or worst episode ever depending on your taste. My old friend Hanna Tuulikki, from the UK, was in town to talk about her residency at Saari, and Kimmo Modig came up to help carry the show since I was pretty much delirious. This was also Justin's final show before he escaped to Taiwan!

We've been a bit behind schedule on editing videos, but here is the video from episode 5, which took place on 23 March 2016. Our guests were 110% (Lachlan and Beth), Marek Pluciennik, and the mysterious Mirva. Agnieszka also joined to talk about our trip to Prague. We had some live performance art, and we talked about film and depression too. Ernest sent in a travel report from Madrid, too.

Serious Introspection season 2, episode 4 took place on Wednesday, 16 March 2016 at Ihana Baari in Helsinki and featured Tuukka Asplund and Kira O'Reilly as guests. We talked about life in Helsinki, ecology and trans-disciplinary approaches to performance, British complaint culture, and the value of making stuff or not. Also, we sang some karaoke, went to Estonia, tried to call Ernest, and spoke again with my parents.

After some delay (sorry, I am lazy when it comes to my video editing responsibilities), here is season 2, episode 3 from 1 March 2016. Martina Marti was on first to discuss her work Reverie with Gnab Collective, as well as the general balance of being an artirst vs. and administrator, and the different approaches to these topics. Then we had Juuso Paaso, who has been working with the Oranssi Pienlehtiarkisto, here talking about zine culture in Finland and his digitisation efforts.

In addition, Justin and I settled some beef, Juuso and I sang a Daniel Johnston song, and I did a STRONG FIVE about the Uberman Sleep Schedule. Ernest provided his tweets, seen here on-screen and followable @room4error via #SeriousIntrospection.

This week we had Juha Valkeapää to talk about his production 2341 AD, and Malin Gustavsson who explained a bit about her work as a diversity consultant. We also channeled the spirit of a country and western supergroup, phoned my parents, and met the Pope Urban VII of Mad House Helsinki. As always, it could happen without Justin Tyler Tate (world's best hype man), Ernest Truely (follow @room4error!), video master Lotta Blomberg, and sound master Joosep Tormis.

We started the new season of Serious Introspection last week at Mad House, and we came back strong (I hope). Guests were standup comedienne/anthropologist Marianna Keisalo, Kosminen and Khaos Publishing's Helen Korpak and Iina Esko, and Brasilian artist Paola de Ramos. We debuted some new segments, enjoyed the strange glow of a 4:3 aspect ratio projector, and enjoyed seeing the audience again. Plus, balls.

Here is the video for your enjoyment, featuring embedded tweets courtesy of Ernest (@room4error).

We're off next week but we'll be back on the 24th for a special #ErrEvening night, and also with guest Juha Valkeapää!

Here's the last episode of Serious Introspection, which was by far the best one (from my perspective, at least). We had a large and hungry audience and great guests and a real spirit of absurdity. Guests were Nikos Doulous and some of the Mad House working group (Heidi Backström, Mirva Pulkkinen and Annika Tudeer); also included were statistical analysis, Minor Threat karaoke, and the one-time-only appearance of the 'What is John learning in (an) art school?' segment. We closed with a smashing music video/clip show.

Thanks again to everyone at Mad House - those on stage, Juha Valkeapää, and everyone else - and to Kimmo Modig who launched this enterpise in the first place. We'll be back for Mad House's third season, beginning in February, and we'll post more details as we know them. In the meantime, we are available to be hired for parties, bar mitzvahs and other events via the SI Services enterprise, and you can check out our new standalone website for Serious Introspection at seriousintrospection.fi.

Here is this week's episode, with Tero Nauha, Milla Koistinen, Salka Gudmundsdóttir and impromptu guest Tuukka Asplund. We passed out feedback forms to the audience and presented the new for-profit wing of Serious Introspection, SI Services (found at http://services.johnw.fail).

We were without a sound man for the third consecutive week but did not have Ilpo to save the day, so all of the mics are really hot and the soundboard mix sounds terrible. I tried the best I could with post-processing but this episode is again really hard to listen to. I apologise immensely and almost didn't post this video at all, but figured some bad-sounding documentation is better than nothing.