Serious Introspection

Episode six brought together Jaakko Blomberg of Yhteismaa and Ossi Koskelainen, Ilpo Heikkinen & Emmi Venna of the Post-MJ Era Institute of Consciousness. We discussed legacy, openness, social boundaries, memories, divorce, and shark costumes. I unsuccessfully tried to get rid of a Gertrude Stein book, played Michael Jackson trivia, and saw St. Elmo's Fire spitting ions in the ether.

Hey, sorry, we had some tech difficulties again. More camera fuckups and the audio feed was missing some mics, so I had to mix in some camera sound and it's not optimal. I promise we'll get back on track next week, when our trusted technical supervisor will be back. Tero Nauha will be there to talk about his book launch, and we'll try some other hijinks. There's only two episodes left so if you're in Helsinki, please come along! Thanks also to Mad House for letting us do this show in the first place, and please don't miss the rest of Mad House's 2nd season programme.

Those of you who saw Matthew Goulish on my show last week (or on the video here) know how much I admire his writing and approach to art and performance. I wanted to talk further with him (and with Lin Hixson, who didn't come on stage during episode 5) while they were in Helsinki, so we recorded a conversation which is presented here in podcast format. Among the topics discussed were interruptions, reversing course, limitations, permission, fear, comfort zones, walking across the room 10000 times, respect, skepticism, dogma, generosity, and peripheral consciousness.

It's the TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES episode! With our trusted sound man in Estonia we had to figure it out ourselves, mainly, 'where do they store the microphones?' and thus we started a half-hour late, and I was agitated throughout. It's also the AMERICA episode! With guests Megan Snowe (USA), Ernest Truely (USA), Matthew Goulish (USA) and myself and Justin as always. Special thanks to Ilpo Heikkinen for stepping in and being a pop-up sound guy/saviour. I love him, even if he isn't American.

Despite the slow start I think this was our best episode yet, and I was thrilled to have Matthew on the show as his work has influenced me a great deal. And I wish Megan could be on the show every week. Here's the video, with live tweets by Ernest (@room4error) superimposed where appropriate. Sorry the lighting isn't as pleasant and before; I guess our sound man usually handles that too. It's the DARK episode!

Next week (10 November) is episiode 6 - the ANTEPENULTIMATE episode! - starting at 18:00 as always at Ihana Baari/Mad House Helsinki. Guests will include Jaakko Blomberg from Yhteismaa and several representatives of the Post-MJ Era Institute of Consciousness. And if you can't make it, you can still follow us on Facebook (send in those mailbag questions!) and check the hashtag #SeriousIntrospection for future livetweets and other interactions.

Here's the hastily edited video from this week's episode of Serious Introspection with John W. Fail, which was a good one - featuring Hanne Ivars, Synes Elischka and Harriina Räinä as well as hype man Justin Tyler Tate. We talked about Bruce Conner films, interactivity in art, and how to make fake blood. And we played a game based on my life. There was a camera failure so we didn't have as much footage to work with this time, and I also tried to superimpose Ernest Truely's live tweets on the video, which is maybe funny or maybe annoying.

Here is episode 3, from last week at Ihana Baari. Guests were Kristinsson & Fredriksson, and we attempted a subjective 'trivia' game which flopped due to low audience participation. Thanks to Justin Tyler Tate as always for being a great hype man, and to Lotta Blomberg for taking care of the videographing and editing.

Here's episode 2 of Serious Introspection with John W. Fail, my weekly live/talk show at Mad House Helsinki. This week I talked with Annika Tudeer, Andrew Paterson, and Kimmo Modig. It was a significantly more lively show than last time, and I felt way better about it. I apologise for the audio being terrible - it makes this quite hard to listen to, but next week we will ensure that we get a better recording.

The first episode of Serious Introspection with John W. Fail, with Zil Lilas and Leena Kela (and hype man Justin Tyler Tate).