![]() “I think I have an unhealthy sense of safety,” she said. I asked how she developed her tolerance for embarrassment and humiliation, whether she’d had to build it up, the way an athlete trains a muscle. In person, Takala is low-key and easy to talk to. We ate vegetarian dolsot bibimbap and cupped our hands around little bowls of ginger tea. I braced myself for a persnickety order or a feigned sneezing fit, but nothing untoward happened. “I get super excited when things get awkward,” Takala, who is forty-two, admitted. We met for lunch at a cozy Korean place in an artsy neighborhood called Punavuori. In January, I went to see Takala in Helsinki. Then she visited the building in a T-shirt printed with their wildly varying responses, wandering the halls and maintaining an epic poker face when security stepped in. For “Broad Sense” (2011), she e-mailed questions about the dress code at the European Parliament to representatives of all the member states. ![]() In “Wallflower” (2006), Takala showed up at a dance for vacationing pensioners in a poufy pink prom dress and just sat there, tragically. This almost legalistic talent for identifying vulnerabilities in institutional protocol is evident in “The Announcer” (2007), for which Takala hired an actor, an older woman, to insist that an employee at a posh Helsinki department store use the intercom to summon “interesting-looking” men to the information desk. Excruciating silences and cringeworthy conversations act as magnifying glasses on the social contract, inviting us to pore over its fine print. “We easily fail to assess the real losses or benefits of someone just taking a free apple because they want to eat it, and prefer to offer it to a person who presents their commitment to our arbitrary system of rules.” There’s a “Jackass” element to Takala’s approach, but instead of shooting herself out of a cannon she’s inserting herself into social lacunae, filling up the negative space of subtexts and taboos. “The fear of someone possibly exploiting the system and a requirement that we follow the rules is often greater than that of common sense,” Takala writes. Soon, she’s laden with swag, attracting whispers and side-eyes. At another, she palpates the free apples before slipping a few into her bag. At one booth, she silently pockets some pens. The Supertramp song of the same name plays in the background as a young woman makes the rounds at a career fair, breezily collecting corporate freebies. In a 2015 video piece called “Give a Little Bit,” Takala explores the rules of exchange. “It’s like the Yes Men, but softer and weirder,” the artist Stine Marie Jacobsen, who has collaborated with Takala, told me, referring to the American prankster-activist duo. ![]() Takala’s work involves an unusual combination of earnestness and humor. Last year, Takala, who lives in Helsinki and Berlin, represented her home country at the Venice Biennale, where a curatorial statement noted that her work explores “how the neoliberal conflation of civic spaces and commerce has created a nebulous boundary that privileges consumer over citizen.” According to Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, in London, which staged a show of Takala’s pieces earlier this year, her art seeks “to stress test the conventions and codes that govern our daily interactions.” Takala sometimes describes her practice as “intervention.” One might simply say that she does things she’s not supposed to do in places where she’s not supposed to be. When I asked Vanessa Carlos, Takala’s London gallerist, how she would categorize her client’s art, she replied, “To be honest, I think she’s kind of off on her own-ish.” But precisely what kind of Finnish artist she is remains as debatable as a theme park’s rule book. The woman in the costume is Pilvi Takala, who used the encounter as the basis for a 2009 video piece called “Real Snow White.” She is Finnish. Scarlet cape rippling in the summer breeze, the too-real fake Snow White trudges off toward the toilets. “She’s no Snow White,” someone in the crowd mutters. She states firmly that no disguises are allowed on the premises, and that the Snow White look-alike must change her clothes in the bathroom if she wishes to remain at the park. Unfazed by the fuss she’s causing, the Snow White look-alike continues posing for photos and autographing books. ![]() “I thought the real Snow White is a drawing,” the Snow White look-alike replies.Ī crowd gathers. ![]()
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