Am I Callin You at a Bad Time?
2024
00:15:00
X is growing up in the 1990s, she makes prank calls as a child and gets her first job in telephone sales as a teenager. Office smells, heavy breathers, and meaningless greetings follow her from one workplace to another. Through archival material and amateur video footage, the narrative reflects X’s actions as a faceless subject playing with her voice as a commercialised asset. Am I Calling you at a Bad Time? is an experimental fictional story based on recollections of true events.
The artwork was supported by The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture – AVEK, Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse, Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation and produced by Kenno Filmi. The artist is supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Taike.
Photo: Farbod Fakharzadeh, Kenno Filmi.
Martta Tuomaala is a Helsinki-based visual artist (MA) who works between documentary and fiction. She works with various forms of film, video and installation. Over the past decade she has mainly concentrated on work culture and workers’ issues. Tuomaala has worked in many low-income fields and her own experiences have inspired her to create projects that emphasize workers’ rights.
In her recent artworks, a notable satirical touch and expressive body language are evident, but the form and the tone of the artwork depends largely on the content that is dealt with.
Tuomaala is currently a board member of AV-Arkki. She is also a co-founder of Kenno Filmi co-op, a production house proposing reconfigurations of film and media art production practices through creative exchanges. Tuomaala’s works have been exhibited in various festivals and exhibitions internationally, e.g. 2022-23, 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, 2021 ACC Gallery, Weimar, 2020 Tartu Art Museum, Tartu, 2020, EKKM, Tallinn, Survival Kit Festival, Riga. She also represented Finland at the 2019 Venice Biennale as part of the Miracle Workers Collective.