Darker Tones is a fictional narrative built upon personal experiences and memories, raising questions about how reality is structured for the artists themselves. In the film, Jade Kallio and Antti Jussila portray themselves—aging performance artists who have worked together for 18 years in the MSL collective they co-founded.
The film takes the form of a road movie—a bleak, fear-tinged coming-of-age story during which the protagonists spiral downward as their internal moral compass disintegrates, ultimately leading them to a kind of self-acceptance: a hazy, entangled creation, like tightly compressed playdough.
The film also explores themes of aging, the hope for success and recognition, friendship, the uncertainties inherent in shared artistic thinking, and life within the parallel reality shaped by collectively created meanings and personas.
MSL (Antti Jussila and Jade Kallio) is a duo of artists who have been working since 2008 and whose work deals with the body, gender, feelings of alienation, repetitive and often ambiguous syndromes: twitching crotches, visceral noises, substance abuse and identification with well-known popular music figures.
Mediabox is Forum Box gallery’s space dedicated to media art. The program is created in collaboration with AV-arkki.
There are three steps to the media art space Mediabox, but the work is also available for viewing on a tablet by request. Please don’t hestitate to contact our staff if Mediabox is inaccessible for you.