Delight at Robert St. – which will have its premiere at Mediabox – was shot on a small street in Toronto, where I lived for a while in the territory of an old stray cat. The neighbors called him Buddy. One beautiful Sunday morning, I, without guessing, captured Buddy’s final autumn with an old 35mm movie camera.
Delight at Robert St. is compiled from material shot on different film formats and qualities, starting on 35mm Academy from the early history of cinema, to 16mm and S16 formats. I reshot the original black-and-white material onto color stock in an optical printer – and continued from there.
My working method is simple, as I find targets and shoot just like a street photographer. I’ve noticed that many situations that seem mundane become completely different when depicted. My 70-year-old Soviet-made Konvas camera is a mystical magic box; there is only a small amount of documentary material in Delight at Robert St. – but by working on the material in the darkroom, a minute can stretch to ten – and a whole world can develop from that.
After returning home, to my surprise, I found my deceased neighbor on the Google maps. There, in the digital cloud, my friend still monitors his territory under his Maple tree.
Delight at Robert St. is produced with the assistance of the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) and Filemo Films. Thanks to University of Arts/Academy of Fine Arts, Saastamoinen Foundation, Serlachius residency. Arts Promotion Centre Finland has supported the artist in her work. Funding: AVEK/Milla Moilanen.
There are three steps to the media art space Mediabox, but the work can also be watched on a tablet by request.