Bits and pieces

The house is warm and smells of animal fat. I´ve been melting and cooking birdfood of sheepfat and seeds as it´s supposed to be between -20 and -30°C in some parts of southern Finland tomorrow morning. This day was also magnificent, but I spent it in a red and white shopping-heaven that took me over a frozen sea. Watching the ice break in the bow of the boat just never stops to fascinate. Mmh... and just some months ago there were dolphins under the bow. Not breaking, though...


Let us get back to the beast. I know my upbringing has much to do with why I´m writing this. It was as recently as the day before yesterday that my father reminded me of how much I appreciate his approach to life. He had been working for days and driving hundreds of kilometres for medicine to cure a sheep that was fatally ill. Few sheepfarmers would have done anything else than slaughtered the animal at that point. But the woolly lady seems to be getting better, and there still might be a chance that she gives birth next month.
Except for parents with respect for life there has also been a number of animals that have had an especially fine way of pointing out the differences between human and other beeing by taking their space and right and living out their individuality. It´s interesting – there has been so many sheep, turkeys, cats, dogs, lizards and snakes, geese and chickens, rabbits and doves,- but one that appears in my mind now is, or was, a magpie. He came as a dirty and injured youngster, got a new 180 cm tall mother with beard, and mainly grew up on dogfood (you would be amazed to see how much sausage can fit into the tunnel of a human ear). The bird gathered golden treasures that he found in the house (and my mother was looking for them for years) and was curious about all we did with our hands (it became almost annoying to have him between the fingers nonstop or rocking on the edge of the book as one tried to read). He certainly charmed the villagers, but was also fast to judge and show it if he disliked someone or something. What was special with him was that he learned to observe us humans and adapt our behaviour to what he learned of life. He was for example clearly trying out our way to laugh, and it became comical when he used it in situations like the cats tailpulling game. Who knows what happened to him, one morning he was just gone...

There was life, but also death. On the farm the whole family used to participate in the slaughter. I didn´t enjoy it, but learned to approve it and it became a process for thoughts concerning order of precedence, metamorphose and materia. At some point the sudden kill just felt too abrupt, and I started to work with leftover skin, the knife and the camera to deal with deconstruction. It became important to feel the change that happened as the living breathing perfect creature became pieces with accurate value. The process continues, and will appear here as well.


A girl who´s name I can not recall at the moment recently reminded me through her book that our confrontations with animals lay the ground for our understanding of their moral value. For me working with skin also feels like becoming a chain in a tradition that works meaning into material. The experience is very subjective, and I´m deeply fascinated with the form that these subjective experiences take.
I haven´t managed to get rid of my curiosity, so I will ask you what circumstances and incidents have effected your relationship to animals, may it then be fish, bird, cat, frog, cow or wolf...
How did you end up here?