Vieno Järventausta
The artwork is exhibited in the Screening room on the 2nd floor of the Mylly building.
Description
Study the stars tonight
2023
Movie | DCP | 58 min | Language: Finnish, subtitles in English
Script and directing: Vieno Järventausta, Lauri Julkunen, Ida Vesterinen
Screening times: 11:15, 14:00, 17:00 daily
Blank, cut-out address forms slide into the frame. A broken pair of sunglasses, small notebooks, a volunteer work journal – a mix of personal effects and junk is revealed piece by piece, sketching out their owner, a child from the 1940s. What can objects tell us about the past and what are the limits of that knowledge?
The school bag was found in a shed. A filmmaker and two historians search for the meanings reflected in the paraphernalia, attempting to trace a history of childhood while recognising their own misinterpretations of a tragedy. The contents of the school bag also shed light on the society of its time. The Second World War and civic education are present in surprising ways in the child’s belongings and school essays.
The film is an outline of a new form merging art and scholarship. Reaching beyond the realms of documentary film and literary essay, it focuses on the history of material culture, our notion of history, and on the ways we use the past.
About the artist
Artist Vieno Järventausta was born in 1991 in Valkeakoski.