Potentiality of Love

Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s hybrid piece combines sculpture with moving image technology. 

Potentiality for Love deals with the potential for empathy and love towards other living beings. The work turns attention to those human emotions that could serve as a foundation for dismantling the hierarchical structures between living things, thereby engendering a turn towards non-humans and the recognition of others. The work reflects the origins of these emotions, how we define them and how we conceive of their function as part of a larger continuum of living beings.

The first element of the installation is a hybrid work that combines sculpture with moving image technology to focus attention on the point where love is born. Using outdated LED modules, it recreates an image of a distant memory, of mother and the primal unity. It also touches upon the memory of loss and distance, the moment when the possibility for love that rests as potentiality, first emerges. 

The second element asks whether our love and empathy is reserved only for our own kind, or whether we are capable of holding them towards other living beings as well. This question is approached by addressing the historical divide between humans and non-humans. This is achieved by creating a situation that questions what it is to be a human being and how the other, the stranger, is constructed in our culture. The medium for this is a modified situation featuring a setup similar to that used to treat phantom limb aches

Potentiality for Love is a Serlachius Museums’ commission, which is receiving its premiere in Mänttä before embarking on an extensive world tour, including a show at the Biennale of Sydney in March 2018, among others.

Cast Jenny & Matleena Kuusniemi
Written & directed by Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Cinematography Jussi Eerola – Edit Heikki Kotsalo – Wire FX Reijo Kontio – 3d VFX Jari Hakala – Audio Olli Pärnänen – Animal supervisor Roger Farr
Commissioned by Serlachius Museums
With support from Avek, Biennale of Sydney, Frame, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Finnish Film Foundation, Kordelin Foundation Museum M
Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris, London
Produced by Ilppo Pohjola
© 2018 – Crystal Eys  www.crystaleye.fi

Image: Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Potentially of Love, 2018.