“Some we kept, some we threw back” draws a parallel between the migration of Finns to Minnesota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the migration today of people from developing nations to the West.

The film depicts a man in contemporary times, making preparations for a sauna in the backwoods of Northern Minnesota. As he carries out his mundane tasks — chopping wood, pumping water, lighting the sauna fire — a woman narrates a series of experiences dating from her childhood when she and her parents left Finland to start a new life in America.

The woman recalls the reasons her parents left their home country: famine, unemployment, political persecution. She reveals how her family and other Finns were treated upon their arrival in the U.S.; how they were called “Dirty Finns”, classified as non-white, and treated as unwanted refugees.

Through its use of a dramatized narrative, the film draws clear parallels between the experiences of immigrants and refugees arriving from Europe in the past with those traveling from further afield today.

The film illustrates that not so long ago, the countries that today employ controversial rhetoric in the simplistic discussion of immigration were once themselves subject to the same pressures and circumstances that lead people to leave their homes in a desperate attempt to find a better, safer life.

For example, the current anti-immigration discourse taking place in Finland has become the most significant issue of the forthcoming elections. However, only 130 years ago Finns themselves were seeking to leave their country in massive numbers. In the late 19th and early 20th Century, hundreds of thousands of Finns migrated from Finland to find a new life in the United States of America. When they arrived they were met with scorn and treated as third-class citizens.

It is perhaps surprising that similar discussions in the U.S. today concerning the influx of foreign immigrants also appear to forget that the antecedents of today’s population were once immigrants themselves.

“Some we kept, some we threw back” contrasts these two situations, and draws parallels between the conditions and circumstances experienced by people in different countries, and in different periods of history. The themes of immigration, and the underlying reasons that cause people to flee their homes in search of a better life, are increasingly important in today’s world. While international immigration policies dominate political discourse, it is easy to forget that at its core it is an issue born in human, personal tragedy.

“Some we kept, some we threw back” will receive its premiere at Rainio & Roberts’s solo exhibition at Franklin Artworks, Minneapolis, 10th September to 29th October 2010.

This plain question illuminates the difference between the processes of becoming an adoptive or biological parent – to get a biological child, parents do not need to fill in forms or analyse and justify their reasons. The question, however, is relevant to most people at some point in their lives

In our work “Why do you want to have a child?” we have asked this same question to many different people: those who already have a child, people who wish to have a child, as well as people who have decided they don’t want children. The people interviewed did not know the question in advance, and were therefore unable to prepare an answer beforehand. The work reveals the interviewees’ feelings of surprise, discomfort or hesitation at being suddenly confronted with the unexpected question.

We ourselves have lived with this question for the last few years and this work gave us the opportunity to relate our own feelings about it as well as to share the question with others. We have included our own response to the question by including ourselves amongst the interviewees.

The work is supported by the Arts Council of Finland.

Why do you want to have a child? will premiere at the Aine Art Museum, Tornio, Finland, on November 27th, 2009. The exhibition will run until January 24th, 2010.

Why do you want to have a child?
Directed, filmed and edited by Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts
38 minutes.

Eight Rooms received its premiere at Korjaamo in Helsinki on 5.11.2008. The new eight-screen video installation focuses on the international trafficking of women for prostitution.

The exhibition runs from 5.11 – 30.11.2008.

Read more about Eight Rooms…

The series is comprised of the works Rajamailla (Borderlands) (2004), Angles of Incidence (2006) and Eight Rooms (2008). THe three works explore how different groups of people experience their changing social positions and relations, and focus on people who exist at the margins of society – margins which might be either physical (geographical) or social. Each of the works also deals with the transformations experienced when passing from one place, time or set of circumstances to another.

Rajamailla (Borderlands)
Three-screen synchonised DVD installation, 24 minutes

Rajamaiila is a DVD installation which takes the Finnish-Russian border as its central theme. The film focuses on the lives of people living on both sides of the border, using fact, fiction and fantasy to investigate how the presence of the border affects their lives.

The film is presented on three-screens – the left screen shows scenes from Finland, the right screen shows scenes from Russia, while the central screen shows scenes from the border cut between the two countries. The images from Finland and Russia have been photographed in villages and areas which lie very close to the border.

Eight Rooms
Eight-screen synchronised DVD installation.
20 minutes

‘Eight Rooms’ is an installation consisting of eight video projections that deals with the trafficking of women into Finland. The eight screens are arranged to form a circle around the audience. The audio soundtrack for each screen features one story – one aspect or point of view – detailing the experiences of a trafficked woman. Each story is associated with a different screen. Each screen depicts a bed in a room. The beds are initially untidy. As the story begins, a cleaning woman enters the room and begins to tidy the room. When the room has been tidied, she leaves the room (and the screen) and enters the next room on the adjacent screen. Occasionally, the images on the screens are interrupted with other footage supporting the dialogue. As the cleaner moves from screen to screen, the tidied rooms behind the audience become untidy again, so that by the time the cleaner has made a full circuit around the installation, the first room is once again untidy and in need of cleaning.

Angles of Incidence
Three-screen DVD installation. 15 minutes

Angels of Incidence deals with the experiences of immigrants moving to other countries. The work is comprised of three video scenes photographed in three separate locations – an immigration interview room, an immigration detention centre, and an administration building where decisions concerning the immigrant’s future are made.

Each of the spaces photographed for Angles of Incidence are spaces of power – situations which the immigrant must pass through in order to enter and be legally accepted in his or her new society. The video material consists of static ‘photographic’ shots – there is only one long shot of each space. No people are visible in the spaces, rendering the spaces, and their significance, all the more powerful.

Each image is accompanied by audio interviews with immigrants detailing their experiences in each of the specific locations. Their stories complement and contrast with the stark images.

Eight Rooms is an eight screen video installation that deals with the trafficking of women as part of international sex trade. 

International human trafficking is a phenomenon that exists in the shadows of globalisation and in which Finland also participates. This trade in women – mostly from ex-Soviet nations but also further afield – is perpetuated by thousands of ordinary Finnish men, and yet it remains relatively hidden and unspoken in our society.

The installation ‘Eight Rooms’ consists of eight synchronized DVD-video projections that have been filmed in hotel rooms. The screens create a circular space inside which the audience views the work. Each screen depicts a different hotel bedroom into which a cleaning lady enters to perform her work or tidying the beds and smoothing out the sheets. As the cleaning goes on, a narrator – a young Russian woman – describes the dramatised feelings and experiences of trafficked women. These brief, plain monologues, when juxtaposed with the ordinary and familiar hotel rooms, emphasise the everyday nature of this phenomenon. As the stories continue, the cleaner continues her own invisible work, cleaning the same rooms over and over again.

The installation uses images, sound and space to create a claustrophobic and sometimes uncomfortable environment that mirrors the experiences described in the narrative. The viewer becomes a physical participant in the installation, in much the same way that they are a part of a society in which trafficking takes place.

Eight Rooms  is the third part of the Rainio & Roberts’s video If you could see me now. The first part of the trilogy – Borderlands (2004) – examined the Finnish-Russian border, while the second part – Angles of Incidence (2006)  –dealt with the experiences of refugees in Finland.

Eight Rooms is a part of Rainio’s PhD research at the Elomedia Doctoral School for Audiovisual Media in the University of Art & Design in Helsinki and University of Lapland.

Script & Direction: Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts
Producer: Ville Hyvönen
Cinematography: Tuomas Järvelä
Original Soundtrack: Petri Kuljuntausta
Actress: Riitta Elstelä
Narrator: Nadja Leinonen
Co-produced by:  Valotalo Productions / Virta Productions

The work is supported by:
The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture AVEK
The Art’s Council of Finland
POEM, The northern film and media foundation

‘Surfaces’ is an edited selection of tracks from the performance ‘Working Space / Surface Time’ by John Court and Mark Roberts.

The sound sources used were generated entirely by the movements of Court’s body as he moved slowly over a raised wooden platform. The sounds of his movements were picked up by four piezo microphones, amplified, and processed live. Each performance lasted exaclty 8 hours, and the material presented on this album was selected from four separate performances made during 2004.

The album contains 11 mp3 tracks edited into a continuous soundscape.

Download tracks and artwork below.

Surface 1

Surface 2

Surface 3

Surface 4

Surface 5

Surface 6

Surface 7

Surface 8

Surface 9

Surface 10

Surface 11

Surfaces CD Cover

‘How Everything Turns Away’ is a mini-album of guitar experiments recorded by Mark Roberts under the pseudonym ‘_R’.

The album presents 4 tracks of entropic decay. Individual tracks and a printable CD wallet are available for download below.

1 We need to create a political crisis in order to rescue art from a quagmire of impotence

2 Action is elegance

3 A kind of excellent dumb discourse

4 The rest is silence

Printable CD artwork

‘The Fact of the Matter’ was a live, four-hour sound performance in the abandoned Lokstall (train depot) of a closed iron-ore mine in Kirkenes, Norway. The sounds used in the performance were sourced from field recordings around the mine and depot. Narration is provided by an ex-worker reading extracts from a 1950s promotional book. The texts boast of the machinery, techniques, and large export product of the mine, which today sits abandoned and desolate. The community of Kirkenes still feels the effects of the closure of the mine.

This mp3 presents an edited re-recording of the performance made in 2005.

The Fact of the Matter (mp3)

Angles of Incidence is showing as part of the touring exhibition Borderlives
March 15 – June 1, 2008 Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany
June 14 – August 10, 2008, Stadtgalerie Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Veli Granö, Jaakko Heikkilä, Tea Mäkipää, Anu Pennanen, Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts, Vesa Ranta & others

Borderlives – Contemporary Art from Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Tallinn is an up-to-date inquiry into the artistic, social and mental situation of this northernmost region of art in Europe. It concentrates on artists, who independently and accurately reflect the epochal upheavals of recent years. At the center of this artistic discussion are physical and mental border experiences.

Stadtgalerie Kiel

Ludvig Forum für International Kunst

Catalogue (Amazon.de)