Vaasa (Finland) is a bilingual city. About 25% of the citizens are native swedish speaking. In the surrounding region of Ostrobothnia, the rate of swedish-speaking population is even higher.
In the 2011 parliamentary elections, the True Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset) won 19% of the votes, which made them the third strongest party in the Finish parliament. This party is rather nationalistic and populistic. One of their political goals is the Abolition of the obligatory swedish language-education in schools. Amongst other traditionalistic political goals, one is the preference of „traditional art“ to „post-modernistic art“ for state subsidised institutions.
ALL (Audio Linguistic Laboratory) is a video-project, dealing with the bilingualism of the Vaasa. In October 2012 (right at the time of the municipal elections), a video-recording-studio – with Camera, lights and a white backdrop – was installed in the lobby of the local museum for modern art, Kuntsi for the course of two weeks. The citizens of Vaasa were asked to participate in the project via posters, hand-outs and online. When sitting down in front of the camera they would hear a series of questions (in either Finish or Swedish) on headphones, which they were asked to answer. The questions were inspired by the Schengen-immigration-form and the form for the Finish citizenship declaration.
The 27 video- and audio-tracks were over layered to a composite-video, whereas you only hear the participant's answers – simultaneously in Finish ans Swedish – but not the questions.
FullHD video loop 4:50 min
ALL (Audio Linguistic Laboratory) 2012
supported by:
special thanks to: Johanna Knull, Rasmus Hedlund and Peter Lüttge