Journey through a barren place:
a reflection on Elena Näsänen's Waste Land

Sarah Hetherington

Elena Näsänen is an artist whose practice is located within the realm of video, installation, moving image and experimental short film. Näsänen’s work explores the filmic relationship between image and sound, and the translation of certain traditional cinematic techniques into contemporary video art to create fictional, ambiguous narratives that wholly and palpably capture the viewer. Näsänen is a storyteller; non-language based narrative structures, created purely through the use of physical action, moving image and a background soundscape are the basis of her film practice.
Näsänen is part of a recent revolution in Finnish video and media art. Since its inception in the early 1980s, the medium has risen to prominence and is now recognised as a major cultural export. Artists including Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Marita Liulia, Liisa Lounila, Veli Granö and Marikki Hakola have brought this art form an international profile. According to Kari Yli-Annala in ‘FixC: From Countdown to Orbit’, a history of a co-operative for artists working in moving image, ‘at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s Finnish video art was the domain of artists and researchers who were interested in the electronic expression language of video, or in its performative, reflective, or cultural-critical potentials.’ And later, ‘in the 1990s, while video held its earned place as a medium, film-based forms of art were rediscovered as well, and the practice of combining various media gained momentum.’ Common attributes of the Finnish genre include the fusion of minimalist sensibilities, the figure and land art, and the relationship between the human and the natural in an increasingly technological and industrial society.
Näsänen creates constructed environments where elusive characters or protagonists often venture on a journey leading to self-realisation and discovery. Yet, nothing really happens in her filmscapes; something has either just occurred or is about to, and in each case, the viewer is not privy to any of it. As Yli-Annala states:
The referential relations of Näsänen’s works extend from the genre of narrative film to feminist avant-garde film and landscape film. The pace in the films varies on the full scale of contemplative, fast-paced and driven. What they all have in common is a strong, dramatic charge. The pursued structural and sound impressions guide the choice of content, object and narrative elements. In the last ten years, the soundscape has become a more and more fixed part…
Näsänen’s interest in immersive soundscapes to create narrative and plot, coupled with the lack of any dialogue or language, enhance the level of the ‘unknown’, raising many unanswered questions in her short films.
Näsänen’s use of heightened yet fantastical realism, coupled with the core element of the atmospheric soundscape, creates suspenseful and obscure narratives that exude mystery and a sense of danger. Recognisable environs and familiar scenarios sit somewhere between a lucid dreamscape, an imagined moment in time, and a past memory. The artist states:
The narration of my films is related to feature films but there is always something strange and unfamiliar. Something is not right. There is a moment of someone’s life in one or two sequences. The woman who drives a car in icy roads or the violent action at home where the characters are outside the frame and we can only hear the sound of their movements. What happens before or after this moment is framed out. For me the soundtrack of the film is often more important than the images. Sound affects directly the emotions. It not only enhances action and mood, but it creates narrative.
After completing her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and the Slade School of Fine Art, London, Näsänen has since exhibited her work at festivals, museums and galleries in Finland and overseas, and she has been actively involved in Finnish cultural politics, being appointed as the first female president for the Finnish Artist’s Association. Näsänen is also a member of the Muu (the ‘Other’) artist association, an artist-run and interdisciplinary organisation founded in 1987 to promote experimental forms of art, and to encourage cultural and political discussion.
Recently, Näsänen completed an artist-in-residency program at Artspace, Sydney where she created Waste Land (2008), exhibited in EVENT: New Moving Image Works. The title of the film refers to an area that is barren, or ravaged; a place, era, or aspect of life that is considered as lacking in spiritual or aesthetic qualities; a vacuum; a culturally void, post-apocalyptic landscape.
Shot using 16mm film on location at Lake George in New South Wales in the peak of an Australian summer, Waste Land depicts a united group of demographically and physically diverse women journeying through the expansive landscape to an end point. Their cause, intention or reasons are unknown and vague, and their fate is left to the imagination. Questions are raised and left unanswered: what are they searching for, why are they in this place, what is their objective? Christopher Gordon confers in ‘Who do you think you are?’ a catalogue essay for an exhibition of Näsänen’s work at the Anna Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia in 2006, ‘in drawing us ever forward in a very comforting and familiar manner while simultaneously problematising any definitive reading of the images she presents, the artist introduces a level of dissonance and uncertainty that remain long after the piece concludes.’

At the start of the short film, the viewer sees (from a high vantage point through a cluster of trees) individual figures apparently emerging from out of nowhere and congregating in a group. From here, the women proceed on their journey, often viewed from afar, walking in a line, and one by one behind each other, towards their destination. The barren, dry plains are underneath them, and the bleak distant hills are framed in the background. The camera occasionally takes the viewer in for a close-up of their sweaty, exhausted faces. The summer sun at midday is tangible; the viewer witnesses it bearing down on the women and the earth. The walking/journey is drawn out, until finally the women reach a wire fence, breaking the rhythm of their movement, but also contributing to the narrative. The women have entered a private piece of land, once sealed by a barrier that has now been broken. All the while insects, footsteps, leaves crackling underfoot and the whistling wind echo loudly in the background soundscape.

After some time, the endless walking results in the women taking refuge under a group of trees, a threatening helicopter can be heard flying overhead. The viewer does not see the helicopter, merely hears its foreboding sound. As the women fumble and run for shelter, their faces looking skyward, the camera slows down in real time, creating a heightened sense of chaos, drama and perhaps danger. The women’s faces are fatigued and tense. Dusk has now arrived, and the day is slowly passing. Finally the women arrive at their destination, a non-descript industrial complex lit with harsh, fluorescent light, in the middle of nowhere. It is dark. One of the women undoes a wire security fence, and the group begins to enter just as the screen blanks out signaling the end of Näsänen’s narrative. The film begins again on a loop, only allowing the viewer to pause for a moment and reflect, although none the wiser in a semi-hypnotised state. The technique of looping the film parallels the rhythm of the narrative moving from day to night, the journey from start to finish, as well as the rhythm and pace of the women moving through the landscape.
Triggering remnants of familiar, ‘non-real’ landscapes, Näsänen effectively connects the characters and the narrative to the viewer through cinematic techniques including the long-shot and the ‘close-up’. The medium is completely oriented toward cinematic narrative. Time, rhythm and pace are also key elements in Näsänen’s oeuvre; slow action alongside meaningful and lingering ‘close-ups’ and ‘long-shots’ result in the viewer becoming palpably immersed in the plot, though somewhat lulled into a soporific trance.
Näsänen effectively creates an intimate relationship between the artist, the protagonists and the viewer through the act of watching in the physical space of the darkened installation/projection. Actual and intangible/fantastical landscapes interlink to create a story focusing on one event—something that is about to happen or something that just has occurred. Cleverly, the viewer is completely unaware, and discovers or uncovers the plotline at the same time as the camera, or in fact the artist. The camera mirrors the viewer and the subjects; all are searching for something. As Gordon states, ‘… by probing the relationship between the watcher and the watched, she implicates the viewer of the film in the creation of its meaning. With a fluid virtuosity of movement, the artist lets her camera roam around as if looking for something—inviting the audience to seemingly discover the story along with her… engages us in the process of constructing the experience.’ Näsänen’s use of the elements of suspense and the ‘unknown’ result in a certain form of psychological, non-violent thriller, similar to that of classic film noir cinema.
Waste Land could be interpreted as a phase in the transition and self-discovery of a group of protagonists; strong emotions, a sense of stoic forward momentum and an abstraction of intensifications of the ambiguous narrative create intrigue for the viewer. Images and sounds coalesce into their own reality and radiate a characteristic mystery, just as the female figures and vast landscape manifest strength, yet vulnerability. For the viewer, questions are left unanswered, but one has experienced, alongside the protagonists, Näsänen’s journey through a waste land.

First published in Column 3, edited by Reuben Keehan, published by Artspace, Sydney, 2009
© Artspace and the author.

Kari Yli-Annala, ‘FixC: From Countdown to Orbit’, FixC Co-operative, exhibition catalogue, Finland, 2008, p. 4.
ibid.
ibid., p. 32.
Elena Näsänen, artist statement, March 2009, http://larm.pbwiki.com/Elena+Näsänen
Christopher Gordon, ‘Who do you think you are? in Pia Euro, Tanja Koponen, Elena Näsänen, exhibition catalogue, Anna Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2006. Available at http://www.elenanasanen.com/Pages/texts4.html, accessed March 2009.
ibid.