"Life on a Leaf" ou viver numa folha, de Jan-Erik Andersson

Há tempos que procuro a resposta ao cinzentismo na arquitectura, as linhas direitas e o funcionalismo, minimalismo, o despir. Gosto de tudo isto, mas algo novo se anuncia e é esse algo que desejo. O sinal mais caricato veio de uma visita recente a Londres: procurava por capricho as velhas lojas de punks do Soho onde se podia comprar cintos de cabedal e picos, botas de biqueira de aço e pins com o símbolo da canabis.

Em vez dessas lojas onde em tempos conviveram minisaias vermelhas com o cabedal encontrei lojas gourmet e de produtos biológicos, restaurantes vegetarianos, biológicos, naturais, mercearias biológicas, cafés amigos do ambiente e bares orgânicos. Das velhinhas lojas, nem uma! Apenas um pequeno "estaminé" na cave do Covent Garden com algumas t-shirts dos Iron Maiden e do Clash mas que me parece estar em vias de extinção pela pouca mercadoria nas paredes e prateleiras. Talvez até já tenha fechado.

Uma das maiores estrelas do novo tempo deve ser Zaha Hadid, uma das influências maiores de hoje e dos tempos que se avizinham. O seu nome é incontornável. Pergunto-me o que faria ela em Lisboa...

Hoje encontrei um artista / arquitecto / performer finlandês que exprime bem as novas ideias: Jan-Erik Anderssen. Os seus trabalhos são interessantes, têm um imenso sentido de humor e de alegria, uma inocência levada ao extremo, quase até ao simplismo. Gostei! Encontrei-o numa entrevista muitíssimo interessante à revista NY Arts, uma leitura que acompanha na perfeição qualquer meia de leite matinal ao sol de outono das nossas esplanadas.

O novo projecto de Jan-Erik Andersson é a "Life on a Leaf", a casa-folha que está a construir numa zona de floresta da Finlândia (porque construir uma folha na cidade é quase impossível face às muitas restrições). Gostei tanto do artista, deste projecto de casa, da sua entrevista e de alguns dos projectos que apresenta na sua página, como este ("The Life Boat Adventure"), que nem sei o que coloque aqui...

Sobre o "Life on a Leaf":

"Have you ever wondered why among all these millions of box shaped buildings, you will never see a house shaped like a shoe, a flower or a leaf?

This is the question, which set out artist Jan-Erik Andersson on a long and adventurous journey to build his own leaf shaped house in the middle of Turku city in Finland. The house project, called Life on a Leaf, is also the art part of Andersson’s studies for a doctorate degree in visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.Andersson is exploring the possibilities of building a personal house, shaped like a leaf, as a total art work. He is interested in the way stories, written by Andersson himself, can influence the shape, the ornaments and the interior of the house.

The aesthetics of the house is departing from the Art Nouveau concept about the house as a shelter for an individual soul, opposed to the modernist concept of the house as machine for living. Can a house both be functional and fantastic, can we use contemporary computer technology to create ornaments with a meaning which stimulate people of today? Can a house, which you can live and work in, at the same time have the quality of a sculpture. How can the site’s own history inspire the new building? And is it possible to achieve all this within a decent budget? "

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Da entrevista à NY Arts (Setembro-Outubro de 2007):

"I have used art as a way to deal with my personal life. This concerns the art I made in the 80s that mixed the art and ideas of the international art stars with my own personal life.

When I stopped drinking and cleaned up my life, which I did through my art, by cleaning an empty gallery for three weeks every day from nine to five. I kind of got happier and more relaxed and ready for a more socially oriented path for my art. I started to think over the fact that the surroundings and buildings where people spend most of their lives in general are very unimaginative and un-stimulating. The art element has been taken away from architecture since the beginning of modernism and this had in a way led art into a position of commenting and deconstructing the society, not so much being involved in developing it into new more stimulating environments. This was when I started to make public works, which were incorporated in the building’s structure, like floors, ceilings and walls, trying to create spaces where people would feel they are in some kind of tale. So the art wouldn't be works to be hung afterward in the space, but organic parts of the building. I also wrote stories myself which influenced how the installations turned out, and of course my personal life history could be seen in these, but not as directly as before. "

How would you describe the Finnish arts scene and the European arts scene?How does a European artist perceive the New York arts scene?

Finland is different because we have an extended grant system which makes it possible for several artists to work freely for 1-5 years (meu sublinhado). This is necesssary because of the lack of an art market. It has helped artists like Eija Liisa Ahtila to make an international career. I think we have a great art world in Finland. I curated an exhibition with artists from eastern Finland and the stuff they made was amazingly in touch with things I have seen on the international scene. So Intenet, TV and cheap flights have made, at least the western world, into one big unit. But of course there is one significant different. Not even the most famous artists in Finland gets rich! If you make it in bigger art centers you might find yourself operating with big sums of money, which gives you a certain freedom to do projects we in Finland couldn't dream of, like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. Mariko Mori's projects are on the scale of a rock band. Unthinkable of in Finland. But it is possible that the small scale and local energies become more and more important, when environmental an sustainability issues become more and more important."

Webcam para a construção de Life on a Leaf.