Spiral, by Roi Vaara

Colour code: B4, G4, Y1, R1
Roi Vaaras work Spiral is a core performance artwork. It is highly creative and conceptually charged, but has only slight elements of emotional involvement and mental disturbance. The artist writes on the pavement of the Court Yard of Upsala Castle a series of concepts characterising destructive tendencies in contemporary culture. The writing took the form of a spiral, which seemed to cause the artist to lay down his pencil and wheel around until he fell to the ground. After a while he recovered and started scoring out the words of the spiral replacing them from the end towards the beginning with new ones. Thus an old concept crossed out became paired with a new, akin but slightly more favourable counterpart forming a set of surrealistic twins. White House became a pair with Black Hole for example.

Of course the strong political implications of the chosen words might be mentally disturbing to some, but for me the only disturbing thing was the loss of political meaning in the aesthetic context of the Art Museum. This however was of minor importance to the experience of the work. Its associative richness opened new alleys for the thought, and its creativeness made it impossible to predict the next move of the artist. In the end the impression was one of a strong logical unity and impact.

The likeness of Vaara's Spiral to the traditional rune stone inscriptions was not intentional, but created a new dimension in the work determined by the place. In other circumstances the modern graffitti writing might have a similar function. Not every aspect of an artwork need to be predictable or intentional.