When I was in Helsinki last November, Anna Bromley sent me a video of a talk by Gavin Butt on glamour. A year later, in November, I'm back in Helsinki and Anna is visiting me. We're giving a workshop on Silly Glamour. Timo of MUU Galleria tells us that Gavin Butt is now in Helsinki for real, giving a talk about performance and post-punk.
The talk, or rather the discussion, is organised by MUU Galleria but takes place at HUUTO Galleria. Finnish artist Annette Arlander is moderating the discussion with Gavin Butt and Tero Nauha. I remember Arlander from an artist talk in her exhibition the year before. I even made a note of something she said: “If I put myself physically in nature, could I become more natural?”
Gavin Butt tells us he's interested in "Activist History." Activist History is a history for the now. A few years ago, he was still talking about post-punk with an elderly greying male audience. Nowadays he says young people attend his lectures on post-punk. They are looking for the conditions of possibility in neo-liberal austerity culture.
"When there seems to be NO FUTURE," Tero Nauha says, "we start speculating about new modes of futures." It needs a certain extent of disillusionment.
Somebody from the audience tells us that when growing up in a small, rather neo-nazi town in Finland, punk was her strategy of survival.
"We suffer from speed," Gavin Butt says. Duration is used to slow things down.
In the 1980s there was a "broadcasting culture," notices Butt. You could appear with your band on Tops of the Pops and everyone would have seen you. Now we have a "narrow-casting culture": you can appear on Youtube but not everyone will have seen you.
Gavin Butt is working on a book titled Being in a Band about post-punk, or basically about people deciding to work with others to see what could be done that couldn't be done alone.
There is a temperature to punk, Annette Arlander notices.
At the end of the talk, I introduce myself to Annette Arlander and I compliment her on her monochrome beige outfit. “I tried to look as little punk as possible,” she says.