Maa Kuu

Changes in Philosophy

You see a new website now. It reflects my current art practice and its philosophy.
This is a project space, not a white cube gallery online.
More underground, more experimental, more direct and undefended.
Even if the site looks unfinished, “under construction”, it reflects the WIP (work in progress) philosophy: show work as it evolves, don’t waste energy in polishing.
That applies to the art on the site too. One of the weaknesses of the previous site was that there were new images only every 6 weeks or so.
Now the image feed is instant and incremental: you will see the latest work in the “Work In Progress” portfolio (click on home page).
I will bring the existing blog posts – roughly 20 of them – back online as Winter Remixes.
Reviewed, updated and commented.
Sticking with the weekly blog posts rhythm, targeting Fridays, with new posts and winter remixes alternating.
Also, the comments are open in the blog. Please do use the opportunity to bring forth your comments, feels and thinking.
I’ve moved on with my image making and left Midjourney that I was relying on earlier. I’m now using Flux.1 and can show some skin, explore male nudity.
As a more technical note I left Squarespace I was using to host the site. It was restrictive and not aligned to my exploratory art practice.
I’m now running the site on Wordpress on a server I manage myself.
Full creative control of infrastructure.
So things are not so polished anymore, but the site is alive and updating when it wants to. I wish you enjoy the vibe and thank you for your attention and participation.

More underground, more experimental, more direct and undefended.

by Maa Kuu

You Will Be Obscure

“Mä voisin olla Kuvataideakatemian käynyt ja silti yhtä obscure and culturally irrelevant as now.”
 (diary entry, June 25, 2015)

Lesson 1: You will be obscure. The question is: will you survive it?

In 2015, I stood between disciplines, identities, and eras.

Not quite an artist, not quite a strategist.
 A former senior manager from Nokia, now sitting in Tokoinranta with a notebook, haunted by the ghosts of corporate relevance and artistic irrelevance.
 Folding in 4 years, 5 months of silence into a single realization:

I had a secret. And that secret would change everything.

It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t a product. It was a threshold, a recognition that the path forward would not be found by asking which career title to choose, or which platform to post on, or which job to apply for.

It would be found by accepting obscurity.

Radical obscurity.

Not as failure, but as a mythological phase-state, a kind of chrysalis. The necessary darkness before a true form can emerge. A state where systems dissolve and new identities are composed of fragments, metaphors, dreams, and doubt.

“Taide. Strategia. Tietojenkäsittelytiede.
 Yritysympäristössä mä loistin. Avoimessa maailmassa stumbling.” (July 12, 2015)

I didn’t know it yet, but I had begun mythologizing my own practice.
 Not building a portfolio.
 Not chasing recognition.
 But letting the formless period do its real work.

Lesson 1 is this: If you’re between identities, between careers, between structures, just stay there. Stay. Observe the obscure. Survive the irrelevance.

Because if you can survive your own obscurity, something unreplicable begins to form inside it.

And one day, years later, you will find yourself standing on the cliff edge, speaking again. But this time, not as a seeker. As a signal.

You will be obscure

by Maa Kuu