A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MESSIANIC RESEARCH CENTRE FOR VISUAL ETHICS
The Messianic Research Centre for Visual Ethics presents: A Brief History of
the Research Centre. Presented by researcher Simo Saarikoski.
The Messianic Research Centre for Visual Ethics is an organisation founded by
independent researchers. The aims of the Messianic Research Centre for Visual
Ethics are: the acquisition of objective scientific findings about the
visual-ethical behavioural patterns of people; the creation of a consistent
research model that allows comparisons between different visual-ethical
findings; the facilitation of people's daily lives through practical
applications of the findings. The Messianic Research Centre for Visual Ethics
presents its findings at the relevant forums in the field. Operations have
continued successfully since 2002.
"Why yes, at the early stages we considered the creation of a consistent
research model to be our primary aim. As it turns out, it may not be that
straightforward… straightforward a mission as it sounds. After all, visual
ethics is a very young and defined discipline. We consider… consider it to be
necessary to create a kind of… a kind of common… common manifesto, so that… so
that we would be able to integrate visual ethics into other disciplines, and
to standardise… standardise its findings protocol."
The messianic aspect is represented in our work as a presupposition of our
work's justification and its inherent creative power. This includes the
belief that our movement binds also others, it obliges its supporters to
realise it and to disseminate the ideology.
The visual not only reflects behaviour patterns in society - it creates them.
The world is largely defined through visual aspects rather than functional
ones. Next follows a condensed detailing of MRCVE's operations, research
projects, and findings.
A scientist at work
Immediately after its foundation the MRCVE focused on the problems of the
post-modern self-image at the crises of the Lebenswelt. The research project
included audio-visual recordings and test performances. During the same year,
research data was collected in the province of Satakunta, where it became
possible to investigate the power relations between media and citizens
through the performance "Scientists in the hands of the press". The work
continued till late 2003. The centre had time to curate a scientific art
exhibition in the Oulu region, too, the theme being "The self-absorbed - the
mind's journey to there and back".
"The task was very challenging, naturally, and we owe our thanks for this
successfully thought-provoking exhibition first and foremost to the fine art
students of Satakunta Polytechnic's School of Business and Fine Art in
Kankaanpää. They went to great pains to offer a seemingly boundless amount of
high-quality art objects for our use."
At the beginning of 2003, when the conflict in Iraq turned to its inevitable
conclusion, the MRCVE centre started a Burn A Flag A Day project, in which the
burning of the flag is represented in relation to established images in the
sphere of political protests.
"Attention. An announcement. On this pitch-black day of collective shame, the
Messianic Research Centre for Visual Ethics pleads for peace at the Mullitori
square due to the lawless offensive against Iraq by burning the flag of the
United States of America, the nation's national symbol, at 12:15.
Demonstrations will continue daily on the same stroke until military
operations are stopped. Everyone who strives for peace and justice is asked
to participate in the demonstration."
Finland's hill museum
As the spring sun melts the snow and reveals the earth, the researchers turn
their attention towards the formations of the land. After all, hills are just
the kind of physical attributes that define one's psycho-somatic wholeness in
one's sphere of experience.
"A boundary-vertex line is a segmented line between a boundary point and a
vertex that follows the direction of an imaginary "zero point" or "origin"
hill.
A measuring point
A vertex-line point
A vertex"
During that same year, the Messianic Research Centre for Audio-Visual Ethics
was established to co-ordinate research into extreme phenomena in popular
culture. Performative research situations that tried to pinpoint the essence
of rebellious teenage music nearly achieved a cult status in Western Finland.
Thus far the most ambitious and far-reaching research project Experiments on
time has already had four realisations, and it has carried on actively since
2003. The project was started in order to study the mystic-paradoxical nature
of time.
"Memory's relation to reality's physical events and to the events stored in our
memory is a complex one, because the memory uses time as a medium in order to
organise different contributory factors in the Lebenswelt. Thus we can say,
on the basis of our findings, that it is precisely the memory that creates
time, even though there is no absolutely separate, independent memory. Memory
uses time and creates the mystic frame of reference with which a subject
associates himself. It is the memory that makes it possible to attach an
individual's semiprivate Lebenswelt to the universal."
The performances from the Experiments on time project were later accompanied
by The Maternal Series.
Operation BeNeLux:
In June 2005 MRCVE made a research on BeNeLux-countries. The
goal of this expedition was to pin-point countries’ cultural,
meta-cultural and topological dimensions on the field of visual
ethics. Experiments took place everywhere in place and time
researches appeared. Footage filmed on the expedition is
confidential and used only in scientific purposes. MRCVE also
made experiments in certain venues in Belgium and Netherlands
carrying on the Maternal-series, a series of performatic tests
gathering information about people of BeNeLux and their
visual-ethical ability of reception.
About the Maternal-series:
Series of test situations in front of audience designed to measure
the awareness of gender oriented behaviour in a home-like
environment. Food itself as an symbol of holy unity and life
becomes simultaneously ritually accepted and rejected in the eyes of
a human. Food resembles food and food as an ideal form of (food)
being in lebenswelt. Hand that penetrates poultry is equated with
man’s feelings of helplessness and frustration in the Madonna-like
shadow of a pregnant woman. During the mystic ritual of
semi-collective nourishment it seems that man is rejected by his
offspring for the first time before it is even born.
PHOTOGALLERY
