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Antti Pussinen: Medicine City

A city scape installation built out of thousands and thousands pill blister packages, 2008

A large, illuminated installation surprises the viewer. At first it seems like a beautiful and mesmerising night-time cityscape, but the realisation of the buildings' materials takes the artwork's themes to deeper levels. Medicine City is made of tens of thousands of empty aluminium medicine packages. Each medicine package has been broken in a different way, making each window look different. The artwork is about the medicalisation of our society. Cities can also be seen as a medicine for loneliness and light as a medicine against fear. A person can be found behind the light at each window in a dark city. Presented on the Esplanade Park stage, this work will resemble a miniature city in the midst of a real one. An estimated 22,000 medicine packages were used for the work. Two artists took six months to create it. Medicine City has been presented on previous occasions at the Tampere Art Museum, the SUOMESTA gallery in Berlin and the Kuopio Art Museum. It was also featured as part of the Lux Helsinki Lux IN exhibition at the Cable Factory in 2014 and in LUX Helsinki 2016

Fine Arts BA, b. 1984, Lives in Berlin, Germany

Information

Artwork finished in: 2008

Dimensions of the work:

300 x 300 x 300m

Spaces suitable for exhibiting the work:

Cold space (eg. a shed, a silo etc.), Semi-heated space, Heated space

Work’s durability:

Humidity

Requirements for the space:

fully dark, dark (gleaming exit-lights etc. allowed), dim (light enough for walking)

Colouring requirements:

insignificant

Electricity consumption:

Standard mains current (10A/16A)

Support and other structures:

The work includes all the necessary structures

Sound:

no sound

Minimum height of the space: 

3,5 m

Minimum square meters of the space: 

40

Building time and people required (estimate): 

4 days 3 pepole

Artist's presence: 

Artist or their representative must be present during building

On-site building: 

Built on-site