14 August 2009

Tapio Snellman is no ordinary man. Not because he is a director of a successful company or because his name happens to signify God in Finnish but because he is replete with a creativity and talent that stretches beyond the fields of contemporary art and architecture. His work has been shown in some of the greatest museums around the globe, yet he is kind, humble and never rude. Elegant with an individual sense of style and an adept Yogic headstander, he loves London simply because it is this “wonderfully sticky place, the home of the homeless.”

© Christian Grou & Tapio Snellman
for the Global Cities exhibition, Tate Modern 2007, film stills

PP. Where does the name Tapio come from?

TS. It is an old fashioned Finnish name, the God or Goddess of the Forest from the Finnish mythology Kalevala.

PP. So I presume you grew up in Finland.

TS. Yes, in the centre of Helsinki; my mom was Swiss and dad Finnish.

PP. Art is in your genes. Wasn’t your grandmother a painter?

TS. Yes she was. I don’t know if she was very talented but she was a bohemian and lived off and for art. She was also a paranoid-schizophrenic which was part of her personality and hence reflected in her art as well. I think that extreme emotions are part of a profound artistic process – and while I am mentally more stable than she was, I have certainly inherited some of the emotional landscape.

PP. When did you come to London and why?

TS. I visited London when I was just 16 and felt strongly that one day I would have to return. I’ve now lived here for 13 years, first as a student then because it’s a wonderfully sticky place, the home of the homeless. In London it’s possible to live a rich and varied life without having to define yourself. It is possible to keep doing things and experimenting even if you are not quite sure what it is that you want to be doing and where exactly you belong.

PP. Do you know where you belong?

TS. No that’s the thing, but now I don’t mind that so much.

PP. Your training is in architecture. Where did you study and why?

TS. Again, the choice to study architecture was based on the idea that when you can’t pinpoint exactly what you want to do but feel a creative urge and want to engage with society on many levels, architecture seemed like a good option. I started my studies in Germany and completed the studies in Architecture and Urban planning while in London. Although I only ever worked as an architect for a short period while in Tokyo, I never regretted spending that time in the college.

PP. You have worked with some of the greatest architects alive today. How does that feel?

TS. For someone with an architectural background it has been an amazing privilege. It has been humbling to see the talent close up and the creative intuitions which fire decision-making. It’s also been fascinating to witness that no single architect, even if they are considered the best in the world, is able to address all concerns as well as having a talent for every aspect of such a complex discipline.

PP. Japan is one of your favourite places, isn’t it?

TS. I had an obsession with Japan for many years and weirdly, having never been there, I spent my youth thinking about it. When I finally started engaging with it I was kind of put off by it. Regardless, after my studies I took the opportunity to go there together with my partner Christian. It was a life-changing year and I still take from that experience, even though it was a tough one.

PP. What was tough about it?

TS. It was tough because of the accumulation of expectations – wanting to be part of it all – without taking on the tourist identity. It was tough arriving only having enough money to survive for three weeks, not knowing anyone apart from each other and sharing a 3,5 tatami sized room. But we both started earning money within a fortnight. Christian got to do Masters at Tokyo University and I got a job at Toyo Ito’s, at that point the most internationally respected architect in Japan.

PP. Do you think you can do things like that only when you are young? Not that I wish to imply you are old now.

TS. Well I don’t know. I didn’t feel brave then and I don’t feel it now. But encouraging people have always surrounded me and I have always been restless. I used to think that I haven’t yet found my destiny. Now I’m happy, mostly, to accept that I will never find it and I can just make the most of the journey. It weirdly makes me feel younger than ever.

PP. Why do you think you haven’t found your destiny yet? What is your definition of destiny?

TS. You ARE a sadist… enjoying the torture I hope? If I knew how to define destiny I would have found it already. Maybe I would be dead then?

PP. Do you believe in destiny? Do you believe that this very conversation was destined to happen?

TS. No, I don’t believe in destiny actually.

PP. So why are we talking about it?

TS. Well you can call it professional fulfillment if that’s less metaphysical.

PP. What do you believe in?

TS. It depends on the time of day, of season, location and company.

PP. Ok, at this very moment.

TS. At this moment I believe that the world along with my life is about to get better but it might be too late.

PP. My God, you are playing Pythia here; it might happen but it might not. Lets get serious. Tell me about your company Neutral, what is it, when did you start, how, why?

Neutral - Cellular growth inspires the organic accumulation of repetitive spaces into a fascinating formation. An animation depicting Zaha Hadid’s design for the 500 room JVC hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico. 2001

TS. More serious? You just kind of asked me what I believe in… OK Neutral: In Tokyo I was disillusioned with architectural practice and myself therein, so it came naturally to start looking for an alternative occupation. Christian was in the same frame of mind and while working on a purely subjective video describing our point of view on Tokyo, we started contemplating about turning film making into a profession.

Backing on some media jobs Christian had got in Tokyo, we set up base in London. As we didn’t know what the company was about exactly we tried to come up with a neutral name… Since then, 10 years now, we have been trying to define ourselves while enjoying the fact that anything is possible within the ‘brand’.

At the moment we are trying to distance ourselves from Neutral as it has come to represent a certain type of commercial work – architectural animations and media – and concentrate on something a little bit different.

PP. The beauty of being creative is that one can shift easily from one field to another. Both you and Christian are extremely talented men as well as being successful with Neutral. So it is not surprising to me that you are operating as well in the field of contemporary art in addition to architecture, animation and media. Your work is art, being that considered by you commercial or not. It is like that, isn’t it?

TS. While having been closely associated with things relating to art we have always been reluctant to be referred to as artists. Our work has been exhibited at places like Tate Modern, Moma, Centre Pompidou, Venice Biennale and Guggenheim NY, but always associated with someone else’s creativity, such as Zaha Hadid, or under the label ‘design’. Hence, while the concepts and way of working are not fundamentally different, it is a shift of identity to be working on our own names.

PP. So from now on you and Christian will exhibit under your personal names rather than being labelled always as Neutral. Currently you are working on a film installation Variations of Grey.

TS. Neutral is still thriving as a company, but for the non-commercial creative work we use our own names.

What comes to our latest project, Christian and I share a macabre fascination for urban spaces which most people would regard ‘ugly’ or ‘depressing’. Variations of Grey – it’s working title – represents part of a journey we have conducted since we first met while studying in Germany and starting with a visit to Christian’s native Romania.

The film is an emotional journey through derelict urban landscapes, which were initially created with high socialist ideals and based on the universally respected modernist solutions. It describes the beauty of the ideal while revealing the catastrophic failures of the typology actually corresponding to human need.

© Christian Grou & Tapio Snellman, Variations of Grey, 2009, film still
to premiere in Dogma exhibition, HDLU Zagreb, Croatia, from 2nd October 2009

PP. The footage is coming from some quite extraordinary places.

TS. We spend a winter travelling to places such as the West Siberian oil production centre of Nizhnevartovsk. The city was build in the middle of the oily swamp during the 60s and 70s. While the city is not big as such, the scale of the housing slabs and the width of the snowy streets was remarkably monumental.

We also filmed in St Petersburg, Kiev, Moscow and Bucharest, where we traced the routes of Christian’s childhood, from the suburban block to the shops where he had to queue for hours for food… Interestingly now that Romania has been integrated into the consumerist society these estates seem even more hopeless as they have been left outside the changing world.

PP. We mentioned Christian here a couple of times. You work together and know each other for many years. How did you two meet?

TS. We met while studying architecture in Stuttgart. Although we broke up as a couple a few years ago we continue working together and still share most of our creative ambitions.

PP. That is a rare quality I have to admit. To end up a relationship but still be able to work and create together. What do you think?

TS. Well we didn’t plan it this way but in someway working together has been better since. But it hasn’t come easy for sure.

PP. Do you work long hours?

TS. I used to work all the time but now its quite civilized. I’m not very efficient though so I often feel I haven’t done half of what I intended.

PP. But you often work even during weekends.

TS. Sure but sometimes I take weekdays off or go to an exhibition in the middle of the day to get inspired.

PP. What else inspires you?

TS. I love maps and I can spend hours staring at them completely loosing touch with the world around me. And I have been sewing since I was in my teens – in fact I hope to design a collection one day. I love cycling around London – discovering new short cuts and weird pockets of hidden urbanities – it is like travelling the world, endlessly inspiring.

PP. Lets talk about the difference between art and entertainment. Do you like listening to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland?

TS. I don’t know what Judy Garland sounds like. Barbra I don’t care about.

PP. Aren’t gay people suppose to love such music?

TS. Apart from falling for men and enjoying sex with men I don’t know if anything else is gay about me. I presume certain people love such music. I never understood what someone like Barbra Streisand has to do with the experience of being a gay male.

The point is that I grew up associating art such as classical music with profoundly existential feelings such as life and death. Hence I still find it difficult to listen to music, almost any music, casually. Something like cabaret or otherwise deliberately ‘funny’ or entertaining music is mostly alien to me. That doesn’t mean that I cannot enjoy pop music per se, but it needs to have a profound effect on me or it doesn’t exist at all. It is most certainly not a question of style.

PP. What is you favourite piece of music? Can you choose only one?

TS. I don’t work like that, it can never be a constant. I did listen to Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater recently hours on end. Currently I can’t tolerate it, probably because I’m in a very different space mentally now. With Christian we are currently trying to generate a piece of music for our film, which has the frustrated energy of a Ukrainian hard pop track but looks at itself from an outsider’s distanced and abstracted point of view. Again its not about whether you like it or not, it is what it does to you in a specific context that is important.

PP. What do you do to relax your mind?

TS. I know it is a sad cliché but I’ve been doing yoga for seven years and standing on my head stops my brain from drifting. Or I go to my log house on a Baltic Island to get away from justification.

PP. Tell me please about that house.

TS. I inherited it with my sister. The house is in the archipelago of around 100,000 islands which stretches across the Baltic sea from the coast of Finland to Sweden. It’s a landscape of smooth granite and bonsai like trees and mosses. It is gorgeous but when you arrive there directly from London the quietness freaks you out.

PP. It sounds like a luxury to me, a perfect place to escape the urban madness from time to time. Do you go there often?

TS. I should go there more often; now that the mobile internet keeps me online it would be possible to work from there. In fact Christian and I had a weeks initial editing session for the aforementioned film there.

PP. What is your biggest dream?

TS. I was dreading that question. Do I have to answer?

PP. Yes.

TS. My biggest dream would be to be content with my abilities.

PP. Do you make long-term life/work plans, or just let your life unfold unexpectedly?

TS. I have an abstract notion about how things could evolve but I’m pretty tolerant about the outcome. At times I have an urge to do something radical – like to move somewhere far away to wash elephants for example – but I am pretty content about how things are going. Even the recession makes me hopeful that after spending so much effort on big commercial commissions there is more time for contemplative and meaningful work.

PP. What is a good art for you?

TS. I’m an idealist so good art should potentially generate some positive energy by provoking but also simply by inspiring. And I believe in high quality craftsmanship, extending to digital media and any other type of artistic expression. So for me a strong concept doesn’t justify low quality execution. But sometimes something very well done, even without a specific mission, can be deeply moving of course.

© Christian Grou & Tapio Snellman, Upright, 2009
animation film installation, work in progress, to premiere in London in 2010

Text: © Predrag Pajdic
Images and the Upright video segment: © Christian Grou & Tapio Snellman
Video for Zaha Hadid’s 500 JVC hotel in Guadalajara, Mexico: © Neutral