Pauliina Salminen

Title: 8 crossings
Duration: 05:20
Format: digital video 4:3
Language: English
Production date: 2008
Production country: India
Acknowledgements: Desire Machine Collective, Periferry 1.0
www.pauliina.salminen.over-blog.com

8 crossings
The city of Guwahati is divided by the Brahmaputra River. On one side is a village, on the other, a chaotic growing city. Crowds of people commute daily between the banks, standing on the roofs of ferries. In the video, the camera remains still while people move from one edge of the frame to the other, only to disappear from view. They float against the pale background as if dissociated from their surroundings, describing in a few sentences their feelings towards both sides of their city. Their voices too blend and float in different directions, building up into a story of the everyday life of a population.

Pauliina Salminen is a media artist whose work includes film, installation and new media. Salminen was born 1975 in Finland. She studied film and video in Turku, Finland, and in Marseille, France where she’s now based. She has directed documentary films and moved gradually towards media art projects as well as interactive video installations. The audience is often involved in her working process. Her participatory video projects often deal with inhabitants of a city and their relationship with their environment, mixing documentary approach with an installation concept. Her installations can be seen in a variety of different spaces (galleries, museums, social centers or schools, public space…) and her short videos are distributed in festivals.

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