osuuskuntahastur: Camper trailer

Just like Clark Kent works at day and flies at night, things move with Osuuskunta Hastur. Last friday we had an exhibition opening for Jouko Alapartanen, theme being 'art is here'. Jouko popped by a few weeks ago during a portrait painting gig in Ylitornio and mentioned he had a bunch of heavy old paintings stashed away somewhere that could be used for an art show. Things set in motion!

Jouko's paintings are really big and heavy and it was no easy feat to arrange the exhibition. Visiting sculptors Pekka and Teija Isorättyä had a van but no winter tires and that problem had to be solved before any of the art could make it's way to camp hastur. When the paintings came in, we realized just how heavy they were and got into scratching our heads on how to display them without crashing the ceiling down. Welding wire to the rescue.

Again, unexpected things happened. Certain Mr Matti drops in out of the blue and turns out he's a pro building exhibitions and me, Florentino and Mr Matti start shuffling the pieces about. Inspirational 70's disco was played and plenty of bassist jokes were told. Didn't quite break our backs with the stuff but it took three grown men to set things up.

The opening was on friday and Jouko took a coach from Rovaniemi to join us. Well stocked with crisps and bubbly, we sat down to wait the guests to arrive. And arrive they did.

Instead of the usual flowers, the artist received a bottle of swedish blended cognag (such a thing exists in Finland too, a remnant of the wartime when cognag was mixed with vodka, google Jaloviina for more details). Jouko was well happy with the present =)

After all the hard work building the exhibition, the party turned into a total chaos at Isorättyä's workspace where we eventually ended up. Trombones and organ were played amongs the dementic robot sculptures. We made a hell of a racket for at least an hour, got too tired and then it was time to start pretending we're 9 years old and at school, Pekka was the headmaster. Local disco-taxi took us to the next afterparty in sweden (yep we switch countries fluently here). After the disco-taxi things got a bit fuzzy. ahem.

But we had a great time. Probably the craziest party in years. People of software engineering: Hang out with artists every one in a while, it'll do you good!

This week is preparing for slush 2013 amongs other, coding and promotion related things. Hope to see you at Helsinki next week everybody!