OUT OF ORDER | Panu Johansson

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Year of Production: 2011

Running Time: 11min58s (film version) & 12min13s (3–channel installation)

Original Format: Super8 (Kodak Ektachrome 64T)

Master Format: Quicktime File (720p)

Crew:

Panu Johansson: concept, direction, cinematography, editing, music (writing, performance & mix)
Ilkka Olander: music mastering

SYNOPSIS:

The film presents a trip full of childhood memories along the former Finnish national road 1. This road used to connect the cities of Turku and Helsinki, the former and the current capital of Finland. Today, after the introduction of bigger and more up-to-date connections, the old road has significantly quieted down and most of the roadside attractions have now been closed. However, the landscapes, locations and recollections from the past are still very strongly present.

The piece is available as a traditional one-channel film and as a three-channel installation. The preview-video presented here represents how the installation should look in the exhibition space. The technical implementation of the piece can vary as long as the general form of the work is maintained.

Additional information about the piece can be found from the written part of my Master’s Thesis “Landscape and Experimental Image – An Artistic Research on Forming the Language of Expression in a Multi-Channel Installation” which can be read here:

urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:ula-201406121261

(Thesis is written in Finnish, abstract also in English)

WRITINGS:

“Johansson’s earlier ‘’Out of Order” (2011) is another itinerary and an almost literal road movie. Johansson depicts an absurd urban situation where we encounter once more recurrent patterns in his work : disappearance, abandonment and the passing of time.

[…] The camera somehow reenacts this family journey by showing simultaneously through a triptych system, a bleakness landscapes inhabited by deserted gasoline stations and drive-in restaurants along with its current lively copy, albeit empty of the artist’s memory. This two sites are set in different rhythms, a fast and elliptic one when on the road and a more contemplative and motionless’s camera when filming the quasi-wasteland.

[…] The thinker Gilles Clément’s definition of the term ‘’landscape’’ is clarifying when thinking of Johansson’s work :

‘’To the question ‘’what is the landscape ?’’, we could answer : it is is what remains in our memory after we have ceased to watch, what we keep in our memory after having ceased to practice our senses within a space inhabited by the body […] the landscape appears as something essentially subjective. It is being read through a strong filter made up with personal history and a cultural armour […]”

Gauthier Lesturgie: Panu Johansson: DUAL PURPOSE

”Time is not always an ally, as Finnish filmmaker Panu Johansson details in his compelling film essay that seeks out the remains of the commercial culture along the former Finnish National Road 1”…”Johansson presents his unsettling image of lifeless roadside ruins and an empty wilderness against a throbbing techno music beat, creating a jolting counterbalance between the rhythm of musical motion and the wreck of a man-abandoned environment.”

Phil Hall, Film Threat (Internet Archive)

https://filmthreat.com/uncategorized/out-of-order/

(3,5/5 stars)

AWARDS:

The film was awarded with jury mention at the 2013 International Super 8mm Festival Szeged, Hungary.

SCREENINGS & EXHIBITIONS:

2015 Bogotá Experimental Film Festival, Colombia

2013 International Super 8mm Festival Szeged, Hungary

2013 Gallery Katve, Rovaniemi, Finland (solo exhibition)

2013 Vitus Festival, Rovaniemi, Finland

2012 The Berlin International Directors Lounge Festival, Germany

2012 Antimatter Film Festival, Victoria, Canada