UHD, duration 20:00

Initially exhibited at the Architectural Digest solo show at gallery Sinne 15 Apr – 21 May 2023.

Currently showing the exhibition Feels Like Home at Museum of Contemporary Arti Kiasma, Helsinki 12 Jan 2024 – 12 Jan 2025.

Sentences is a 20-minute architectural journey into the interiors of late capitalism. The film follows the POV of a protagonist on their passage through an endless building complex. The protagonist is a spectre imprisoned in their home like the Minotaur in its labyrinth. Despite them being able to walk freely through walls and jump between floors the building is ultimately inescapable. It sentences the protagonist – and the viewer – into an eternal looping journey. By its vast, chaotic and eclectic setting, Sentences places the viewer into a state of constant liminality. A passage leads nowhere except into another passage, another intermediate state. The film studies dissociation and disorientation within contemporary capitalism composed of digital labour platforms, social media and algorithmic surveillance. Drawing on the aesthetics of computer games, the at times eerily realistic Sentences also touches on the ambiguity of the photographic image in a time of an increasingly automated image production.

Author, director, editor: Jaakko Pietiläinen
Singers: Helsinki Chamber Choir / Eleriin Müüripeal, Keri Kallio, David Hackston, Martti Anttila, Riku Laurikka 
Sound design: Tatu Nenonen
VFX: Olli Leppänen
Color Grading: Jonatan Sundström

Installation view from the exhibition Feels Like Home at Kiasma, Helsinki 2024. Photo © Pirje Mykkänen / Finnish National Gallery