The pleasures we choose

The freedom to pursue pleasure is not afforded to all. Many are conditioned to labor on behalf of causes assumed to be more purposeful or fruitful than art in order to keep the world turning and bread in our bellies. We are often told that art is an act of indulgence, but never a matter of necessity; only if we work hard enough to afford these leisurely pursuits are we deserving of their affordances. But what if our bodies need art? What if imagining, making and encountering art is the only way for us to survive this world, to make sense of it and to reconstruct it? What if all that gets stored in the thick of our flesh as a result of inhabiting so many toxic territories, generation after generation, needs to be released and reclaimed through the ink of a pen, the point of a needle or the sculpting of clay? These are slow and often repetitive actions, enacted time after time, until they are entirely embodied. How might many more of us—until all of us—encourage and embolden one another to resist the pressures of time, labor and productivity exerted on our bodies and instead learn to more fully embody the pleasures we choose?

This publication unfolds as a small space thick with material to provoke both thought and practice related to the intersecting social, cultural, environmental and systemic imbalances that structure our lives and myriad livabilities. In a close dialogue with these ideas, processes and the artworks by Pia Lindman, Vidha Saumya and Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, the contributions gathered here address matters of access, agency, toxicity, architectures of violence (social, cultural and environmental), institutional conditions, disability justice, interdependency, collectivity, human and planetary health, healing, embodiment-as-power, rest-as-resistance, and radical acts of selection, sustaining and spreading pleasure.

This book leans into the concept of “access architecture” operating in The pleasures we choose, the eponymous Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. As a book, The pleasures we choose acts as a guide for the exhibition—a way to orient and mediate our experiences of the works – and thereby promotes access and communication of different registers. Intended as a handbook, it can be read in direct relation to the exhibition, but it also functions as an invitation for all those who could not attend in person. In short, the book extends beyond the pavilion’s walls to present and extend the core practices, processes and politics of the project through the more intimate and autonomous format of a printed matter publication. For more information on the Finland Pavilion, please visit the Finland Pavilion website.