Anni Puolakka

Sacre 2: HEX is the second part of The Sacre Trilogy by Anni Puolakka and Jaakko Pallasvuo. The solemn cybergoth dance enthusiast introduced in the first part of the trilogy (Sacre, 2015) has graduated into a smug Wiccan vlogger. Her formerly know-it-all brother has fallen on hard times and now needs her help. Family relations entangle with work anxiety. Virtual and material survival tactics get tested. Spiritual, financial and social layers mesh in money-burning rituals. A damaged sibling dynamic is further destabilized by a seductive alien.

I have lost everything again. Again, I have nothing to lose. An unnamed woman breaks up with her extraterrestrial lover and runs away to Italy in search of new meaning. Seasons change while she repeats old familial conflicts, makes experimental video art and is haunted by the idea of eternal return. Will our lives recur in the same form infinitely, with no escape? Sacr3: Eternal Return is the final part in the Sacre trilogy by Anni Puolakka and Jaakko Pallasvuo.

The parts are Sacre (2015), Sacre 2: HEX (2017) and Sacr3: Eternal Return (2019). The video works are following an anonymous protagonist searching for freedom and meaningfulness.

A video essay by Anni Puolakka and Alexander Iezzi, connecting monsterhood, post-fossil transgression and forms of refusal in the lives and practices of artists.

Looking back at footage of Venice Biennale 2011, The Artist remembers the optimistic feelings felt at the time, the projected careers, the romantic setting and how art meant something. The Finnish pavilion was closed when the footage was shot because of a fallen tree. Was it a sign? The sinking city echoes The Artist's current sense of resignation. The piece shifts from video footage into cartoons with speech bubbles, perhaps in an effort to reclaim the voiceover from a romanticising of ennui that seemed to be setting in. Is this a new beginning? Liberated from its ambitions for an illustrious career, art has now become a more metaphysical means of survival.