‘A Day in the Office’ by Lewis Biggs

Anu Pennanen’s practice as a film-makervgrew from her desire to increase the affective quality of her still photography. Her filmic images retain the intensity characteristic of ‘composed’ images, but by adding the rhythmic sensuality of a soundtrack she arrived at a medium capable of carrying the affective charge that she had already experienced in her earliest artistic expression (multidisciplinary theatre).

She is drawn to the technical aspects, the craft, of film, the knowledge and obsessive care needed to produce a compelling visual and aural experience. Her preferred visual vocabulary is the urban landscape, viewed as an arena for events and a metaphor for the social forces that influence the ‘architecture’ of our lives. (The application of ‘archipuncture’ to the ‘body’ of the city in Manray Hsu’s conception for this exhibition is an allied approach.)

Pennanen is very interested in collaboration, and in the shared subjectivity resulting from the use of actual lives as content. She acknowledges the vital importance of other people in creating these films: they are not ‘about’ her experience, nor are they shaped formally by her alone. But it is her vision (her concern for the interaction between people and the built environment) that is the catalyst for the work’s existence and its artistic quality.

Lewis Biggs for Liverpool International Biennial catalogue 2006.