Kieran Long

I think you see in the final result the freedom with which the artists have been able to approach it
I still think their works are very profound and have a lot of meaning in relation to the collection but they are also free of the historical scholarship

I think when museums do this kind of scholarships often they will bring too much of the history so it becomes a history project, just about the past and they do not allow new

artists to make new interpretations, and that is what you were very clear about from the beginning.
We also found artists who are at the right stage in their careers where they are open and very respectful but they do not feel this tremendous pressure to be the people who are going to represent this history

They work in a lot of different directions finding their identities, very skilled as they work conceptually, I don’t feel they are the kind of artists who are going to be held back by a quite important history that they had to handle in this project.

Riikka Latva-Somppi

I think its been a really useful tool for them, that you have a starting point that you
can reflect your thoughts on, you can get inspiration from and when they start I think they will dig deeper and deeper
There is this researcher in every artist – they want to find out
And sometimes finding out can be not knowing, in detail, you start looking at an artist and find out more, family life or whatever and you dig deeper, and you can take it back to your own way of working and your own ideas.
We also talked about the possibility that some ideas would end up being a product, which in building an exhibition, that is an aspect that is not very interesting as a starting point, and even a little questionable. But then i have noticed that the artists are still thinking about it, and it is a good way to wake up an archive, because you are immersing the artists in the archive, and they still come up with new things.