Emilia Rüf and Tinja Ruusuvuori: Logbook
Where people’s movement is restricted, goods travel more freely than ever. Karaoke blares from the bowels of an enormous freighter. A logbook of longing and seafarers’ sympathy towards migrants.
We filmed seafarers at a sailors’ club in Hamburg, on board a freighter in the Mediterranean and in the city of Saint-Louis in Senegal. We wanted to find out what seafarers working in freight dream of and how their dreams enable them to understand migrants’ need to leave their home country. Seamen and migrants from low-income countries share a feeling of homesickness and a hope for a better life.
Emilia Rüf (b.1986) graduated as a Master of Fine Arts in 2017 from the department of time and space from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. She works mainly with moving image. With her graduation work she won Pro AV Saarikko prize in the Kuvan Kevät exhibition in 2016.
Tinja Ruusuvuori (b.1988) holds a Master of Letters in Fine Art Practice from the Glasgow School of Art (2018) and a Bachelor of Documentary Film Directing from Aalto University, Helsinki. With her graduation film Untitled (burned rubber on asphalt, 2018) she won the main prize of National Competition in Tampere Film Festival in 2019. She works across a broad range of media including heavy materials, photography and moving image to produce films and sculptural installations.
Direction and camera: Emilia Rüf and Tinja Ruusuvuori
Editing: Inka Lahti
Sound design: Eero Pulkkinen
Colour grading: Hannu Käki
The exhibition has been supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, People’s Cultural Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Pro Av Art Oy.
