Hüseyin Alptekin (Turkey) and Camila Rocha (Brazil) were artists in the Platform recidency during the spring 2007, when Alptekin was planning the work for his participation representing Turkey at the Venice biennial. Since Alptekins work deals with the issues of displacement, records unimportant facts and acts and through this brings attention to things that are out of attention Cheap Finnish Labour offered to help realizing the work.
The actual physical work contained deconstructing 5 log-barns in Finland. The Barn Research group found 5 unused barns in Laihea. One of the barns was reconstructed in Platform for Camila Rochas exhibition ‘Its all about the past’. Then the rest of the barns, along with paint, constructing material and traditional finnish furniture, chairs and tables were shipped to Venice. There the barns where rebuild in a slightly different shape so that it formed 5 different spaces. In the text “The titel of Hüseyin Alptekin’s installation for Turkey’s participation in the Biennial is ‘Don’t complain’. Vasif Kortun, the curator of the work, writes ” …Alptekin’s large-scale installation of five wood cabins is the result of a revisitation of a mental-setting the artist experienced in Tblisi, Georgia. This comes out of a particular type of public dining where restaurants are strictly divided into separate cabins clustered around an open courtyard.”
The group – at the most Cheap Finnish Labour consisted of 12 persons working at the exhibitions site – were all wearing the CFL T-shirts.
