Hüseyin Alptekin (Turkey) and Camila Rocha (Brazil) were artists in the Platform residency during spring 2007, when Alptekin was planning the work for his participation representing Turkey at the Venice biennial. Since Alptekin’s work deals with issues of displacement, records unimportant facts and acts, and through this brings attention to things that are not generally known, Cheap Finnish Labour offered to help in realizing the work.

The actual physical work contained deconstructing five log-barns in Finland. The Barn Research group found five unused barns in Laihia, Osthrobotnia. One of the barns was reconstructed in the Platform gallery for Camila Rocha’s exhibition ‘Its all about the past’. The rest of the barns, along with paint, constructing material and traditional Finnish furniture, chairs and tables, were shipped to Venice. There the barns were rebuilt in a slightly different shape so that five different spaces were formed. In the text “The title 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 CFL t-shirts.