Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts

The term “angle of incidence” is used in physics to describe the angle at which a ray of light hits the surface of an object. In this piece we explore how this phenomenon might apply to the experiences of refugees moving to Finland. Might this concept help us to better understand the experiences of refugees and the immigration process? The installation is comprised of three video screens, each showing images of rooms that represent three different stages in the immigration process, places where decisions concerning an immigrant’s future and residential status are made. Audio interviews accompany each screen in which refugees illuminate their experiences. The spaces they pass through, interrogation rooms, immigration reception centres, and the Finnish Department of Immigration, are all quite mundane rooms and buildings. Yet these apparently ordinary spaces are charged with meaning, it is in such mundane places that power resides.

Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts live and work in Finland. They collaborate to produce large-scale, multi-channel video installations dealing with social and political issues and with the impact these issues have on people’s individual experiences and histories.

Verk

Angles of Incidence, installation

Plats

Luleå