#09 New York, New York
A photo-heavy travel diary from a documentary shoot in the Big Apple.
I write this newsletter to structure my experiences and ideas around creativity. It’s mainly a personal exercise in writing, but I’m sure there is something for you as well.
My name is Juho Vesanen and I’m a co-founder of Veli Studio. I’m also editing the studio’s annual passion project Attraction Magazine – a printed and online exploration dedicated to the appreciation of visual curiosity.
#09 New York, New York
Hello reader! Happy to have you here.
Earlier this month, I traveled to NYC for the first time and while I kind of already knew how it looks, feels and even smells, the energy of the city surprised me.
We were there shooting a documentary commissioned by the Finnish National Gallery and more specifically their new digital community platform Alusta. The brief was, and still is, very open ended and it functions much like a personal passion project. Our goal was to find and interview people who operate around art, culture, technology and creative communities and talk to them about the role of the museum and art institutions today and in the future. Everything else was a mystery to be solved, like the final format of the documentary for example. That’s why we treated it like a curious study and our mindset was to say yes to everything and see where it leads us.
Before our trip, we had five interviews scheduled and by the end of our 9-day shoot we boarded the plane with twelve interviews in the bag – this was the NYC energy that surged through us.
Days 1-3
The first thing that we had to eat was always going to be pizza, and that’s what we did on our way to B&H Photo to grab some additional equipment. Rose’s Pizza by Madison Square Garden was a solid choice and gave us a good start to our first day. The lovely people of the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York generously gave us access to their offices in Bowery, where we set up our headquarters for the rest of the trip. The FCINY and the Finnish Consulate also got us an invite to a special event that was held on our first night in the city, and we got to visit one of the last remaining artist lofts in SOHO that is still in it’s original form from the 60’s. It was the home and studio of a Finnish artist Iria Leino, who passed away two years ago. The loft still holds over 700 of her abstract paintings and a group of people are now organising a solo exhibition of her work opening later this year in NYC. The event was hosted to screen a short excerpt of an upcoming documentary about her – more info and a wonderful teaser trailer can be found at www.iriathefilm.com
This event was our first real encountered with the special energy of the city and how things can move really fast if you let them. Within the first hour, we were introduced to five people who would have all wanted to be a part of our documentary.
The next day we came back to the loft and interviewed one of them, Peter Hastings Falk – art historian and curator who is organising the upcoming exhibition.
This set the ball rolling and during the next two days we interviewed the wonderfully talented and well-spoken Nick Law, global lead for design and creative tech at Accenture Song, as well as Joshua Hubberman who runs a digital design and experience studio called Cthdrl.
We also visited the studio of a long time idol of mine, Salomon Ligthelm, who screened us his short film MOEDER that he shot in Ukraine in late 2021 – trailer here.
To wrap up the first part of the trip we visited DEMO festival by New Inc, the New Museum’s cultural incubator for art, design, and technology. This festival, held at the WSA building was a great example of how a museum can operate and function for an even wider audience and help emerging artist to showcase their work.
Also the trip’s best pizza was discovered that night at Scarr’s.
Days 4-6
Thursday morning we we headed to the Upper East Side to interview Lynn Hershman Leeson, a pioneering multimedia artist whose work, spanning over five decades, has helped define what is considered art, especially when it comes to the use of technology. Afterwards we also attended a screening of her film “!Women Art Revolution” at MoMA.
After a quick visit to Tom Sachs’ gallery, Bodega 245, which is such a vibrant place, we had our hands full with interviews coming up with Eileen Isagon Skyers – artist, writer, and curator, Asher Remy-Toledo – founder of Hyphen Hub and Billy Clark – artistic director at CultureHub. Eileen had curated the Art & Code track’s showcase titled Random Access Memory for New Inc that we went to see at DEMO festival a couple days earlier.
Anssi Vallius, special adviser for cultural affairs and creative industries at the Finnish Consulate, helped us set up the interviews with Asher and Billy (and later Lawrence) who provided us with great insights to creative community building.
Before the middle part of our trip was concluded we went to the DEMO closing party, which was hosted at the top floor of the WSA building – another great example of how museums can participate in culture outside of the physical museum spaces.
Days 7-9
We started feeling more and more comfortable with the city and the Chinatown part of Canal street had become a daily evening hangout spot with multiple late night dinners at Kiki’s and Scarr’s. This helped fuel our 15km per day walking average.
The next day with met with a friend of mine Timo Kiuru, who is a creative director currently working and living in the US. After a lunch and an insightful interview with him we headed to Red Hook, Brooklyn to visit an outdoor sculpture exhibition curated by Entrance Gallery.
Back at Manhattan we met Dina Litovksy, an amazing photographer, who also writes a very popular newsletter here on Substack called In the Flash (seriously check it out). She graciously sat down for an interview and showed us around East Village.
The final stretch was approaching, but we still had tick Central Park from our to-do list and there was two more interviews lined up. First we headed to Greenpoint, Brooklyn to meet Manuel Dilone, Co-Founder of U.N.N.A.M.E.D - A regenerative design ecosystem, and finally back to Manhattan to the OMA New York’s office to interview architect Lawrence Siu, who had interesting takes on how museum buildings are designed and how architecture shapes the museum experience.
After Lawrence’s interview we headed for a farewell dinner with Kati Laakso, the director of FCINY, who helped us all along our trip and Max Henderson, who is a long time friend of Veera and many other finns (including us now). He booked us a table at the Balthazar which was a fitting bookend to our crazy packed trip.
New York definitely left a mark on me and the amount of positive energy was quite overwhelming. Will definitely be coming back.
Thanks for reading – until next time!
CURRENT INSPIRATION
🍝 Sopranos – Started watching it from the first episode after our trip, currently in S4.
🤳 iPhone 15 Pro Max – Shot most of the b-roll on this trip with it and the Blackmagic Camera app + a Kodak 2383 lut. Absolutely ridiculous what you can do with a phone.
📖 Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken by Yorgos Lanthimos – A gem of a photobook, which they made with Emma Stone while shooting Poor Things.
“After a busy day of filming, they would develop the colour 6x7 negatives and the b&w 4x5 sheet film together in a makeshift darkroom in a bathroom. This alchemic act offered them both a creative outlet beyond the realm and constraints of the film.”
THE STUDIO
Veli Studio is a full service creative studio based in Helsinki.
Website – Instagram – Behance – Linkedin – Attraction Magazine
LET’S CONNECT
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