melkoinen

I am a 40 years old Finnish man. Also in my family there is a little boy, fiancé from Australia, and a cat.

I have a background in do-it-yourself (d.i.y) from my childhood. I've been in bands since I was 13, I've published punk-zines, sold records, photographed, etc. I've got a large variety of skills, but I'm not exceptionally good in anything. Making art is fun to me as it is, and I've got lots of ideas about what to do.

I've been mostly working in information technology related companies. Once upon a time, I tried to combine my job and my artistic ambitions, but I found out pretty quickly that it was making me and the customers feel bad. Since that I've kept my job and hobbies separate. Therefore my work in this melkoinen-project is a hobby.

Ideology-wise I'm still a kind of punk kid. I support animal rights, green values and I don't think there is anything totally wrong with anarchism. Of course I'm not very radical anymore and my point of view has been expanded with for example writings of Naomi Klein and Zen Buddhism.

Digital technology and the internet have been a dream come true to me in many ways. I can do lots of really cool things with modern software, whereas earlier I needed lots of really expensive hardware. Also hardware prices have come down, and the quality is better too. The internet has also almost infinite possibilities for promoting and hosting my various art and music projects, etc.

I'm pretty optimistic towards any d.i.y in general. I think almost anything is really possible if you really want it bad enough, and are willing to work for it really hard. There are really little absolute limitations. Also I don't think that art and culture are things meant to be done by official, professional and commercial people and organizations only. I think everyone has the right to express him or herself in any possible way. I think expressing lots of different views is richness.

I'm not particularly interested in art as technical perfection of different skills. I think the content is much more important.