
Viljami Nissi
Seitsemän kuumaa veljestä
(The Seven Hot Brothers)
The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, 2024
We thought we knew enough about it:
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Finland's first novel.Â
Written by Aleksis Kivi in 1870.Â
The story follows seven brothers living somewhere in the backwoods, drinking and brawling. Â
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So, we decided to ask the brothers themselves what they remembered. We found them easily—cruising at the top of a hill. But the brothers didn’t recall much, not even their own names. We gave them new ones since we couldn’t remember all the originals either. We also handed each of them a copy of the book to jog their memories. Some read without issue, while others couldn’t make sense of a single word. None of the brothers had seen the book before.Â
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The Seven Hot Brothers is a gay man’s attempt to endure reading Aleksis Kivi’s novel The Seven Brothers. Rather than offering a new interpretation of the novel, Nissi presents an independent work that honors both Kivi's novel and Finnish queer history.Â
seven-channel video installation, sauna benches
duration: 19:45min
the work is in Finnish, with an English translation
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concept, text, direction, costum design, editing: Viljami Nissi
performer: Aleksi Holkko
sound design and English translation: Roy Boswell
cinematography and additional editing: Liisa Mudist
founded by Kone Foundation
documentation: Virve Laustela (The Finnish Museum of Photography), Tuure Leppänen
email hello(at)viljaminissi.com to preview the video



