All of the work of Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila deals with the process of thoughts and all of its absurdities. In her film The House/Talo, through a process of research and interviews, she develops a narrative of psychotic disorders and feelings of confinement. Projected onto three different screens; the film progresses and brief accounts of individuals experiences start to unravel through the protagonist's dialogue, from cars driving themselves, and farm animals walking through the house, to flying through the woods, and hearing sounds from a nonexistent ship at sea. The woman describes her daily household routine in the manner of how an obsessive-compulsive person would. When her schedule of events starts to become interrupted by the surreal, dreamlike imagery of the psychosis, she begins feeling great anxiety. Using the metaphor of light coming into the house to represent the strange thoughts enveloping her mind, she begins to cover the windows in black cloth. When the last window is blinded in black, all three screens go dark, and the narrator(the woman) begins to speak. She describes how "they" live inside her, they fill a void, "They press on her achilles tendon, and come and go as they please, some stay long and some short." The film then ends with different view points on a peaceful farm house in country.
Another of Eija-Liisa Ahtila's video work, If 6 was 9.
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