I just received Swallow Magazine which is a super stylish hardcover food journal published in New York. This issue is about Nordic stuff and from Finland they have interviewed the two-Michelin star chef Hans Välimäki and me. I prefer this context over an art magazine.

Some like it hot. An enigmatic emigré artist goes west. Interview by James Casey. Photograph by Inmaculada Díaz.

Some highlights of the interview:

"A good artist disagrees always and is always wrong. It kinda explains everything."

“The world’s favorite cocktail is Molotov cocktail, popular also in Islamic countries.”

Where cultural theorist Paul Virilio speaks of a global civil war, Sakkinen takes it more precise – it’s all about döner kebab versus Big Mac.

“I’ve heard that the most important businesses in the world are weapons, drugs and prostitution. I can’t believe it. I know people who don’t  have guns, who don’t take drugs and I even know somebody who doesn’t like sex, but I don’t know anybody who doesn’t eat.”

With statements like that, Sakkinen is readily proving his maxim wrong as some good artists can often have a habit of being right more often than they would admit.

My daughter got many presents from the Three Kings of the Orient. She liked most a plastic tiara. Why do these guys have to be kings?Is it because we live in the Kingdom of Spain? Are they in republics Three Presidents of the Orient?

My three-year-old daughter loves princesses. She watches adventures of Sissi, reads Disney Princess magazine and wears crowns. What have I done wrong in her education? Why does she adore monarchy that is anti-everything what I believe in? Is it because I haven’t given her any systematic political education?

I’d like to have the Spanish citizenship but it includes pledging allegiance to the king. That’s out of question. I’m in the extreme outermost left of the the left and my idea of justice is to convert the Disneyland Resorts in concentration camps and intern there Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan and all other cute but oppressive princesses. And of course the Three Kings, too.

The Italian superstar artist and joker Maurizio Cattelan had his own football team Rauss that was formed of African immigrants. Every boy wants to be a football star (naturally the sinister kids dream of being someday guitar heroes) and when they grow older and have beer bellies, they aspire to become presidents of football clubs. Silvio Berlusconi is the prime minister of  Italy but I0m sure that he fulfilled his dreams already when he bought AC Milan in the 80's. Politics are just an extra topping in his pizza.

My cold war era childhood was over politized and since a very early age I had the famous picture of Che Guevara on my wall.I remember that once I was taken to watch a game between HJK and AC Milan at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium. But I didn’t want to be Marco van Basten nor Metallica. I didn't want to play ball nor guitar in a stadium. I wanted to be a terrorist and bomb stadiums.

Logically, now as artist I don’t want to own a football team but a private commando, my own light special forces military unit parachuting to all the conflicts areas.My troops would be formed of the 4th world people: homeless junkies and street prostitutes.

It would be named Liberation Army of Cheeseburgers and it would get invloved in all crisis and conflicts around the world. It might be a mixtue of RAF (Red Army Faction), LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) and KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken)

Now I'd send my commando to Gaza Strip where they would shoot Heinz ketchup to the Israeli invasors and offer bacon burgers to the Hamas leaders.

A couple of weeks ago, I built with my daughter a typical Christmas gingerbread house. Gingerbread was brought from the Orient to Europe by the Crusaders and in a famous fairy tale the poor kids Hansel and Gretel found a delicious gingerbread house in the forest but it was a trap set up by a witch.

While we were baking the dough, a top 40 radio newsreader was genuinely surprised that the Israelis and the Palestinians didin’t cease the fire during the Christmas. Can the self-centered Christians believe that all the world celebrates the Nativity? Bob Geldof sang with his friends in the 80’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” raising money for the starving Ethiopians (60% Christians, 35% Muslims, 5% traditional faiths).

Yesterday, Israeli airstrikes killed hundreds of people and destroyed dozens of houses in Gaza. While the bombs exploded in Palestina, our ginger bread house imploded – now my daugher can plunder the M&M’s and other decorations.

The tale about Hans, Gretel and the ginger bread house, including famine, was originated during the economic crisis of the Late Middle Ages – in the start of the 14th century the European prosperity and growth halted. Recently, the Finnish Ex-prime minister Paavo Lipponen, now working for the Russian Gazprom, said that the current economic crisis is the Armageddon, the final battle between the good and the bad and it will reach even “the most remote village in the jungle”. I suppose that for Mr. Lipponen the good is represented by the neoliberalist capitalism that should crusade the world from Gaza strip to Hansel and Gretel’s forest.

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