I have attended the listed performances as an audience member during my doctoral research. They constitute the parapractice of audience membership and have served as source material for my thinking process along with the works in which I have been in the position of the maker. They are listed in order of the date of attendance, from the most recent to the earliest. Between August 2017 and June 2024 all (or at least nearly all) have been listed. From the time before, some selected performances are mentioned, due to their relevance for the development of my work.
In grey I have added some notes, documenting my personal audience experience, or the memories of it.
Auringonvalo lattialla. Masi Tiitta. Attended on 19 June 2024. Contemporary Art Space Kutomo, Turku. Premiered 13 June 2024.
The performance art of the future will cherish the complicity of the ecosystem, the land and the universe beyond. This performance followed its title Sunlight on the Floor to an eloquent conclusion. On the left-hand side of the space when viewed from the audience seating were a row of windows, with no curtains obstructing natural light from entering. The carpet had a diagonal parallelogram-shaped form, mimicing the pattern made by sunlight. Three performers entered and started to move very slowly, while clouds moved away from in front of the sun and a pattern was painted on the floor, not identical but resembling the one in the carpet.
The space was set like a minimalistic installation, throughtout the work, the piano piece Triadic Memories by Morton Feldman was playing from speakers and the dancers moved according to a minimalistic and for the most part slow choreography. It was intermedial in a lucid but subtle way, like an impressionist painting translated into a fusion of music, dance and spatial design. Even the clothing of the performers had a relation to the eye color of each of them.
It was also very much a European work made by people who are blessed and cursed with the luxury of leisure.
Sonic Organism. Hanna Pajala-Assefa. Attended on 6 June 2024. Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiered 5 june 2024.
An artistic part of an artistic doctorate, the work invites us to move in the space in relation each other and to stimuli given by the authors, such as sound and video projection on the floor. Our movements are then recorded somehow and used as data in the research. I notice that it seems uncklear to me whether this is a performance: it is framed as one but it does not feel like one. More like a workshop or something. It relies heavily on our participation and due to that it benefits from participants who are artists themselves or otherwise prone to submit to these kinds of propositions. Maybe the context has produced such a selection.
Sofa - Conversations on utopias. Pilvi Porkola & Salla Salin / Reality Research Center. Attended on 22 & 25 May 2024. Central Park, Helsinki. Premiered 22 May 2024.
Public conversations framed as performances, dealing with the theme of utopias. I take part in two, one at a square in the center of Helsinki, one in the forest of the Central Park. Simple concept, articulate people. In the center there is an interesting diversion when a skateboarder comes close by with a speaker on a loud volume and when the organizing group approach him and request them to turn it down, they say "call the police if you want". :) Public space is occupied by dissonant and conflicting agents, which felt proper. On the other hand, it is great to be in the forest, I long for more forest art!
tokonoma series 2. SLOW BLUE LOVE. Vincent Roumagnac & Nina Liebenberg. Attended on 16 May 2024. Pengerkatu 7 Työhuone, Helsinki. Premiere.
This was a sophisticated intermedial performance without performers for an audience of one. I was welcomed by Vincent at the door, he showed me the set, which was composed of a laptop, an ikebana composition and a drink. The laptop has a slide show for me to go through, paying homage to the film maker Derek Jarman. "The tokonoma is a small alcove within a traditional Japanese home which serves as a little stage for showcasing a mise-en-scène consisting of specific works of art, including calligraphy (kakejiku) and floral arrangements (ikebana), often complemented by precious objects of craftsmanship." The combination results in a sensitive, intelligent, intermedial work of artistic research, in the realm of which I feel at ease and inspired.
DOWN BEAT BEAT DOWN BEAT DOWN DOWN BEAT. Mean Time Between Failures. Attended on 11 May 2024. Yö Galleria, Helsinki. Premiere.
The audience is offered bubble gum, the performers take some as well. The action of chewing bubble gum continues throughout the performance as a dramaturgical connective tissue, creating an experience of a collective body. Performers in sportswear, dancing, chewing. In the end part we are also filmed and our images are projected on the wall and we are asked to place our bubble gums on the naked bodies of the performers, subjecting them to our touch and saliva.
Alku keskikohta loppu. Arni Rajamäki. Attended on 19 & 30 April 2024. Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila, Helsinki. Premiered 24 November 2021.
A prima vista performance in which the actor sees the text for the first time when performing it and it is also projected for the audience to see. As a prelude a wonderful performance of a piano piece. Interesting power play between the playwright, the actor and the audience. The punchline was
"A list of things that make theatre so tiring:
- it is of poor quality
- heteros"
Occupy this. Niko Nordström. Attended on 13 April 2024. Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiered 12 April 2024.
A re-staging of the occupation of the Theatre Academy that took place the year before. The artist (whom I was mentoring) had been part of the movement and used documentary methods like interviews to gather material about the occupation and similar happenings in earlier history. Niko was able to create a sincere, dialogical atmosphere among and with the audience.
Empty Stage. Kaino Wennerstrand. Attended on 11 April & 15 May 2024. Helsinki City Theatre, the Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila, Helsinki. Premiered 11 April 2024.
Thinking abut the stage aloud, some reminisence of my thinking aloud in writing. A bare esitystaide form paired with a expressive, even sentimental concert of songs. It is interesting to think how can marginal esitystaide scale up to fit these large theatres. The stage is never empty, right? The artist made big changes to the structure in between shows which is rare and refreshing.
Kadonnutta aikaa etsimässä, osa 5. Aleksi Holkko & Hanna-Kaisa Tiainen. Attended on 1 April 2024. Kankaanpää cemetery / remote. Premiered 8 March 2021.
This was the fifth part of an ambitious series of performances, staging since 2017 piece by piece the famous novel In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Due to the pandemic restrictions the performance was realized in the form of a letter – or a set of letters placed in smaller and smaller envelopes that were revealed one by one as the audience member progressed in this epistolary dramaturgy. It was obviously relevant in terms of my research, since I also used letters as a medium.
In 2021, when I registered for the performance, I didn't at first receive it. When I contacted the makers, they re-sent it to me during the summer. In the letter, which was contained in the first envelope, I was made aware of the site of the performance: a graveyeard, any graveyard. For some reason, I did not go there nor did I proceed further.
Before almost three years later, in April 2024, I was travelling by bus towards Kankaanpää, where I was teaching a course on performances as forms of togetherness. My aunt had passed away some days before and I had grabbed the performance envelope from 2021 with me when packing. After reaching my destination, I walked to the local cemetary and launched the performance.
The written voices of Hanna-Kaisa and Aleksi addressed me from the era of the pandemic. While the difference in the societal situation was clear between theirs and the one I was in, it did not seem obsolete in any way. The performance was taking place in my present moment, it was live and I felt a member of the collective audience work. The words of performance artist Shaun Chua echoed in my head, when Chua was commenting on my work A Reading of Audience (at 1:15:22 in the video) when interviewed by me: "it's not like you're out of time. It's still continuing and you just came in in another time frame".
This was highly interesting in terms gathering, time and complicity. I felt complicit, in the right time and part of a collective body, regardless of the assumed distance (in time and place) to all the others who were or had been involved with the work.
Kadonnutta aikaa etsimässä, osa 7. Aleksi Holkko & Hanna-Kaisa Tiainen. Attended on 11 March 2024. Teatteri Takomo. Premiered 4 March 2024.
I was really taken by this. I hadn't enjoyed any work like this in a long time. It was the seventh part of the megalomaniac series of staging Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time in 2017-27. The seventh part was Sodoma and Gomorra. It was set in a private gay sauna and it dealt with the way Proust is hiding his homosexuality into stories of his "female" conquests. There was an installation in the sauna, Proust himself present via Tiainen, cello music with S&M encounters, Holkko opening up about his endeavor to find out whether Proust was gay, stories of the real local Theatre Academy, a golden shower... It is hard to convey why I thought it was so good. But it had to do with the way it was multilayered, intelligent, hilarious and real. I was also thinking of the way I have lived mostlly a heterosexual life, but still I often feel like home in these kind of shabby queer, sexually unconventional, even straightforwardly gay places.
Tanz. Florentina Holzinger. Attended on 7 February 2024. Dance House, Helsinki. Premiered 3 October 2019.
Acclaimed and celebrated. The wheelchairbound aged ballet teacher giving a lesson in front of us was truly disarming. There had been stories of people vomiting in the show, which I suppose was due to a live peircing and then a hanging from meat hooks. This was not at all nauseating to me, and the hanging was a great scene. The choreographer, who was also on stage, confronted the audience straightforwardly, asking some money from us. To me this was rather unnecessary, but I guess they had their reasons. To me, other aspects of the work were much more interesting and inventive. It was a spectacle, all in all.
Kuvitellaan toivo. Totem Theatre. Attended on 17 January 2024. Premiere. Perkkaa Elementary School, Espoo.
The yearly premieres of Totem theatre keep me in sime kind of touch with child audiences and they are always energetic, restless and touching. The worked reached out towards them through the thematics f bullying and by giving voice to some young people via videoroles.
Joitakin keskusteluja merkityksestä. Q-teatteri. Attended on 15 December 2023, Q-teatteri, Helsinki. Premiered 22 September 2023.
Virtuoso work in many ways but what was interesting was that it was somewhere between genres and the audience would have trouble deciding should the virtuosic comical acting be applauded due to the skill or should it be taken as part of a bigger picture, meaning applause only in the end. In addition, a musician and a dancer were also present, using unashamed their own genres along the actors' work.
Tytöille, jotka ajattelevat olevansa yksin. Ujuni Ahmed & Elina Hirvonen. National Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 21 September 2023.
It was therapeutic to be an audience of a Finnish Somali story and the performer bodies that it needed on the Main Stage of the National Theatre. This kind of programming that confronts racist structures is so important. Ahmed's book, on which this was based, is also important and courageous, disclosing the troubled conditions of girls who live in between these two sets of cultural codes.
Save the Last Dance for Me. Alessandro Sciarroni. Attended on 6 November 2023, Moving in November Festival, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki. Premiered 2019.
Like the previous year, Moving in November had programmed a 20-minute stand-alone work to the Kunsthall. This time a male couple dancing aa traditional Italian Polka, it was enchanting. The short duration creates a welcome disturbance to the conventions of the contemporary dance scene.
Ihana tytär Erika - huomioita nimestä. Emil Santtu Uuttu Et alia. Attended on 6 November 2023. Finnish Literature Society Archive, Helsinki. Premiered 1 September 2023.
Before the performance I was sitting in the hallway browsing a book about Rabbits. I was thinking about the term beforemance I was planning to coin and how it would or would not apply to a book. Is a book also a performance or a beforemance? The writing of it is performed and it is before me now, so to some extent maybe?
The work Ihana tytär Erika was arranged on a table in the archive room. On the table, there was a box of index cards, an archive case with a book and three thin publications, a table of contents and two sets of headphones. We listened to a 90 minute audio track, a kind of audio play of sorts, tracing in detail a meticulous process of research after a person called Erika, mentioned shortly in one "local story" about "unusual people" in the archives. Erika was labeled unusual because she did not fit the gender roles of the community. The archive materials on the table were sources relevant to this research process. In the end we also saw a touching, sentimental video, in which the audio actors performed, all of them apparently non-cis-gendered, presenting the unusual of the story as usual.
This was more beforemative than the the book in the hallway: it was installed before us (there could be either one or two audience members at a time) in space, and it took place at a specific time and it could not be rewound. The audio track proceeded independent from us but the included printed materials were available and we could choose how we attended them. Framed temporally by the duration of the audio tape, the work was gone after our timeslot. In other words, the work included a beforemative arrangement. Its beformativity was not very strong - there was almost no way for us to affect the work, which resulted in the absence of risk and, in the end, a relatively minor level of complicity.
Fracpturing. Mean Time Between Failures -group. Attended on 10 October 2023, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Helsinki. Premiered 29 September 2023.
A work which tried to capture the condition of living with screens: mobile phones, laptops etc. And render experiences typical for this condition into audience experiences in a black box theatre. It also succeeded in this, at least in my experience. There is something interestingly solitary and shared in screen time. Everybody is doing it, they connect with each other through it and at the same time they are alone due to it.
The most memorable moment was when there was a stream of images on a large projection, like someone using tiktok or instagram in a fast pace, and one performer sitting on the floor in front of the audience wathcing it. Like pre-watching, like showing us the way we are in front of this stream of information.
I want. Marta Jalowska, Edka Jarząb & Sebastian Winkler. Attended on 24 September 2023, theaterszene europa festival, Orangerie Theater, Cologne. Premiered 17 October 2020.
The polish flag was smudged and smeared on the skin of the performers as paint. The performing was hard for me to digest, it seemed to me that the performers were each doing a bit their own thing and I struggled connecting them, finding the style. The subject material was great, a Polish-American lesbian poet who run for the president of USA in the 90s. Important stuff, but I did not really find the connection to how it was performed.
Commitment Phobe. A dedication to doubt. Ira Brand / Frascati Producties. Attended on 23 September 2023. theaterszene europa festival, Orangerie Theater, Cologne. Premiered 19 April 2023.
I could so well relate to the kind of labour where you prepare everything in advance, polish a precarious system in order for it to work perfectly at a given time, at which point you cannot do anything to save it from failing. This is how my literary performance practice works as well. I prepare everything for the event and then I am unable to improvise if it does not work. The performers seemed at the same time very comfortable on stage and anxious about how it will play out. Also a somewhat strange balance between acting and non-acting that I was left thinking about.
Hearty. Emma Frankland. Attended on 22 September 2023, theaterszene europa festival, Orangerie Theater, Cologne. Premiered 21 February 2022.
I was touched by the sincerity and urgency I sensed emitting from the performer. I am no expert of British theatre but I had a feeling that the tradition was present quite strongly, in the rhythm, in the quality of the voice, in the articulation. A combination of something very traditional and something very current. The repetition.
Neljän päivän läheisyys (sky every day). WAUHAUS-group. Attended on 19 Septemper 2023, & Espoo Theatre, &Revontuli, Espoo. Premiered 13 September 2023.
This was quite a pearl. Such an elegant combination of contemporary classical music, (3-channel) video art, (15-channel) sound art, play text, set & light design and live art. Transdisciplinary work creates a transdisciplinary way of audiencing, and thus the work is experimenting on the role of the audience, but while they are just sitting in the auditorium and in a seemingly conventional way. How we audience a video work and a theatre work and a live art work are not the same. This work takes us to the subtly wobbly ground in between.
Upotapia. The Center for Everything. Attended on 16 September 2023, Kaasukello, Suvilahti, Helsinki. Premiered 1 September 2023.
An immersive game performance in a giant circular gasometer. The basic dramaturgical elements were very well planned I thought and the aesthetics also quite inventive, a nice combination of imagination, megalomania and a shoe-string budget. The dramaturgy guided the audience to work together, but enough in a non-linear way so it did not seem forced at all. It was a collaborative game, there was almost no competition, which is a merit I think. On the critical side, the waiting in the beginning was very long I thought for the first group of audience. And more importantly, I was missing any deeper level of meaning – it looked good and worked well, but why?
Dancer. Janina Rajakangas Project. Attended on 15 & 19 September 2023, Kiasma Theatre, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki. Premiered 15 September 2023.
This was a work choreographed by my partner and what was weird was that I had not seen any rehearsals before the premiere. I have a suspicion that it is not easy for me not to like her work, it comes naturally that I enjoy, respect and admire it. It was a big group of dancers, 13, and I was so happy to see that since that is so rare. The group is neurodivergent and that was not visible, which I also was amazed by. That is a provocation also, I thought, since there are some conventional aesthetics of how non-normatively able dancers perform. My favorite was the part with the Nirvana song Come as You Are. Regarding audiencing, it followed the “relaxed performance” concept, which means that there are extra seats and you can change your place, you can stand, rock, joggle, stim and so on. Go in and out when you need. I loved that and it is also an interesting way of changing the convention – not through experimentalism but through the practice of accessability.
Future past in Linnaniemi. Suvi Tuominen. Attended on 8 September 2023, New Performance Turku Biennale, Turku Harbour, Turku. Premiered 8 September 2023.
While biking to the performance along the Aura river that splits the center of Turku in half, I passed at least four performances, three of which were part of the New Performance Turku Biennale: first I passed Ana Matey and Isabel León at the House of Art, then gustaf broms in a commercial space at the shopping mall, then Mark Pozlep by a container outdoors in the harbour and then I also saw puppeteer Ishmael Falke doing a one-on-one guidance by the sea museum, totally unconnected to the festival. This felt quite amazing, like a utopia in which performance art is a typical part of everyday urban life.
Suvi’s choice of space and context was fascinating. The site was a long unused harbour terminal corridor that leads nowhere. The intellectual context was the Museum of History and Future which is to be built at the very site in the future (sic). Suvi’s left foot was or is or will be in the unreality and flexibility of the future.
The Score’s Party. Ana Matey & Isabel León. Attended 7 & 8 September 2023, New Performance Turku Biennale, The House of Arts, Turku. Premiered 6 September 2023.
I thought this was somehow between my work and that of gustaf broms: they were communicating with materials, but both writing and paper itself were very important part of these materials. I was too busy with my own work to really settle down into theirs, but I could feel them in the next room while I worked.
M*otherland: stack of rules and a big collective feeling. Dash Che. Attended on 7 September 2023, New Performance Turku Biennale, Adventure Park, Turku. Premiered 7 September 2023.
“Somebody has let and adult free on the playground” a fellow audience member explained the work to their child. It was so lovely to follow this joyful, fast-paced and energetic performer. The audience body was struggling to alter its habitual slow pace of moving in an event space. The performer was already elsewhere, when the audience cought up with them. Half-way they transformed into something that I thought was the beast from the book the Beast of Moniseur Racine. This creature was easier to follow, until it found a police car at the childrens traffic park and headed for an anarchistic pilluralli.
untitled (worlds of becomings). gustaf broms. Attended on 7 & 8 September 2023, New Performance Turku Biennale, Eerikinkatu 17, Turku. Premiered on 7 & 8 September 2023.
I visited gustaf’s 40-hour durational performance five or six times and it was beautiful. In an empty commercial space on one of the main streets, he is communicating with his materials, organizing them, in a constant creative state. Branches, bones, video projections, mirrors, overalls, stones etc. It is wonderful to be able to visit, linger, leave, exist in a work that occupies and institutes its own terrain of time-space.
Impossible Actions. Yasen Vasilev. Attended on 6 September 2023, New Performance Turku Biennale, The House of Arts, Turku. Premiered 20 May 2021.
About ten performers were executing a dramaturgy of tasks in a slow rhythm. There was a big audience, more than hundred, on all sides of the stage. It brought to my mind Other Spaces, a Finnish group who have made this kind of exercise performances. Also in their group some of the performers are dancers, but some not, and the taks-based work resembles works of contemporary dance, but the focus is not on the skill or the movement choreography itself. It felt to me like on the dance field this could be the starting point of a project, but on the field of performance art it can be the destination. Simply staging practices don't feel enough – in this one I felt like I could detect everything they did, there was no mystery, surprise, transformation or conceptual tickles. I could look at the performers repeating the simple score and that was it.
In the beginning they told us that after 45 minutes the door will be opened and then the second part starts and we can leave or stay. For the first part, everyone were completely silent, totally opposite from my morning show (see Oikotie Peikkometsään below) at the school. When they opened the door, almost everyone got up, clapped, started to talk and left. About 15 of us stayed and then the best part came and the transformation finally took place. The rigid task-based structure changed into a more porous process, in which the tasks were not anymore that obvious. The perfomers were touching each other gently, it seemed like some of the performativity was released and yet they did not fall into everyday. It was a very interesting dynamic: the performance got interesting when most of the audience left and they were performing less.
I, Earth. Joanna Rajkowska. Attended on 6 September 2023, New Performance Turku Biennale, Ryöväriholma, Kaarina. Premiered 6 September 2023.
We travelled with a bus to a small island and walked to a few meters deep crack in the rock by the sea. Audience was sitting up on both sides of the crack and the performers were making music deep down, out of sight. I felt that I had grown in this soundscape, I was remembering that my dad had been doing this kind of music 30 years ago. That was in the context of music, this in the context of performance art. It felt kind of weird, or dated in that way. Now it was framed with the fact of ecological disaster and the emotions related to that. I think we are desperate as a society, how to react to this crisis.
Oikotie Peikkometsään. Totem-teatteri. Attended on 6 September 2023, Perkkaa school, Espoo. Premiere.
“A social-psychedelic” theatre performance for kids. I attended with my 4-year-old daughter, everyone else were primary school kids and their teachers. The audience was interesting – they do not keep quiet and you really have to work as a performer to get them interested and keep their attention. It also requires a specific dramaturgical skill. This was partly very good, but also I thought it struggled a bit to sell philosophcal and political thinking to the children… but I am only supposing since I am not one of the kids. I directed a piece with the same company and faced these same challenges then myself. The best thing was when the performers swapped eyes with each other.
Kävelyn tiellä / Walking within the Frame. Reality Research Center. Attended on 3 September 2023, Viikki Arboretum, Helsinki. Premiered 2 September 2023.
There is seven of us, we close our own smart phones in envelopes, put them in our pockets and receive “performance phones”. Then we head towards the forest. The phone asks us to check its screen every now and then with sounds of birds. On the screen instructions appear, guiding each of us on our own trip into the Arboretum, feeling the forest and our place in between it and the phone. I feel at ease. The performance seems like groundwork for an emerging genre of art – these experiential performances that use contemporary everyday technologies and bring their audiences outdoors.
Dilemma. Masi Tiitta. Attended on 21, 22, 26 & 29 August 2023, Helsinki City Theatre, Stage for Contemporary Performance, studio Pasila, Helsinki. Premiered 22 August 2023.
I loved the beginning: an empty stage with a diagonal beam of light on the backdrop and a tree branch hanging from the ceiling. Two voices start to discuss with a lazy tempo. The other one is pondering whether to go out, since “it said that it will start raining an hour ago… but it did not… it shifted… now it is again saying that it will start raining… but it does not look like it would start raining… so should I go out now… or wait that it will start raining… and then that it will pass… and then go out… or should I go now…. maybe I will wait… and see if it will start...” The curse of freedom. The contemporary "royalty" are just normal middle class western people who spend there days thinking if they should sit here or there and open the cava now or in an hour. Also the use of the word "it" in the first dialogue. "It" is both the internet and the weather and it says things. I was involved in the role of a curator.
Matin d’été à Epidaure (GIF). Vincent Roumagnac. Attended on 18 August 2023, Teater Viirus, Helsinki. Premiered 17 August 2023.
I have followed Vincent’s series of pieces restaging the theatrical apparatus in the era of climate crisis and big data already for several years. This was a beautiful simple superimposition of an ancient Greek theatre and an outdoor auditorium in the South of Helsinki. It was a place where I could contemplate theatre as a sturcture, as architecture.
Little Mermaid. Helsinki City Theatre. Direction Samuli Harjanne. Attended on 15 August 2023. Helsinki City Theatre, main stage, Helsinki. Premiered 17 August 2023.
A large-scale musical at the main stage. The mermaid was flying in the water, truly flying. The stage was alive with the skillful co-design of music, set, puppetry, choreography. Teens, with whom I attended, loved it, the songs were also familiar from a Disney movie.
Nano Steps. Trial & Theatre -group. Attended on 8 & 14 August 2023, Helsinki City Theatre, Stage for Contemporary Performance, studio Pasila, Helsinki. Premiered 8 August 2023.
Nanopuppetry: microparticles animated by puppeteers. Audiencing something too small to be seen, technologically mediated and enlarged to a screen. Sound and electricity direct particles. We are composed of particles. When the performers used microphone as the interface through which the movement of the particles was directed with sound, a cough from the audience made the particles jump in the projection. And then again the laughter that was triggered by that. This really broke the fourth wall and made us (the audience) aware of the cohabitation of the space and the effect of the audience on the performance. I was involved in the realization of this piece in the role of the curator.
Pukkila. Yövieraat-group. Attended on 12 July 2023, Volter Kilpi Kustavissa – literary week, Nissilä yard, Kustavi.
A summer vacation theatre visit. This monologue tells about the thoughts of a man during the period of time when he enters the house of Alastalo farm, goes to greet the host sitting in the room and sits on a bench. The amount of things that go through his mind is amazing and mostly it has to do the bad things he thinks other people think of him.
Karvonen, Ami & Kokko, Kid & Mustonen, Anna: Liike ja tyhjyys (Movement and emptiness). Ami Karvonen, Kid Kokko & Anna Mustonen. Attended on 25 May 2023, Helsinki City Theatre, Stage for Contemporary Performance, studio Pasila. Premiered 9 February 2023.
I was a member of the curator group programming the work. It was restaged to the Pasila space, which was to its advantage – as the space is quite large, emptiness was present. I started to come up with memories of these performers in other performances over the years, separately or in combinations.
What is seen and what’s (left) behind the scene? Fjolla Hoxha. Attended on 23 May 2023. Helsinki City Theatre, Stage for Contemporary Performance, studio Pasila. Premiere.
Another piece curated by the group I was part, a site-specific audio work composed of interviews of the staff of the theatre working behind the scenes. Very kind to the audience, a light experience for myself. The moment with most weight took place when the audience was divided into two groups and one of them stepped onstage, while the other one settled in the auditorium. This simple gesture was to the point.
TIIKERI – Se some@bility näyttämöteos eli consertti ja bienanaali Nykyesityksen näyttämölle ja muihin tiloihin. Milla Jarko. Attended on 19 May 2023. Helsinki City Theatre, Stage for Contemporary Performance, studio Pasila. Premiere.
A second version of the piece shown in Cirko in January – or its “memorial service”. I was in the curatorial group programming it to the theatre, so at work in the show. It was a fascinating Gesamtkunstwerk, taking the earlier version on a new level in the Pasila space. The moment of entering the theatre hall itself after a long intro in the foyer is memorable – the audience, dressed in yellow, are standing on the technical balcony surrounding the stage, looking down on it. On stage there one large mattress and above that an aerial hoop, with the performer, “Tiikeri” (Tiger) on it.
Mortal Tropical Dances. Elina Pirinen. Attended on 10 May 2023. Dance House Helsinki, Erkko Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 5 May 2023.
A metal band, ritual circles and bodies hungry for life. A drum set on stage in a contemporary performance is always touching for me. The choreographer has a strong voice and I felt a lot of respect, even if I was not with it every moment.
One drop. Sonya Lindfors. 10 May 2023, Dance House Helsinki, Pannu Hall, Helsinki. Premiere 6 May 2023.
The instructions given by the choreographer in the foyer were meaningful, for example the mention that we can react and cheer the performers during the show, since “performing is hard work”. Most of the audience where school groups. In the beginning, I loved the dance, but then it turned into a complicated critique of colonization with several layers of irony making it hard to digest.
Nimetön. Ene-Liis Semper. Attended on 3 May 2023, Helsinki City Theatre, studio Pasila. Premiered 20 April 2023.
An actor student work by a professional director and it was a difficult experience for me. It was too long and I did not get the point at all. Except that the students could practice acting without speech. The set was interesting, with translucent film all around the stage and actors changing costume behind them.
Relax on a Shaky Ground. Yun-Chen Chang. Attended on 5 April 2023. University of the Arts Helsinki, Fine Arts Academy, White Box, Helsinki. Premiered 28 March 2023.
I had seen work-in-progress versions of the piece before, as I was mentoring the artist. I enjoyed the piece a lot – it had a lot of background materials, which I knew about through talking with them during the process, but the end result was very exact and sharp. The audience was free to move in the space (like in a performance art event) and the performers were moving tables in the space (like a choreography), some of the tables were miked and produced sounds which were amplified (like music). Also, there was a video installation on a table hanging from the ceiling and the space functioned also as an exhibition. So it was truly a transdisciplinary work and in a very effortless and organic way.
Extra Neitsyt Evankeliumi. Grus Grus Theatre. 21 April 2023, Cirko – Center for New Circus, Helsinki. Premiere 7 October 2022.
The first sex toy store in Palestine! A hilarious journey into the history of political violence on Palestinian land, depicting all peoples that have ruled the land with dildos. Several audience members, myself as one of them, were invited to step on stage as different characters who destroy the store piece by piece. I loved it. The artist is a dear friend of mine and we have also some shared history in Palestine. After the performance he gave me a gift he had brought from there: a bag of za’atar, a local spice mix.
Special Night. Helsinki Dance Company. Choreography Anton Lachky. Attended on 18 March 2023, Helsinki City Theatre, main stage. Premiered 8 March 2023.
A celebration of the skill of dancers. They were amazing – the choreographer's technique uses very fast-paced movement phrases, which emit from the big group of dancers like an avalanche. It was also an anniversary of Helsinki Dance Company and the room was full of Helsinki’s top contemporary dancers and choreographers from the last decades.
Love Simulation Eve. Avatar's Journey & Espoo City Theatre. Artistic derction Eero Tiainen. Attended on 14 March 2023. Espoo City Theatre, Revontulihalli, Espoo. Premiered 1 March 2023.
A rare case of a full-scale performance mostly executed with VR-technology. I noticed being more interested in the performative and dramaturgical arrangements around the VR experience. I was mentoring the director of the work at some point and he developed this project already at the time of his studies. It has demanded a lot from the makers and they use cutting-edge technologies. It is definitely good that performing arts react to recent technological developments that transform our lives. Still, after the show I was wondering, whether all this computing power and the use of time, energy and intelligence is worth it. In many ways, old-school performing bodies can still do the same better with smaller effort. But, in this genre, the interesting point is were the tech and the body intersect and disturb each other.
Kepeä elämäni. Miiko Toiviainen. Attended on 6 March 2023, Espoon City Theatre, Louhisali, Espoo. Premiered 7 July 2019.
A positive, approachable and humorous account of an experience of gender transition. All in all I was a bit disappointed, but Toiviainen is a wonderful singer. I was all the time waiting for more singing. It was informative, but I was already familiar of the information part, so my focus was on other things, like the dramaturgy, aesthetics and so on. And it was not that original on that side so maybe that is why the feeling of disappointment. The performers charisma and confidence was enchanting though. And the funniest part was them writing a critique of the show itself onstage.
Liike ja tyhjyys (Movement and emptiness). Karvonen Kokko Mustonen. Attended on 14 February 2023, Teatteri Takomo, Helsinki. Premiered 10 February 2023.
With this one I also feel the presence of the aura of the artists. The makers of this piece are famous in the small art circles of Helsinki, and not in vain. But still it disturbs my experience a bit, the expectation that everything they do must be great. It is a demanding piece for the audience, with its minimalism and slow rhythm. I do enjoy that, but lately I have become more aware of how it is designed for certain kind of people and for some it would be very difficult. There was a part in the piece where there was just a composition of flickering lights or “stars”. I liked that a lot.
On Earth I’m Done: Mountains. Cullberg. Choreography Jefta van Dinther. Attended on 11 February 2023, Sidestep Festival, Dance House Helsinki, Erkko Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 11 May 2022.
I wasn’t really touched by this at all I think. Sometimes it just feels that these enormous resources of the big stage are wasted. But Jefta van Dinther is also a big name, and it is not a wonder that he can be trusted with that. But I just wasn’t touched.
Graces. Silvia Gribaudi. Attended on 10 February 2023. Sidestep Festival, Dance House Helsinki, Pannu Hall, Helsinki.
I thought this was funny and in a nice way combined skill and amateurship, and played with stereotypes of masculinity. Later on I had some discussions with other members of the audience who were more critical and I started to doubt my experience. One thing I started to think about was the category of a “European festival piece”. Some works get a reputation and are programmed by everyone, and then they tour a lot. They are not necessarily exceptional, but they somehow hit a spot in the market. This is one of them.
Bauer Hour & A Peck Sec. Eleanor Bauer & Chris Peck. Attended on 9 February 2023, Sidestep Festival, Cable Factory Konttori, Helsinki.
Hmmm. I guess I was waiting for some more, like an art work… I was also a bit tense since I had the impression that Eleanor Bauer might demand us audience members to take part in unpredictable and uncomfortable ways. But it didn’t really happen and my experience stayed quite light, like a soft stand-up comedy night.
Versailles. Viirus Teater. Direction Jussi Sorjanen & Sinna Virtanen. Attended on 2 February 2023. Viirus Teater, Helsinki.
The opening scene where the actors come in as a tourist group in Versailles, the guide explaining and explaining, the group circling around (and behind) the auditorium with the voice of the guide audible all the time, and each time they re-enter the stage they have more and more Baroque style pieces of clothing. This was the best.
TIIKERI - The (some@bility) PERFORMANCE PIECE i.e. concerto and biennianal for cirko's Solmu stage and other spaces. Milla Jarko. Attended on 26 January 2023, Cirko – Center for New Circus, Helsinki. Premiered 20 January 2023.
Was this circus? Jarko calls it post-contemporary circus I think… A very powerful performer and no clear proscenium to protect us but still I felt quite safe. A weird combination of low-tech-DIY-aesthetics and some kind of original skill and thinking. I had been involved in curating this to another venue, the Stage for Contemporary Performance, so I was checking it out because of that. I was still happy with the choice, it was definitely contemporary performance.
Priscilla, queen of the desert. Script Stephan Elliot & Allan Scott, Direction Samuli Harjanne. Attended on 12 December 2022. Helsinki City Theatre, Main stage, Helsinki. Premiered 25 August 2023.
In the front row with my teenage bonusdaughter, this was wonderful, great fun. Having seen the film in the 90’s in a scrappy underground cinema, it is also a beautiful sign of a cultural change that transgender thematics and queer aesthetics are now selling out on the main stage of the biggest theatre in Finland. Over-the-top costume, set, music and a great way to stage the lip-sync tradition of the drag culture. Maximalism to the masses.
Seeking Unicorns. Chiara Bersani. Attended 24 November 2022. Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.
Interesting was the time of the day, it was a rare case of an early morning performance, at 8.30, before the museum opens. We were sitting on three sides of a rectangular space set in the entry hall of the museum, and the performer was going around the audience, taking contact to audience members. In the end a band of young (child) musicians appeared as sounds from above. Otherwise, it stayed somewhat distant to me, but the morning hour was a welcome distraction.
Venus. Janina Rajakangas & working group. Attended on 22 November 2022. Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Villa Salin, Helsinki. Premiere.
The choreographer is my wife and our daughter is one of the performers, and the piece deals with erotisation of teenagers and the sexual harassment they encounter – inspired by things she has encountered and which we have dealt with in our family. So could my audience perspective be more involved, while I have not been one of the makers? I think not. It is no surprise that it was very touching. An intimate space, four teens performing in a very sincere yet accurately choreographed way, showing how they are abused on a regular basis by adults. My favorite part was the end, where they carry a Bruce Springsteen doll outdoors and burn it, while his song I’m on Fire is playing.
“Hey, little girl, is your daddy home?
Did he go away and leave you all alone?
I got a bad desire
Oh, oh, oh, I'm on fire”
Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. Mette Edvardsen. Attended on 12 November 2022. Moving in November festival, Kunsthalle Helsinki. Premiered 2010.
A library of living books – or performers who have memorized a book (or a section of a book?) which they then recite to the sole audience member. This was a mix of something very familiar, of something non-contemporary and something extravagant. The concept is fascinating due to the size of the task of the performer, it sounds like a massive effort to learn a whole book by heart. On the other hand, there is something very familiar(/l) to me, since I grew up listening to my father memorizing huge junks of folk poetics, like the Kalevala. In the end, the performer “reads” only the beginning of the book, so I am left unsure if this massivity is met by the piece. I have read to my kids for years and years, so reading aloud one-on-one is a very familiar practice to me. It was a warm feeling to receive that. Also, the relation to oral history is very touching.
Solos and Duets. Meg Stuart & Damaged Goods. Attended on 4 November 2022, Moving in November festival, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 31 July 2018.
Sometimes it feels like everything just falls into place in a performance. It was strong and delicate, transgressive and skillful. And so were the performers. I was feeling both at ease when watching them because they owned the stage but at the same time a situation hass an element of danger, when someone is so powerful. In the middle of the front row, everything on my face. Amazing music, what a drummer (a drum set onstage works for me without exception, but this was something extraaordinary).
Nature untitled, part 1. Veli Lehtovaara, Eija-Liisa Ahtila & Jani Hietanen. Attended on 30 October 2022. Moving in November festival, Oil Container 468, Helsinki. Premiere.
Monumental. The oil container is a strong and beautiful space in itself and now the proportions of it were applied and enhanced. Burning forests, oily dancers. Veli’s previous piece in the same space was more touching to me, and it was great to enter the space and smell the smoke and see the same sauna oven that was used in that performance. The oven was a very meaningful and well placed element in terms of time, continuation, content.
Magenta Haze. Milla Koistinen. Attended on 28 October 2022. Dance House Helsinki, Erkko Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 27 October 2022.
We stepped into that large space without instructions. There were no seats, but large fabrics, two of which functioned as giant balloons. A dancer came to talk to me, maybe because I was with a child, but I was left unclear of how we should act. Can we sit on the balloons like he did? But I also enjoyed the way I had to read from the performers’ gestures and movements what was my role. The audience body was reformed constantly, even if mostly we stood on the sides of the space.
Exercises in Transparency. Reality Research Center. Attended on 27 October 2022, Cultural Center Caisa, Helsinki. Premiere.
Kristian Palmu talking about the heaviness of his work to a mysterious video call recipient. Again (see below for the first time) I was touched by how he talked, and these conditions of freelance art work were recognizable. The performance had some scenes from the previous parts that I had attended, but I felt that they had been enhanced or restructured so that the it worked better as a whole.
Exercises in Transparency - Darkness. Reality Research Center. Attended on20. & 21 October 2022, Cultural Center Caisa, Helsinki. Premiere.
When I stepped in the first time I had a strong feeling of relief. The performers were on a retreat of sorts – they were not using electronic devices or clocks and neither did they speak during the few days that this installation lasted. I realized how much I love these kind of sanctuaries, spaces of austere practice for a limited time. I really am a proper audience for these kinds of works. This strong feeling wore out partly with time, and when I came back on another day, it felt more like home, or like normal.
Manuaali. virate.me. Attended on 14 October 2022, Theatre Academy, Auditorium 1, Helsinki. Premiere.
An elegant work of artistic research, combining the artistic and academic in a beautiful and a very clear way. Also using the shape of a cube, which is linked to my work. The musician/composer was playing the short story by Klaus by moving his hand in the air: a cube in the air is an invisible interface, through which sound is controlled. How about that! I hoped that there would have been a bigger audience to witness this excellent work.
Exercises in Transparency - Body and subconsciousness. Reality Research Center. Attended on 12 October 2022, Cultural Center Caisa, Helsinki. Premiere.
Kristian Palmu talking about his childhood memories to a mysterious video call recipient. It offered different layers of visibility, hiding, covering, revealing. Visually, emotionally, relationally. A strip-tease act inside a sleeping bag and swapping cloths with the audience. I gave my shirt to the performer.
Eros. Marianna Henriksson & Anna Mustonen. Attended on 6 October 2022. Dance House Helsinki, Erkko Hall, Helsinki. Premiere.
The work started beautifully, with Hanna Ahti alone in the center of the stage with small gestures, then the big group of musicians and dancers coming in bit by bit. The singers were beautiful in their expression and I was floating in the music. But I forgot to look at the dancers most of the time. The earlier work by the same makers, Maria-vesper, was so good that my expectations were high and not really fulfilled.
A Prologue. Jenni-Elina von Bagh. Attended on 1 October 2022. Jyväskylä Dance Festival, Villa Rana, Jyväskylä. Premiered 25 February 2020.
So clever, weird and accessible at the same time. It was the second time for me to attend the work and it was rewarding to have the memory in the back of my mind. A sentence stuck with me: “a performer has to be real and illusion at the same time”. Aftertalk was difficult though: while the work itself felt open to non-professionals, in the post-performance discussion the language or jargon used was so difficult that following required theoretical background knowledge which only academics or professional artists usually have.
All – A Physical Poem of Protest. Mia Habib. 1 & 2 October 2022. Jyväskylä Dance Festival, Outdoors & Villa Rana, Jyväskylä. Premiered 2017.
A hypnotic piece of an hour outdoors in the rain and dark and still more than a hundred people watching throughout. I was taking care of a kid who was tired so I was moving quite a lot closer and further according to how I needed to entertain her. I cherished the rituality of it, how the repetitive structure made it visible that we have gathered here just to watch this repetition. Also, it was a big crowd of non-male performers of different ages and this had a specific kind of power, which one rerely can witness.
Mesh. Maija Hirvanen. Attended on 16 September 2022, Dance House Helsinki, Pannu Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 12 August 2022.
I was so happy that this was finally premiered in Helsinki since I knew it had been postponed several times. A friend was performing and this affected my experience quite a lot. Also the Boris Charmatz piece 10000 gestures, which I had seen a couple of weeks ago and which touhed me so much. This had some similar elements, which did not affect me as much as they would have otherwise, since I had so recently had that experience.
Katoaminen Passio. Tari Doris, Meri Ekola & Kid Kokko. Attended on 9 September 2022, Espoo City Theatre, Louhisali, Espoo. Premiered 1 September 2021.
A “concert” which was quite strongly dominated by a text which was both read by a voice and projected as text. But the concert also included a lighting design and a set design (and sound), so maybe a kind of a gesamtkunstwerk? Beautiful, poetic, depressive, long. I felt it related to my own work, since there is so much text and this kind of an insisting, imposing, dominating voice that you can’t escape, even if I don’t use actual voice in audio format.
Mutu. Pystynen & Rajakangas. Attended on 4 September 2022, Dance House Helsinki, Pannu Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 5 September 2022.
A work for babies and belonging to the genre of works by my family members. How to feel like a baby? The dancers both approached us and let us be, it felt like a lot of their work had gone into how they relate. The group of performers was inclusive, with members from different parts of the neurodiverse terrain. This I would not have noticed if I hadn’t known. The structure was very suitable for the target group: show started slowly, you could come and go in peace and move in the space freely.
A Dancer’s Day. Boris Charmatz. Attended on 27 August 2022. Dance House, Helsinki. Premiered 14 September 2017.
An amazing day for an audience member. Beginning with a warm-up session led by dancers of 10000 gestures, then a rehearsal session with Charmatz where we learned how to perform 10000 gestures, then a picnic on the floor of Erkko Hall where we could follow Tino Seghal’s choreography while eating snacks, then audiencing 10000 gestures and then a techno party. Such a rich composition for the audience body that I think I have not experienced anything similar before. So the two following works took place inside Dancer's Day.
(untitled). Tino Seghal. Attended on 27 August 2022, Dance House, Erkko Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 2000.
Picnicing on the big stage of the Dance House while an amazing performer dances among us.
10 000 gestures. Boris Charmatz. Attended on 27 August 2022. Dance House, Erkko Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 14 September 2017.
This will stay in my body for a long time. A work that flowed over me with it’s excessive stream of movements, feelings, gestures, voices. So great. A big group of very skillful dancers who aimed at not repeating any of their movements, creating an avalanche of everchanging motion.
The Artist is at Home. Kati Korosuo. Attended on 22 & 23 & 29 August 2022, Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 23 August 2022.
The last of the series curated for HCT in 2022 with Riikka Thitz and Suvi Tuominen. I noticed that it mattered quite a lot where I was sitting. From back of the hall I could not see the small gestures and expressions of the dancer, which was quite meaningful at some point. The time scale and the use of autobiographical material in the style of social media was touching: the artist had recorded a video diary of her turtle dreams during a period of ten years or so. Something like an autopsy of a cultural neurosis.
The Last Hurrah. Sara Grotenfelt. Attended on 8 August 2022, Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
One of the curated for HCT. I took part altogether four times, one of them later on in Jyväskylä. Every time I laughed. The audience had party hats and snake whistles and we were instructed to blow to them whenever we saw something we liked. This instruction for participation was genius. The performance was a truly tragic comedy, "a sense of emptiness and awkwardness seen on stage", an ambivalent celebration.
Encounters. The Secret Feminist Society of Helsinki. Attended on 8 August 2022, Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
One of the curated for HCT. Two actors were speaking the words that to volunteers said in the backroom. These volunteers had a conversation through the borrowed bodies of the actors. It was one of the genre of avatar performances, like Outi Condit's Remote Control Human, my work in Plato's Cave or Harold Hezaji's Adventures of Harriharri. What surprised me was the softness, the lack of drama, the way nothing much happened. I was thinking about feminism with soft flavor. Soft feminism. I was surprised to like this flavor.
Eriopis. Q-theatre. Attended on 4 August 2022, Tampere Theatre Festival, Teatterimonttu. Premiered 4 March 2022.
Even if the festival had recommended that the audience members would use masks, I think I was the only one in the large auditorium who had one. The day after I tested positive for Covid-19. The performance was a stream of text, a stream of speech, a re-interpretation of Medea, from the point of view of a child. I loved this point of view.
Midsummer night shifts. Work-in-progress. Nanni Vapaavuori. Attended 11-12 June 2022, Paimio Sanatorium. Premiere 20-22 June 2022.
I took part in a work-in-progress version of Nanni Vapaavuori’s examined artistic part. The duration of the final work was two overnights, the version I attended lasted (only) over one night. We spent the night in the empty Paimio Sanatorium, designed by Alvar Aalto as a tuberculosis hospital, with the circulation of light and air as the main methods of healing. We roamed through the night in the huge building, which was filled only by natural light and its absence. A short nap on the roof balcony, where the patients used to lay in the sun. A remarkable experience, the perception of the environment, and of time, transformed. Unhurried beauty.
Invisible dancing. Mira Kautto, Roy Boswell & Ella Skoikka. Attended on 19 June 2022, Kiasma theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 16 June 2022.
Repetitive movement in the twilight, with one window in the ceiling on one side of the small space. How eyes adapt to the small amount of light and how not being able to focus changes your state of mind. Dreamy.
Mystery Sonatas / for Rosa. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Attended on 16 June 2022, Dance House Helsinki, Erkko Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 16 February 2022.
Beautiful interplay of live music and dance. Especially the moments, when the musicians, especially the violin player was tuning their instrument. How that act of tuning was part of the aesthetic composition – the aesthetics of the pause.
Ningen. Mammu Rankanen. Attended on 7 June 2022, Dance House Helsinki, Pannu Hall, Helsinki. Premiered 31 May 2022.
The Pannu Hall space felt so high, with some paper elements and lamps hanging above the stage. The spatial design emphasized the vertical dimension. Audience on four sides of the space. Flowing movement, elegant. The paper used linked it to my work. Mammu is both a peer from doctoral studies and as well as a neighbour of mine.
olO. Eeva Juutinen. Attended on 27. & 28 May 2022, Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 27 August 2021.
A double bill with Ignacio's work. A sensitive contemporary dance work with strong performer presence. In the premiere, my focus went to one person who photographed in the show in a disturbing way. I realized that this was not only his insensitivity but also my fault, since the curation of the evening mixed two cultures: first in Ignacios piece it was ok to take pictures (which is customary in performance art events), and the after it in olO, it was not (which is customary in theatre and contemporary dance). It had also to do with the performers being naked for a major part of the work. I told him not to do it, but he did not comply.
The Longest Journey. Ignacio Perez Perez. Attended on 27. & 28 May 2022, Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
One of the curated series at HCT. I helped Ignacio along the way. He had a beautiful way of braiding together political actions, aesthetic compositions, autobiographical materials and mysticism. During the performance, for example, we had a video call with his mother in Spain. This was an attempt to bring the tradition of performance art into the context of the Helsinki City Theatre.
Adventures of Harriharri – episode 3. Harold Hejazi. Attended on 19 & 21 May 2022, Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, Studio Pasila Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
One of the series of works, which I curated together with Riikka Thitz and Suvi Tuominen. It is a live video game performance, in which an alter ego of the artist, Harriharri, tries to enter Finnish society as an immigrant. The audience is asked to contribute by shouting what the character should do next. I felt the enjoyment of being entertained and challenged at the same time. I witnessed it twice, the second time with my teenage daughter and it worked well for her as well.
Silver medal. Biitsi. Attended on 19 May 2022, Helsinki City Theatre, The Stage for Contemporary Performance, private appartment at the shopping center Tripla, Helsinki. Premiered on 30 October 2020.
I took part in the curation of this work and also helped to build it. It was an installation in a private apartment, where one could visit with a reservation for 30 minutes, a maximum of four people at a time. So the audience was both contemporaneous and asynchronous, coming like a stream in small packages. The apartment was decorated with art works dealing with the memory loss and demise of parents of the artist duo and with art works made by their friends. The windows were coated with a dark blue film, coloring the whole space. The space was a big part of the work, its atmosphere of sadness, loss, love, family, letting go. It was touching, graceful, intimate.
Lindfors, Sonya & Melleri, Sara & Pirinen, Elina. Armageddon. Attended on 26 March 2022. Espoo City Theatre, Revontulihalli, Espoo. Premiered 1 March 2022.
The Helsingin Sanomat journalist called the authors the “dream team” of contemporary performance. :) It must be flattering to be called that. The performance is a feminist cabaree, using cultural stereotypes and mixing different styles of performing, with an explicit political goal of taking down patriarchy. There are two MC:s who perform as if they are from the US. I can't see the point of that. I find many scenes funny and it is nice to be able to laugh in a show. The ending is long and in dim light, and I start to get tired.
Sounds described to Marja, Niko-Matti and Rasmus. Kuorinki, Mikko & Himera. Attended on 18 March 2022, Kutomo Art Space, Spring Roll Festival, Turku. Premiere.
A minimalistic concert with both traditional instruments and everyday objects. 30 min. A concentrated atmosphere, the musicians sneaking quietly from one instrument to the next. Enjoyable, an I also pay a lot of attention to the social space of Kutomo and its audience, and to whom I know in the audience.
Conjoined Fugues. Stylianou, Nicolina. Attended on 10 February 2022, Tiivistämö, Helsinki. Premiere.
The last show before getting Covid. I may have already been infected at the time. Nicolina has been a student of mine, and some of the other performers are my colleagues. I felt constrained to the chair and wanted to move. I was wondering if the work should take place in the context of music, either contemporary experimental or punk/noise scene. The same work would have been more interesting that way, just by changing the context. There were instruments that seemed to be deviced specifically for the work.
Bolla. Statovci, Pajtim (original book) & Timonen, Tuomas (dramatisation) & Sarkola, Milja (direction). Attended on 4 December 2021, Helsinki City Theatre, Small stage, Helsinki. Premiered 2 September 2021.
City Theatre audience, meaning non-artists. People from Ostrobotnia sitting next to me, semi-circular auditorium, a rotating stage. The work itself was great, based on an amazing novel and well stage and skillfully acted.
Niitty. Rajakangas, Janina. Attended on 2. & 18 December 2021. Zodiak Center for New Dance, Helsinki. Premiered 2 December 2021.
A choreography by my partner in which my dad performed, so emotionally strong and complex, strongly within the genre of family performance. I saw both the premiere and the last show. Composed of three episodes, combining skillful young dancers and senior amateurs. This mix of different kinds of performers confused the way I spectate, the criteria of evaluating it was not clear.
Small and Nice Immigrant Shop. Che, Dash. Attended on 25 November 2021, Posture of Impermanence -exhibition, Vantaa Art Museum Artsi, Vantaa. Premiere.
The performance took place in a store space rented from a shopping center. It was like entering a travel agency. I bought a piece of land by the lake Tuusula. It will be available for me in a hundred years or something. I had Valpuri with me, and she was happy that some candy was offered.
Värähdellä etäisyys. Juolahti, Minerva. Attended on 25 November 2021. Posture of Impermanence - exhibition, Vantaa Art Museum Artsi, Vantaa. Premiere.
In a gallery space, as part of a performance exhibition / happening. It was hard for me to follow, since Valpuri was restless and I had to exit the space.
Space Here We Come. Kela, Leena. Attended 25 November 2021, Posture of Impermanence -exhibition, Vantaa Art Museum Artsi, Vantaa. Premiere 2019.
In a gallery space, as part of a performance exhibition / happening. People seated in the gallery. We received small flags from the artist in the beginning, in the performance she waved a similar but a large one, made of a catastrophe blanket. 2-year-old Valpuri was very attentive and enjoyed the show.
Non-performance performance. Rajan, Vishnu Vardhan. Attended on 25 November 2021, Posture of Impermanence -exhibition, Vantaa Art Museum Artsi, Vantaa. Premiere.
In a gallery space, as part of a performance exhibition / happening. I attended with Valpuri (2 years of age), she was commenting a bit loud, I felt that we are disturbing, it was difficult for me to concentrate and we went out.
Nurture. Laine, Samuli. Attended on 22 November 2021. Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Caisa Cultural Center, Helsinki. Premiered on 28 October 2020.
From Time and Place
The door opens.
A smiling face appears, / a smiling face with a beard, a smiling face attached to a slim male body.
He greets me and instructs me to undress / my outdoor clothing, / my shoes, /my face mask.
The room is almost empty, / in the middle of it /
there is a carpet.
We sit down on pillows.
There is a soundscape.
Listen. It is like a hum, / somewhere in the background.
He takes a bowl, / fills it with water, / explaining how water is / everywhere.
I slide my hand into the water. / It is warm. / He takes my hand, / his hands caress it, / some soap, slippery, / I am sinking, / I get this feeling of sinking, you know, / a feeling of a soft wave entering the brain, / a misty pleasure of relaxation, even a dose of sleep mixing with my awakeness, / descending / descending into me / or washing through / my body-mind, / my head / I close my eyes, / I let myself descend / into the other side
which is on this side
the other hand
which is this hand
The humming / turns into a drone / turns into an organ playing the organ echoing / in the church-like space the sound of organ / echoing in this space
uuuuuu
He takes me onto his lap / My head is resting there
He takes me onto his lap / My head is resting there
The organ playing
He leans towards me / with his chest
His nipple / I open my mouth / I take it in
His nipple into my mouth / Carefully I squeeze it with my lips
Carefully I suck / carefully I suck it
Some sap
I taste some sap / in my mouth
It flows easily, / gently I suck / gently the sap enters / gently the sap into my mouth
is flowing / is flowing / is flowing in the rhythm / of my mouth / suck - suck - suck
his organ playing / my song
his mothering / my infancy
my daughters mouth / my mouth
my mouth is a shadow / of my daughters mouth
of my daughters mouth / playing the ultimate song / this nostalgia / the quest for / benevolent dependence / for symbiosis / for care / for belonging
how does it feel / to be a baby / in her mothers arms
Diorama. Fiksdal, Ingri. Attended on 12 November 2021, Moving in November Festival, Hietaniemi Beach, Helsinki. Premiered 2017.
I took part in a runthrough without a proper audience. The environment at the beach became a part of the performance, a part of the performers. Meditative. I was to facilitate a conversation with the artists later on, which had an effect on how I experienced it. I knew I had to have something to say about it publicly, so I would make notes in my mind and process those notes already during the event.
Astral Projections. Niemistö, Mikko & Blennow, Sanna & Lanerva, Teo & Lautiola, Olli & Kantakoski, Justus. Attended on 9 November 2021. Moving in November festival, Valssaamo, Cable Factory, Helsinki. Premiered 13 March 2020.
It felt like a combination of a durational work and a stage work with a beginning-to-end-dramaturgy. One could step out of the space without a feeling of missing something important and yet it was not just an installation.
StM. Ortega, Ofelia Jarl. Attended on 8 November 2021, Moving in November Festival, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 16 May 2019.
Audience in two opposite rows of chairs (two rows on both sides), the performer moving in between. The performer played with eye contact with individual audience members. Later in a discussion they said they tried to catch everyone’s eye.
Dances of Death. Vandevelde, Michiel. Attended on 7 November 2021, Moving in November festival, Espoo City Theatre, Louhisali, Espoo. Premiered 12 June 2021.
Audience around the stage, rituals or quotes of rituals performed on stage. “Ritualesque”. Had an ambivalent and strange relation to colonialism: whose rituals are these? I was not sure how to position myself in relation to those questions.
Occasions. Lewis, Isabel. Attended on 4 November 2021. Moving in November festival, Stoa Cultural Center, Helsinki. The concept premiered 2013.
A lounge party atmosphere, ambient beats and spoken word. Smell dramaturgy, and those smells manufactured in a laboratory just for this. Also snacks in the style of fine dining. “Nice”, nothing controversial, kind of boring. The smells were very interesting though! Smell art is a rising trend, and Lewis worked with them early on. I had attended the same show a few years ago, also in Helsinki
Un Bolero. Brun, dominique & Chaignaud, François. Attended on 4.11.2021. Moving in November festival, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki.
Duration 17 minutes! This felt a special arrangement, since it was not a double or triple bill, just this one. We gathered from different parts of the town just for 17 minutes. Also four-handed live piano!
HORDE. Fiksdal, Ingri & Styve Holte, Solveig. Attended on 23 October 2021, CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, the roof of Norvegian Opera and Ballet, Oslo. Premiere.
A great audience formation in the outdoor space, in relation to the architecture of the opera house. The sloaping roof the building enabed people to witness the dancers from different heights and distances. The audience is composed of both by-passers and festival audience.
Danse staur, danse staur. Kartellet. Attended on 23 October 2021, CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, Riksscenen, Oslo. Premiered 2021.
A small studio, audience around the stage. The person next to me was coughing. I felt this was weird in pandemic times that this person had come and thus had decided to subject us to the possibility of infection.
Hojotoho! (There´s No Place Like Home). Ingun Bjørnsgaard Prosjekt. Attended on 22 October 2021, CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, Dansens Hus, Oslo. Premiere.
A big auditorium full of audience members. I did not understand why they had come. Could not get the point of the work at all. The audience was not wearing masks, which was very different from Finland of that time.
How to die - Inopiné. Mia HAbib Productions. Attended on 21 October 2021, CODA Oslo Interbnational Dance Festival, Bærum Kulturhus, Oslo. Premiered 6 February 2020.
Audience around the stage, a strong feeling of being in the moment, a ritualistic choreography happening right now. The dancers are building insecure constructions of which they are parts. The second part of the work takes place in the park where performers tell stories by fireplaces and audience is distributed to smaller groups that listen to these stories. The story I heard was about the horrors in Kongo at the time of the rule of Leopold II.
how to like Finland and how Finland can like me (too). Che, Dash. Attended on 20 October 2021, Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiered 18 October 2021.
A fictional institution, to which we took part. The audience ascribed with a role. Each audience member could take a flash light and there were plenty of different ones titled with funny names. In the first part the audience was choosing what is visible by using the flash lights. The struggle of an immigrant in Finland was dealt with several tools: humour, action, somatics etc. The name was a rephrasing of Joseph Beyus's classic piece I Like America and America Likes Me.
Käsi. Numminen, Katariina. Attended on 16 October 2021, Mad House Helsinki, Helsinki. Premiered 22 September 2021.
Two performers working with high level concentration to move forward in the task-based dramaturgy. My companion said later that it demanded a lot from the audience, since it was so close, so slow and everyone was quite visible. The space was a kind of old-school community house hall and we were sitting on benches by the walls, encircling the stage are in the middle. It gave me a nostalgic community feeling.
FROM THE DEAD AIR ORGY: On The Nature of Things. Simon Vincenzi. Attended on 12.-15 October 2021. Mad House Helsinki, Helsinki. Premiere.
Partly pre-recorded, partly livestream, but I did not know which part was live and what wasn't and this made me feel weird. Would it not have been the same if everything was pre-recorded? I had no way of knowing if my presence affected the work at all. And this fact seemed to be meaningful to me, making it difficult to situate the work in the genre of beforemance.
A THOUSAND WAYS (Part One): A Phone Call. 600 Highwaymen. Attended on 17 September 2021, ANTI Festival, Remote.
A structured phone call with another audience member, a one-on-one performance without a performer. So in theory this should be very interesting for me, but for some reason I did not really get much out of it. I can't really trace the reason.
Esitysehdotuksia kulttuuriperinnöstä. Tuominen, Suvi. Attended on 4 September 2021. Theatre Academy, National Museum, Helsinki. Premiere.
An interesting intermedial combination of different elements: a discussion with an archeological professor, some performance art, video, dance. Different audience orientations combined. I especially enjoyed the way Tiktok dances were included and thus youth culture was in dialogue with contemporary performance (fine arts) aesthetics. This kind of thing could mix audiences, for example I could take my stepdaughter with me.
Suurenmoinen Sotku / A Great Mess. WAUHAUS. 1 September 2021. Helsinki Biennale, Vuosaari, Helsinki. Premiered 24 August 2021.
A real intermedial, transgenre work. Bus trip to the site (which was a former garbage dump), a guided walk, a choreography with steam shovels, a performance art act in which a birch tree was manipulated and a butoh style dance piece in the end on top of the hill with a view over the harbour area. Ice cream with herbs from the area inside, and a letter from a researcher. A total art work, full experience.
The continuation of this practice, in the context of theatre, is in my opinion present in sky every day.
[Title unknown]. Olga Spyropoulou. Attended on 25 August 2021, Relational Art Week, Myymälä2 Gallery.
Olga contacted me well before the performance and asked me to “perform the audience”, in order to secure the presence of at least one audience member. Challenging the norm, Olga offered me a compensation of 50 euros for my attendance, which I also accepted. I still have the 50€ banknote in my archive of printed performance programs and objects given to me as an audience member. Olga listed five reasons for asking particularly me for the job.
In the performance itself, Olga had placed a table and a chair in front of the gallery entrance and also projected some material on the door and the wall surrouding it. The door could be opened only slightly, unless Olga moved. As a result of this, anyone entering the gallery was forced onstage as well as to negotiate with the performer in order to get in.
Ocean Ecstatic. Rejström, Tom & Sandqvist, Otto. Attended 14 August 2021, Viirus Teater, Helsinki Biennale, Yrjönatu swimming hall, Helsinki. Premiered 12 August 2021.
The space was special, the old swimming hall of Yrjönkatu. Audience on two sides of the pool. Performers swimming. It is beautiful, but I did not get a hang of the performance itself.
Gateless gate. Reality Research Center. Attended in August 2021, as a part of the preparation for Performance Wagon, Helsinki. Premiered 1999.
I was taking part in Reality Research Center's Performance Wagon (see draft 25). We performed several works by RRC outdoors, around the city center of Helsinki. These performances could be purchased from a wagon at the Esplanadi-boulevard. As a part of the process I audienced Gateless gate, which I was performing during the wagon season. It is a legendary work by Eero-Tapio Vuori and Jukka Aaltonen and I had experience with it already from the 00's. The work is a good example of the genre esitystaide: it exposes, re-evaluates and emancipates of the function of the audience in a minimalist style.
The main idea of the work is that the audience spectates a streetview through an arch-shaped gateway for an hour or so. The makers have not composed the events on the street and the audience thus witnesses a piece of ordinary "reality", which is framed as a stage of sorts. The work of the artists is not focused on stage events but on directing the perception of the audience in a specific way. Details of the act of framing become crucial: the choice of the gateway, the hour of the day, the duration, the way the audience arrives and is instructed.
The work also seems to suggest that audiencing could be practiced independent of makers: this kind of minimalist operations could be easily arranged by anyone without the need for an art education or years of practice. Anyone could take a portable seat and walk to any gateway to audience a streetview.
Vuori has continued with this type of enlightening works later on with the writer and cultural pedagogue Risto Santavuori, in Mail Order Experimance (2008) and The Wall (2011).
Tribute – the outdoor version. Gies,Frédéric & Weld Company. Attended on 19 June 2021, Moving in November Festival, Tapiola Amphitheatre, Espoo. Original version premiered 7 December 2018.
What an engaging techno dance workout in the bright daylight and people passing by behind the dancers. A beautiful mix of an environment and a work which seem not to fit together but then fit perfectly. In the background a pool quiets down during the show.
The Voice of the City. Nada & co. Attended on 16 june 2021. Moving in November festival, Puppet Theatre Sampo, Helsinki.
Pandemic was present since we would have been otherwise sitting around a table. Now the audience sat in an auditorium. Vodka and stories of travels were served. A storytelling evening.
Avoimena Sulkeutunut. Rankanen, Mammu. Attended on 6 June 2021, Research Pavillion, Theatre Academy, Hietsu Pavillion, Helsinki. Premiere.
Artistic research work by a fellow doctoral candidate. In the last part Mammu moved on the Hietsu beach and built a sort of sculpture there, while a beach volley ball game was going on in the background and a lot of teenagers were hanging around the beach. This was a great mix.
Uraanilamppu. Raekallio, Valtteri. Attended on 4 June 2021, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Oil Container 468, Helsinki. Premiered 1 June 2021.
Several different worlds/scenes built inside the round Oil Container and audience members could freely move around the space where several seperate things were happening all the time. Another spatial solution to the restrictions, as the container is a semi-outdoor space allowing a swift dispersal of airborne particles.
Minä olen Hossu. Hosiasluoma, Niina & Kivelä, Minna & Pasanen, Tuukka. Attended on 20 May 2021, Outlaw Theatre Festival, remote (& Pori). Premiered 1 July 2020.
This didn’t really translate via streaming, I felt I should have been there. I was following it on my computer with my daughter and when I figured that some parts were not so suitable for kids, I could silence the sound, which would be more difficult if we were at the site.
TM. Ontroerend Goed. Attended on 22 April 2021. Espoo City Theatre, remote. Premiered 2021.
This was the best online show I have attended I think. First a one-on-one job interview by a mystical organization via a video call. A performer interviewing me and my character was evaluated. The interview was very cleverly structured so that it seemed like the interviewer could see through me, know more about me than I revealed. In the end the screen opened up to other participants whose interviews had been going on simultaneously, dozens of them. It was magical. Also, the same show was on sale through different theatres in different countries so the audience really was geographically very scattered. From intimate to community, via remote connection, bravo.
Mine is to say something small – a live audio broadcast. Muraya,Ogutu. Attended on 21 April 2021, Mad House Helsinki, remote (& Nairobi). Premiere.
“Literary performance practice”. Basically a radio program in the form of reading an essay broadcast from Nairobi – an example of liveness based on contemporaneity, but with a scattered audience body, enabling transcontinental performances.
OPIA. Nuutinen,Johanna. Attended on 20 march 2021, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 1 April 2021.
I was doing a podcast about the piece, which was cancelled as an onsite work and realized instead online. However we were able to attend a general rehearsal onsite – so we became a very exclusive audience since hardly anyone actually witnessed it locally.
Prologi.Huopaniemi,Otso. Attended on 11 February 2021, Theatre Academy, remote (&Helsinki). Premiere.
Especially memorable is the atmosphere after. This was a welcoming performance by Otso, organized by the institution marking the start of his professorship in dramaturgy. So after the event there was a really warm and friendly atmosphere in the zoom call as everyone was so happy for Otso. An inner circle audience.
Monsterference. Kucia, Karolina. Attended on 9-11 December 2020. Theatre Academy, Helsinki, remote. Premiere.
An artistic research work based on the format of a conference, lasting three days! Some audience onsite, but mostly online due to pandemic, I am following parts of it online. Get the feeling that it would be good to be there and/or follow through the whole thing, but I am not able.
Consul & Meshie. Baehr, Antonia & Laâbissi Latifa & Lauro, Nadia. Attended on 13 November 2020. Moving in November Festival, Kunstahalle Helsinki. Premiered 2018.
A long, weird show with two monkeys hanging around in front of the audience. The duration and the style – the performance became a queer mileau or an environment which we inhabited.
Talking in the Rain – An Entertaining Show about the Weather. Reality Research Center & Ferske Scener & Western Norway Research Institute. Attended on 7 November 2020. Moving in November Festival, Online.
An online performance with a package delivered by post. It seemed like the artists were learning the new medium, like many of us were, and it was a nice effort although all in all it came across to me a bit shallow. Audience taking a shower during an esitys was definately a rare specialty.
Joy Riot. Palmgren, Sari. Attended on 7 October 2020. Zodiak Center for New Dance, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiere.
A nice use of space fitting to the pandemic era: the whole of Stoa studio is open and the audience is free to wander around and their formation is directed by lights and the movement of dancers. Organic.
Listening. Live Art Society. Attended on 3 October 2020, Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki. Premiere 29 September 2020.
Audience is situated around a square pool of water. A performer with a hearing disability, using sign language. A rare register of language in a performance. Makes me conscious of sound and the prevalence of spoken language.
Odd Meters. Niemistö, Mikko. Attended on 2 September 2020. Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
Excluding the student work below, this the first onsite performance of the pandemic era for me, and as such it was very strong. The audience seated on three sides with masks, the performer moving fiercely in front of each of us, out of breath, sweating, a real body... I was amazed to wake up to the wonder of it, that we have really gathered here to witness this body!
Such beauty in the fact that I would have not noticed before when it was the norm. Niemistö's generous surrender to our attention is paramount as well.
encore no:2. Minttu-Maaria Makkonen. Attended on 26 August 2020. Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiered 25 August 2020.
A student work, an audience of less than ten people. A rare onsite gathering at that time. In the first part our role as an audience is traditionally distanced, but in the second part we move to a sort of a coffee shop setting, and some drinks offered to us. I don’t take my mask off to drink.
We're like one place. Kettunen-Spyropoulou. Attended 30 May 2020, Feel Helsinki Festival, Uniarts Helsinki, remote. Premiered 21 May 2020.
I received a video call from the performer at 00:20 at night and she read a bed time story to me. It was breaching the borders of intimacy through this setup, which is visible even now, since I don’t even want to disclose all of the experience here. But I was dozing off during the reading.
Covid conditions started to produce new forms of esitystaide.
Fabulous Muscles. Venna, Emmi. Attended on 27 February 2020, Mad House Helsinki, Helsinki. Premiered 14 February 2020.
When the audience members were entering the room at the beginning, the performer was moving in the space, kind of dancing and greeting everyone, chatting with some of them. This gesture created a very special kind of warm atmosphere. Later on, we were also invited on stage. The Mad House venue at Teurastamo had this feeling of alternative metropolis underground art scene, creating an illusion that we are actually in New York or Berlin.
This was the last work I attended before the first wave of Covid-19 lockdowns.
Voyer. Joel Neves & Matilda Aaltonen / Reality Research Center. Attended on 8 February 2020. Sidestep Festival, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 7 February 2020.
I have seen the first version of this previously, and evaluated it as a thesis work. Then there was 10 performers, 10 audience members. Now the audience is bigger, and it changes quite a lot. The show creates an erotisizing gaze as we look at the young, well-formed and able bodies of the performers. It feels somewhat awkward, and it was different, when the audience and the performers were in a way more equal, of equal measure. It is a great format, especially the earlier one, but the voyerist setup also creates power dynamics that seem to me unintentional and that posit us uncomfortably in a way which is not really addressed or acknowledged by the work.
Phantasmagoric. Berstad/Helgebostad/Brun. Attended on 5 February 2020, Sidestep Festival, Valssaamo, Helsinki. Premiered 4 February 2016.
From the Prisoner of Performance (Draft 23)
There are three people on stage, two microphones hanging, a pair of drums, a box, fabrics, a herd of dog-shaped bathtoys, a bunch of computers and mixers, a pair of crocs tied to a couple of planks and other objects. There a two light frames hanging from the ceiling, with several attached fluorescent lamps. People on stage do things: play the drums, shout into microphones, dance, lay down, turn the music louder, flash the lights, enter through the window. We sit along the walls of the large space. I look at us. I see an important curator on the other side of the space, a familiar artist on the right side, a row of student-looking young people on the left. I assume that most of us are professionals in performing arts. They have chosen established artist to perform for us. They have come all the way from abroad. I evaluate their work and notice that I do not like it much. Silently, within myself, I deliver my verdict. I think about what I would do. I think how it would be appreciated. The bass becomes louder and I insert earplugs. I am a bit sick. I look at us, I cannot avoid looking at us, since we sit on all four sides of the space, facing the middle. We just sit and watch, until a performer asks us to lay down. We lay obediently and watch, although nothing is seen, except for a rotating discolight. Until it is time to applause.
Selfie Concert. Ivo Dimchev. Attended on 4 February 2020, Sidestep Festival, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 2018.
From the Prisoner of performance (Draft 23)
On the stage, there is a keyboard on a stand and a microphone. We sit on cushions and benches arranged in a semicircle around the stage. I wait nervously; I know the performer we’re expecting, and I know he is intimidating. Intimidatingly brave. He saunters toward the instrument, with pink hair, high heels, bare chest, and a smartphone in hand, grumbling in a bored tone. He picks up the microphone in his hand and starts singing while walking among us. Occasionally, he stops next to someone, taking a selfie with them as he continues to sing in his beautiful high-pitched voice. I laugh; suddenly the atmosphere feels warm and light. After moving around the space, he finishes, and we applaud and laugh. He places the microphone back on the stand and tells us he will only continue singing if at least three of us take selfies with him the entire time. He looks at us expectantly, and soon a few of us stand up and pull out our phones. They start filming themselves in front of the singer, who is pressing soft chords on the keyboard. Others rise too, including myself, and I notice my researcher's gaze reflected in the phone screen. I’m a reluctant, even a non-existent user of social media, and I know I will never post these videos. But I still enjoy it. The phones have become our campfire. This goes on for at least an hour. I watch as people move from the role of audience to stepping in front of the camera, both admiring and loathing themselves. Some try to maintain a cool style, while others shyly dare to play around, accidentally revealing their desire to appear beautiful, in the right place at the right time, alongside the star. The veil of irony makes it easier to expose this desire. Our eyes and ears are on him, the eyes of the phones are on us. We sit and listen, we rise and film. Instagram captures and posts, captures and posts.
Fight Night. Ontroerend Goed. Attended on 1 February 2020, Espoo City Theatre, Louhisali, Espoo.Premiered 2013.
Audience in the auditorium, each with an electronic voting system. The show was a sort of a social game or a reality show, were the audience would vote one competitor at a time out. Playing with and manipulating the prejudices and morality of the audience, forcing us complicit and aiming at exposing our real life complicity in power play and discrimination.
#PUNK100%POP*N!GGA. nora chipaumire. Attended on 31 January 2020, Sidestep Festival, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 2018.
Audience partly standing and moving freely around the performers, partly sitting in the auditorium. There was a feeling of a party or a gig, mixed with contemporary performing arts aesthetic. I had the feeling that this was an example of non-white dramaturgy or use of the stage. That there was a sensibility at play which challenged Euro-American hegemony, implicitly, on deep embodied and structural levels.
Hotel Room Encounters. Giorgio Convertito. Attended on 29 January 2020, Theatre Academy, Sokos Hotel, Helsinki. Premiered 2020.
One-on-one meeting with Giorgio in a hotel room. He would open the door with a bathrobe on and say that we can use the time, 30 minutes, in anyway I like. I am as an audience member made aware of my complicity in a very challenging and explicit way. Or to be more accurate, the performer's task is to switch our roles, forcing me into the one coming up with performative actions and deciding on them. I need to design the performance experience for myself, using Giorgio as a tool. This necessity of using the performer carries an ethical dillemma, rendering my position troubled. What do I want and can I articulate my desires openly? How not to miss the transgressive potential of this rare situation? At the same time, he also tells that if I want something, we have to negotiate – he is not prepared to do anything I want but he will discuss his personal limits if they come up. 30 minutes passes in my inner negotiation of what do I want and whether I want to tell him my desires, and the negotiation that goes on between us, both verbally and non-verbally.
A really clever minimalistic performance experiment, even a contemporary classic. This was also one of the first performances I used as explicit reference points in my research. The work is described in detail in Convertito's MA thesis (Convertito 2020) on dance pedagogy.
Mind Split = Siamese Twins. Nicolina Stylianou. Attended on 25 January 2020. Theatre Academy, Universum Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
Sitting on three sides of the large space with a noisy neo-mythical ritual taking place. Reminded me of Guillermo Gómez Peña. I was sitting next to artist-researcher Juli Reinartz, which threw me back to 2014, when I was in the same exact space, arguing with the curator and performance artist Willem Wilhelmus over a work by Juli’s, which I had curated. Our fight represented to me some of the tensions between esitystaide-people and performanssi-people at that time (see chapter 2.3). Our dispute has been long since settled. The memory highlighted the fact how personal memories and connotations of each audience member contribute to the situation, creating a diverse and invisible terrain of imagination, affect and memory.
The End. Tero Nauha. Attended on 21 January 2020, Theatre Academy, Helsinki.
1st half: A lecture in the auditorium, commenting the history of the building we were in. 2nd half: a dance show with some teenagers, with audience on three sides of the dance floor, Tero as a DJ. So a multilayered audience position and in an original way intermedial work.
Over Your Fucking Body. Janina Rajakangas & Neil Callaghan. Attended on 17 November 2019, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Moving in November festival, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiere 6 Neovember 2019.
A duet by my partner and her colleague, and I had been there in rehearsals across the process, with a baby of ours. So I was very informed and deep in the process of the work. One of the rare works I have experienced in several stages of the process, without being in the position of a maker. It was touching on many levels to be present in that way. Audience sitting on three sides of the stage, and at one point the performers lick some of its members with fake tongues.
Sparks. Francesca Grilli. Attended on 17 November 2019, Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Kirpilä Art Collection, Helsinki.
The audience is waiting in the lobby, then child performers get them one by one into one-on-one- encounters. After a while I am chosen and taken to table in the next room. The child sits across the table with a special kind of a cap. They turn the visor down to cover their eyes, looks at my hand and does a clairvoyant reading of me. The reading is 10-15 minutes, so the whole thing takes approx. half an hour. A very special, mystical and curious encounter due to their age and the reading technique.
Studies in Non-Human Acting. Posthuman Theatre. Attended on 15 November 2019, Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
The audience sitting both in the auditorium and around the stage, like a musical evening where performers one by one announce what they will act (like “the harbour area of xxx”) and then perform that. Interesting, weird, funny. I was there with a rope tied between myself and my friend Aapo, as part of his bachelor party.
Matter. Laine, Palo & Nylund. Attended on 14 November 14 2019. Baltic Circle Theatre Festival,Puotila Mall, Helsinki. Premiere.
A prologue in which we were instructed by the perfomers and dressed up in protective overalls. Then we stepped into a room, the floor of which was full of peat. We were sitting/lying on it, listening to a sound work, watching at a lighting design. Also a a part of the show took place in darkness.
Al2Be3. Elina Pirinen & Orchestra. Attended on 12 November 2019. Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Kallio Church, Helsinki. Premiere.
This was a concert in a church, and our role was similar to any concert in a church, but the music was unlike it would normally be in a church concert. Also the context guided my orientation, since it was in the program of a contemporary theatre festival, making it more than a concert.
In Many Hands. Kate MacIntosh. Attended on 12 November 2019, Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Cirko Center of New Circus, Helsinki. Premiered 2017.
A ritual of washing hands as a prologue to the performance (anticipating the pandemic). Three long tables in a triangle, the audience sitting in three lines in front of them, backs towards the center. Objects handed from the ends of the tables, moving from hand to hand, object after another, for the whole duration. Halfway we change places and then sit facing the center, visible to each other. In the end the lights go out and hands keep on passing things in the dark. It was an amazing work, such an original format that exposed objects, hands and relations in an original way.
Sapiens. Wauhaus & The National Theatre. Attended on 12 October 2019. National Theatre, Main Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 11 September 2019.
A work in the big stage of the National Theatre. The audience role was conventional, but what was special was that it was a work from WAUHAUS, which is from the freelance contemporary performance scene and it is exceptional that someone from there can make a work for this stage. This was truly upscaling some esitystaide aesthetics.
Yes, you can. Hanna Arvela. Attended on 7 October 2019, Performance Days 2019, Valtion virastotalo, Turku. Premiered 2016.
The performer as a barista in the lobby through which we went for lunch. Offered caffeine mixed with powder sugar for us to snort. I of course tried it out, it was playful and enjoyable in its disobedient way of infilterating to the everyday.
Asennot. Anna-Mari Karvonen. Attended in September 2019, Q-theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 19 September.
Part of the audience (by their own choice) was halfway during the performance invited into a semicircular auditorium, which was situated onstage, and we who entered the stage become thus also performers. The show was in a weird way dealing with the subject of contemporary dance, with an ambivalent attitude, which had a quality of mockery. It seemed like the makers, maybe without intending, ridiculed contemporary dance. I felt a bit offended as a contemporary dance lover.
Passage 468. Veli Lehtovaara. Attended on 14 August 2019, Oil Container 468, Helsinki.
Sitting, standing, laying down, moving in the giant circular space freely. Dance. I had the experience of being free to spectate in peace, even without the protection of any architectural structure for the audience. This remarkably pressureless atmosphere was carefully crafted, although I do not know how.
Turkka kuolee. Ruusu Haarla & Julia Lappalainen. Attended on 24 May 2019, Willensauna, National Theatre, Helsinki.
Sitting in the auditorium traditionally. The work is a self-reflective form of documentary theatre, dealing with the violence that has taken place in the Finnish theatre scene. The title was brilliant: the story is told with two words already in the title! Also the final death scene, towards which the title extended, was very beautiful.
Apparition Apparition. Florence Peake & Eve Stainton. Attended on 12 May 2019, Venice Biennale, Venice.
In the beginning the performers move around the auditorium and ask random audience members to draw on their skin. I also drew on one of them. I saw a friend from London in the audience by accident, which told something about the weird quality of the Venice Biennale.
toxinosexofuturecummings. Teo Ala-Ruona. Attended between 2-5 March 2019, Asbestos Art Space, Helsinki. Premiered 2 March 2019.
Small room theatre, romantic metropolis type. I have a strong feeling of esoteria, of very specific, like-minded queer target audience. I am not sure if I am welcomed as a part of this inner circle.
Unfamiliar Dialogues. Pathic Body and the Uncanny - research group. Attended on 1 March 2019, Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiere.
We sit in a circle. We are invited to introduce ourselves one by one. When we have gone through everybody, the sound designer plays an audio recording of what we just said. A familiar situation turns into an uncanny repetition.
Megalopolis. Constanza Macras & Dorky Park. Attended on 21 February 2019, Volksbuehne Theatre, Berlin. Premiered 16 January 2010.
Stylistic example of contemporary European stage art production. My first time in Volksbuehne and it fits perfectly what could have imagined staged there. A big set depicting an urban housing project, physical theatre expressivity, tragic moments, energetic group choreographies.
69 positions. Ingvartsen, Mette. Attended on 6 February 2019, Sidestep Festival, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 2014.
We audience a sort of a lecture about sex in the history of performance art, including Mette’s own works. I get the feeling that while the subject and the material is very intimate, the performer keeps a safe distance. Sexuality is an exciting subject, it always energizes me as an audience member and the advertisements claim that the nudity in the performance is sensual and intimate. But to me it does not open in that way and my erotic enthuasism is diluted. She also labels the audience into men and women, which pisses some people off.
As a piece of artistic research this was interesting, it definitely fit the "exposition" format which had come familiar to me at the Theatre Academy (see draft 2). Referentiality, discursivity and the lecture format were intertwined with the aesthetics of contemporary choreography.
Through my attendance I was appropriating Ingvartsen's performance as a part of my own research practice, in collaboration with Olga Spyropoulou (see draft 12). This was our way of making audiencing a practice and exceeding its habitual borders as a parapractice. I think that practicing audiencing made me even more aware of my own position than I normally would have been (although my position was always somewhat practice-like due to my position as an artistic researcher of the phenomenon of audience).
Graigslist Allstars. Samira Elagoz. Attended on 1 February 2019, Sidestep Festival, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 2016.
This was actually a screening of a film and thus made me think of the definition of live performance. The film was about an experiment done by Elagoz of arraging through the internet network Graigslist one-on-one meeting with men. The men get to decide what they will do together while Elagoz documents the meetings with a video camera. The events taking place in this process are thus precarious and potential dangers are present. The experiment is kin to live performance. The film screening is however only a film screening although the author is present. The work is programmed as a pair with the companion piece Cock cock who’s there, in which Elagoz performs live a bit more.
Biofiction. Simone Aughterlony & Hahn Rowe. Attended on 1 February 2019, Sidestep Festival, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 2016.
Stylistic example of contemporary European stage art production. Non-normative bodies on stage, wood-chopping, which touches me personally, and the audio track mixed live onstage, making it border with the aesthetics of a concert.
Riita & Rakkaus [Eng. Argument and Love]. Volta Rajakangas. Attended on an unknown date, private home, Helsinki. Premiere.
A private performance at our home, created by my stepdaughter and her friend. Especially interesting was the program leaflet, which mentioned two parts: 1. explanation 2.performance. (fin. 1. selitys, 2. esitys). This kind of dualism is familiar from the institutional context of art: a performance and opening words, an exhibition and a catalogue, a painting and its title. And in the context of Tutke within the guidelines that concern my research: the artistic parts and a commentary.
This framing with a literary program is also one reason it has stayed as a relevant reference, unlike several other non-institutional performances made by children in the course of my everyday.
Station to Station to Station. Mira Kautto. Attended on 29 January 2019, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 22 January 2019.
It is normal to have music in a dance performance, but in this one music had such a strong part, that it was almost intermedial, as if bordering on a concert of electronic music.
Blondit. Michaela The Queen of Fucking Everything, Paula Tuovinen & Kuumat Putket. Attended on between 5-18 December 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 5 December 2018.
One of the perfomers and the original author of this remake was the director of Arts Promotion Center Finland. Such institutional power is rare on stage.
Audience. Raekallio Corp. Attended on 30 November 2018, Museum of Technology, Helsinki. Premiered 15 November 2018.
The work was based on a book of poetry by Eino Santanen; the poet also performed in the work by reciting his texts. This was the fourth work I have included in draft 8: I invited two friends from Palestine to accompany me, because I knew that the show had some militaristic elements, which would have a very different meaning for them. I had asked them to be my research informants, and we had a post-performance discussion.
My experience was that the name promised too much. It was according to the promotional info something to do with performing ourselves through social media and the commercialisation of this constant search for audiences. But for me, as a member of the audience of a show that is called Audience, I felt that it dealt with something else than what we were. We moved in different spaces of the Museum of Technology, as if in an immersive performance, but the relationship of the work to us was ambiguous. It somehow restaged violent power relations, but without really making us question our position. We were safe in the audience, while they seemed to act out some kind of representation of aggression. Or that was how I felt.
Asu (A Rhyme for the Stage). Katariina Numminen. Attended on 18 November 2018, Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Kirjan talo. Helsinki. Premiered 17 November 2018.
An old community hall, where the audience sat on three sides of the large square-shaped room. The space invoked some nostalgic community feeling in me. It felt like something was rewound open in front of us by the two performers.
All the Sex I Ever Had. Mammalian Diving Reflex. Attended on 15 November 2018, Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Espoo City Theatre, Espoo. Premiered February 2010.
The performers were non-professionals (and in that way kind of ”part of us”), but the direction and concept were clearly stylistic contemporary European stage art. Audience was a few times challenged to share stories of their sex lives into the microphone. I didn’t feel at all like doing it.
WeSANK Deep Stage As... Vincent Roumagnac. Attended on 14 November 2018, Theatre Academy, Space for Free Arts, Helsinki. Opening day.
This was an exhibition, but since Vincent is dealing with the subject of theatre and extending it, it seems relevant here. Prototypes of the stage of the future, both as scale models and descriptive texts, made in a series of workshops, it was inspiring.
Death at Work. Pop Up Teatr. Attended on 13 November 2018, Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Kanneltalo, Helsinki. Premiere.
”Laymen” are performing and telling about their private lives, this time about death. Audience was a few times addressed straightforwardly and asked to makea common decision. It is a type of contemporary theatre, in which reporting and telling stories about real events are mixed with aesthetisized compositions or scenes. The lure of the real is present, the styles of non-acting... The space of Kanneltalo is a fixed auditorium, which is a little bit out of place format for many contemporary works, it has this old-school mood.
I appropriated the work for the purposes of my research and brought a peer group of research informants with me, whom I interviewed after. They had very insightful comments, more in the section on draft 8.
Princess. Eisa Jocson. Attended on 9 November 2018, Moving in November Festival, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 2017.
This was an engaging work, with the two performers (supposedly one male, one non-male) dressed as disney princesses performed a highly detailed, skillful and exact choreography of repetition and mimicry.
Brume de Mer. Elina Pirinen. Attended on 9 November 2018, Moving in November Festival, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 29 August 2018.
I was already familiar with Pirinen’s style of dance mixed with transgressive elements and a strong relation to music. It was a strong and a beautiful piece of her style, if the word beautiful is appropriate in Pirinen's case. The music was overflowing, like a prolonged tsunami over us.
Lifeguard. Benoît Lachambre. Attended on 6 November 2018, Moving in November Festival, Valssaamo, Helsinki. Premiered 17 June 2016.
This is one of the works that stay strongly in my memory even years later. Benoît sitting on the barstool as we arrive, asking us to move about in the space to help him map it. Then he starts moving. An atmosphere is created where we become and organic part of the performance and extensions of the body of the performer. We are an organism. Two more audience groups enter, one every fifteen minutes. A shamanistic experience.
Over Your Fucking Body, work-in-progress. Janina Rajakangas & Neil Callaghan. Attended on 5 November 2018, Moving in November Festival, Kunsthallen, Helsinki. The sole performance.
The work takes place in the art gallery, and I have a student group with me from the Waldorf high school and I collect writings from them after. During the performance, performers ask audience members to move or guide them in the space. This evidently is the main gesture of the work for the audience members and their experience is strongly affected by their relation and response to this invitation. They either welcome it or reject it or first reject it and then welcome it. Then they deal with the emotions that their choices trigger in them. I know the authors well (it is within the genre of performances made by family members), which influences my experience as I feel certain ownership and intimacy towards the work. I have articulated my experiment in more detail in the section on draft 8.
Hominal/Öhrn. Marie-Caroline Hominal & Marcus Öhrn. Attended on 4 November, 2018, Moving in November Festival, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 2018.
I did not get in to this work, it did not open to me. Using heavy metal music did not become justified to me (I have a heavy metal background so I consider that I have some expertice in the matter) and my impression of the show was that it was somehow arrogant and self-centered.
Radical Light. Salva Sanchis. Attended on 3 November 2018, Moving in November, Cultural Center Stoa Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 2016.
I have two research informants with me from the Deaconess Foundation, which helps people with problems. I wanted to hear comments from people who are not in the art circles.
The work is an engaging choreography with very skillful dances, I am just in awe about how movement flows in their bodies. And yet, much of my attention goes to two things that are not at all related to the work of the artists. The first is the fact that when arriving to the venue and parking the car I was using, I crashed it into a concrete element. During the performance I think about what will I do with the car and replay the moment of crashing in my mind. Secondly, I worry about the two informants whom I have brought with me and how they feel. My experiment is further elaborated in the section on draft 8.
Sharing Silence. Gabrielle Goria. Attended several times between 22-31 October 2018, Theatre Academy, Helsinki. The sole performance.
An artistic research performance installation, in which Gabrielle meditates publicly for ten days and invites audience members to join. The meditation took place on a stage, which is situated on the large inner yard of the Theatre Academy, Tori (= Agora). On the stage there were places for meditators, composed of pillows and mobile walls/screens. The installation was there for ten uninterrupted days and Gabrielle was there all the time, during the opening hours of the building.
From the point of view of research on the phenomenon of audience the work was exemplary, like a contemporary classic. Audience members have two strongly different possible levels of partipation: witnessing the effort of the performer (if you view the work from outside) and witnessing your own meditating mind (if you step inside the installation and engage in the act of meditating). Through the latter, it seems to suggest that we could view the functioning of our consciousness as an audience experience. Or that we could choose to audience our own consciousness by using meditation techniques.
Also, Gabrielle told in a post performance discussio, that he experienced becoming a spectator of the venue, the Theatre Academy itself, as he could sense it from early morning, when there was no-one else, through the day of buzzing activity and passing people, to the evening when the building emptied out again. In this way, his artistic-meditative practice could also be described as a practice of audiencing.
Posthuman Days. Jenni-Elina von Bagh. Attended on 18 October 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
Performers reaching to be non-human. For me, it was full of ambivalence of not understanding what is going on, both in its enjoyability and annoyability. The theme and the work done to approach it felt necessary and important. Also, since posthumanism has become such a buzzword, it is sometimes difficult to attend to it without feeling also the quality of appropriation resulting from the functions of art as an industry.
Canary. Janina Rajakangas Project. Attended on 13 October 2018, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
The stage is set on a circular carpet on the second floor of the museum of contemporary art Kiasma, on a bridge situated on top of the entrance of the museum and in front of large windows. We the audience are situated around the circle, very close to the four dancers how are very sensitive. the work deals with over-sensitivity to environmental influences, like canaries, which were used in mines to inform miners of a lack of oxygen. Canaries would notice it first and also die before humans. The speakers also placed in the circle. This is one of the performances made by my family members, which is its own specific genre, since an art experience is mixed with a specific kind of an experience of empathy, love and exposure.
Dance. Anna Maria Häkkinen. Attended on 10 October 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Cultural Center Stoa Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
This was clearly not challenging the conventional audience-performer setting, rather it was trying to bring back something that the author feels important in dance but that has been replaced by recent experimental developments.
Remote Control Human - RCH201 Mediated Touch. Outi Condit. Attended on 8 October 2018, Riihimäki Theatre & #digitheatre, Riihimäki. First iteration 1 September 2017.
The work is based on a technical apparatus through which one person can use another person as an avatar, as a borrowed body of sorts. The avatar has a camera on them, mediating the view in front of them to their operator. In their ear, the avatar has an earphone, through which they receive directions and things to say aloud from the operator.
The theatre is in the same building as a hotel. Encounters between avatars and audience members take place in hotel rooms. These encounters can be witnessed in the theatre through a video feed projected on stage.
I go for an encounter, it is intimate, strange and complex. I am at the same time encoutering the person sharing the room with me and the person operating them. And I am also performing for the people in the theatre. The communication with the avatar is clitching constantly. After the encounter, I am offered also the position of an avatar and I accept the offer. Working as an avatar is less complicated, I only need to follow orders.
The work in total is generous in giving us different possibilities to take roles within its theatro-technological apparatus.
I AM IN YOUR MIND. Mikko Orpana. Attended on 2 October 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 27 September 2018.
A beautiful improvised audience formation emerges as we enter the space and situate ourselves so that we are able to follow the performance. I am thinking this is due to spatial design, how the performers move and the elements of the set are placed.
Jungle. Old Vic. Attended between 16-19 September 2018, Playhouse Theatre, London. Premiered 7 December 2017.
A partly immersive work, in which we are kind of the customers of a cafe in a refugee camp in Calais, on the French side of the Canal. I am sitting next to a catwalk, on which the actors move. A part of the audience is on a balcony. There is a weird power structure between this upper middle class audience and the characters of the play.
Othello. Globe Theatre. Attended on 20 September 2018, Shakespeare's Globe, London.
To visit the Globe is kind of special when researching audience, it portrays one important phase in the development of European theatre architecture. Of course nostalgic, but also touching. It is also an interesting spatial formation of an audience body, utilized in our current culture in the context of pop music: part of the audience is standing in front of the stage while another part is sitting in a semicircle. This allows the standing audience body more freedom of movement and the seated audience body more rest.
Healing Words. Theatre Quo Vadis. Attended on 4 September 2018. Outlaws Theatre Festival, public space, Pori.
One-on-one meeting with the author-performer Otso Kautto. He helps me to find the right words that would help me with a personal concern. It is like a meeting with a healer, but in the art context. Reminds me of Alejandro Jodorowski’s psychomagical healing practice. Otso is also just appointed as the head of a big theatre, which contributes to his character in my experience. He is a potential employer of many theatre artists whom I imagine attending the performance.
Juha Biitsillä. Juha Valkeapää & Biitsi. Attended on 4 September 2018. Outlaws Theatre Festival, Pori. Premiere 5 September 2018.
A great combination of Juha’s storytelling vocal expression and the sound art of Biitsi duo. In a small, out-of-use commercial store space, which also adds with a feeling of impermanence and melancholy.
24H Plays: Pori. Outlaws Theater Festival. Attended on 1 September 2018, Outlaws Theatre Festival, Pori. Premiere.
The pace of creation is the main orientation when watching the works: they have been created (written, directed, rehearsed) in 24 hours. A lot of the time I imagine and reflect in my mind their processes. So the imagined making of is superimposed over the performance.
Aidatut unelmat. Sari Palmgren. Attended on 22 August 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Kanneltalo, Helsinki. Premiered 24 August 2017.
This is a site-specific guided walk, we move as a group between different acts in the suburb of Kannelmäki, on yards, in the church and finally on a field in a park, where a spectacle with a lot of performers is acted out.
In the Mood for Frankie. Trajal Harrell. Attended on 30 July 2018, Impulstanz Festival, Wien. Premiered 7 May 2016.
While passing through Vienna, I manage to attend this performance by a highly acclaimed choreographer at the similarly highly acclaimed festival. I feel the specificity of the audience and the internal power relations. As described in draft 7 like this:
"The audience was seated around the stage so they looked at each other
they saw several recognisable types:
young dance students who work to seem confident
self-aware established choregraphs
athletic young men with george michael -style beards
writers with untrained spines
a curator who sweats a scent of power
two japanese butoh artists with suspended eyes
all of them working hard to be individual performing
but now
as the audience
in order to behold the stage
they needed to become something else as well
a we."
SMS – Soft Message Service. Live Art Society. Attended on 13 June 2018, URB Festival, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
One of the rare performances I have attended which use the existence of cell phones in their aesthetic. We are asked to keep our phones and their sounds on. The two performers, who are backstage, chat with individual audience members with text messages. The auditorium is lit with our phone screens and their beeps.
COSMIC LATTE. Sonya Lindfors. Attended on 26 May 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Pannuhalli, Helsinki. Premiered 15 May 2018.
The auditorium is built into an angle on two sides of the stage. The audience is mostly white and the work deals with this fact. It makes fun of whiteness and demands attention to structural rasism. As an audience member I am feel somewhat attacked, which must be one of the goals of the work.
Subject to Change. Katriina Kettunen Attended on 12 May 2018. Recall–Reflect–Return – Palestine Performance Symposium, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah. Premiere.
The artist invited the audience to draw on her skin, which was a very intimate proposal, which rendered the body of the performer vulnerable and gave us the audience responsibility over its wellbeing.
Meet me in the garden. Mirna Bamieh. Attended on 12 May 2018, Recall-Reflect-Return - Palestine Performance Symposium, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah.
An artistic event of cooking and eating. As it was happening during an evening, at the same time with other performances, I I think it lacked the communality it proposed. I did help with the cooking and ate, but kind of missed the art of it.
Orientalism: Art, Ideology and the Depiction of the Arab World. Harold Hejazi. Attended on 10 May 2018. Recall–Reflect–Return – Palestine Performance Symposium, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah. Premiere.
A performance lecture on Eduard Said’s book Orientalism, but with such a self-ironic vibe, showing the artist as a young rapper in a music video by the Giza pyramids. Taking place in occupied Palestine, performed by Canadian-Iranian-Finnish artist, this had multiple levels of cultural critique.
DESAMPARADOS (The Abandoned). Yuan Mor’O Ocampo. Attended on 9 May 2018. Recall–Reflect–Return – Palestine Performance Symposium, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah. Premiere.
In the style of classical performance art, the artist has materials on the table. He acts using these materials, for example throwing white flour on himself. The performance is dealing with the memory of his late mother and I am touched.
Ascension: A live performance holding a 9 kilo salmon fish for an hours time until exhaustion. Maiada Aboud. Attended on 8 May 2018. Recall–Reflect–Return – Palestine Performance Symposium, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah. Premiered 2008.
The name says it all, we were an audience of the determination and the exhaustion of the performer.
Unseen. Timo Viialainen. Attended on 6 May 2018, Recall-Reflect-Return Palestine Performance Symposium, Nowat Theater, Al Arroub Refugee Camp. Premiere.
A visually strong performance, in which Viialainen was playing with a flashlight. In the aftertalk a local man tells how he was touched by it, how it evoked memories of being subject to control and imprisonment by Israeli forces. This was true artistic cross-cultural communication. I used it the Viialainen's performance as a reference in my essay of draft 23.
SHRA-ERÄMAA. Nowat Theater. Attended on 6 May 2018, Recall-Reflect-Return Palestine Performance Symposium, Nowat Theater, Al Arroub Refugee Camp. Premiere 19 September 2017.
A Finnish-Palestinian collaboration performing in the upstairs theatre in the home of one of the artists, at the Al Arroub refugee camp. A multinational audience body gathered in this condition of inequal oppression and structural violence, attending the stories that spanned from Finnish Ostrobotnia to the West Bank.
re-membering. Max McBride. Attended on 25 April 2018, Spring Research Day, Performing Arts Research Center Tutke, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
The performer had pieces of the work appearing along the day, an audio work in the toilet, a video she was carrying around on a small screen etc. To enter audience membership when sitting on the toilet seat is a higly rare audience body condition.
Rock/Crust/Body/Snow/Face/Buoy. Paula Kramer. Attended on 25 April 2018, Spring Research Day, Performing Arts Research Center Tutke, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
The artistic research presentation/performance had a beautiful atmosphere which I can remember years later. Paula was sitting by a table on stage, with a projection she could draw on, addressing us with a calm, thoughtful style.
Backdrop (1977). Vincent Roumagnac. Attended on 25 April 2018, Spring Research Day, PErforming Arts Research Center Tutke, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
Vincent was not there physically, but addressed us through a video, with a text speaking straight to us in this specific situation. Experimenting on or stretching the limits of liveness, in a way not so different from my own experiments. The audience body was contemporaneous and dense, but the performer body was elsewhere.
The Actress. Outi Condit. Attended on 25 April 2018, Spring Research Day, Performing Arts Rsearch Center Tutke, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 13 October 2017.
This was already the third time I audienced this piece, which makes it quite special. It affected me the most the first time, the second I could discern better the structures, techniques and contents of the work, and this third time I started to be more easily distracted.
Title unknown. Daniel Oliver. Attended on 24 April 2018, Spring Research Day, Performing Arts Research Center Tutke, Helsinki.
Daniel was invited to perform by me and Karolina Kucia, so I felt somewhat responsible as an audience member. He was telling some stories about his practice while doing things with his materials, with an unpredictable dramaturgy. In the after talk, it became clear that some audience members had felt Daniel threatening at some point, and I didn’t share this feeling at all and it was hard to understand it. It made me aware of the context: something that would be harmless in a performance art event could be experienced as dangerous in the context of artistic research. Was it oversensitivity? Or just sensitivity? I don't know.
Maria-vesper. Anna Mustonen, Marianna Henriksson & Helsinki Baroch Orchestra. Attended on 19 April 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Pannuhalli, Helsinki.
This was amazing, an intertwining of Monteverdi performed live by high skill level musicians and contemporary dance, also the singers dancing. As an audience member, was just in awe of this combination of bold originality and sophistication. Also, the way the work was situated in between the context of (old) classical music and contemporary dance, both of which have their own typical audience orientation, made our position ambiguous in an implicit way.
80 words. Sarah van Lamsveerde. Attended on 24 March 2018, Mad House Helsinki, Helsinki. Premiered 2012.
The author was imagining a language which would have only 80 words. Also, I remember that it was originally a solo by the author, but now performed by someone else. In this case, it felt important. Maybe because it was a solo work. The author also had published a book with different versions of the 80 words, in a limited edition of 80 copies, extending the audience body into the scattered spatial realm.
Nadita. Alma Söderberg. Attended on 24 March 2018, Mad House Helsinki, Helsinki. Premiered 27 February 2016.
"A small nothing" but actually a lot of vocal-movement-percussive patterns as if she is playing the space in which we are, just with her mouth, f which the rest of the body (and of our body) is an an extension.
Untitled (slick glittery) redux. Kira O’Reilly. Attended 24 February 2018. Steakhouse Live Festival, London. Premiered 2014.
Kira naked, moving slowly on a large square carpet which had some glitter and eggs here and there, applying them on her skin. A durational piece of several hours, the audience coming and going. A very concentrated and peaceful atmosphere, which has persisted in my mind for a long time
Droves. Coney. Attended on 24 February 2018. COLAB Factory, London. Premiered 17 February 2018.
An immersive journey in the basements of a building, created by and with children. Meeting characters played by child performers in different rooms of the basement. We are at the same time playing with the kids and playing the role of a theatre audience. Children become authorities.
Iron Mouth (Boca de Ferro). Marcela Levi & Lucía Russo. Attended on 11 February 2018, Sidestep Dance Festival, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered December 2016.
The space is surrounded with molton curtains, in one corner there is a table for the DJs who already play music when we enter. Then the dancer slips in through the curtains and moves fiercely. He travels between us, coming close, moving, moving, moving like a maniac, a shaman, a techno animal, the audience is organically distributed around, making space as needed. It is so beautiful how the audience body is formed and reformed, close to the performer body and yet clearly distinct from it.
Ajima. Marc Philipp Gabriel. Attended on 20 January 2018, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 13 November 2013.
A high stage, the audience seated on three sides. The dancer Maija Karhunen on stage, her body is not the normative dancer body, she is small in size and has a bone condition, which is why she normally uses a wheelchair. This becomes important to me as an audience member, since it is rare to see this kind of bodies on stage.
Oneiron. Raekallio Corp. Attended on 16 January 2018, Cirko Center for New Circus, Helsinki. Premiered 18 January 2018.
Composed of different sections, one in an apartment, then a walk to the theatre, then in the theatre a choreography to watch, then we are offered soup. I don’t get a good connection to the work, but they have made a big effort to reflect the content with the format and audience positions.
Janne Katajan Riihimäki. Janne Saarakkala. Attended on 16 December 2017, Riihimäki Theatre, Riihimäki. Premiered 14 October 2017.
The performance is based on a real character, a local celebrity. In the lobby before the shows I sit in the same table with a friend of Janne Kataja, a celebrity actor as well. He doesn’t seem to be so happy about the show and how it deals with their common history. Also he is portrayed on stage. It creates a weird disposition; to talk with the character of the play before audiencing the play itself.
Visit. Vincent Roumagnac. Attended on 9 December 2017, Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiere 2017.
A video work, Vincent has been working with the performer Hanna Ahti. Hanna has visited spaces of Theatre Academy and spent time in them, while camera is filming her. Hanna is pregnant. To me, it is a study of presence, absence, and a reformulation of the relationship between the director and the performer.
Teini. Janina Rajakangas Project. Attended on 7 December 2017, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
A choreography by my partner, with teenage dancers. I have been present during the process and I am invested in it emotionally. It is very touching, the presence of the performers is exceptional and rare to someone their age. They look at us unashamed, exposed, impassive. It's captivating.
Pygmakofili. Tremmel & Loper. Attended on 2 December 2017, Viirus Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
The authors are students, whose work I am mentoring. It is a performance installation in the lobby. Salla is inside a transparent box, which functions as a table. Vulnerable. Another performer, who has a large body, is also inside a box, dressed as a pig. A Christmas reference, I think, and quite provocative. I even hesitate to write about it, to not use any offensive language by accident. The whole show is provocative, challenging the audience-performer relation.
Toinen koti. Jussi Lehtonen. Attended on 30 november 2017, National Theatre, Omapohja Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 16 November 2017.
Exceptional here is that the performer group is composed of immigrant artists. This is rare, and my relationship to the performance is dominated and oriented by this fact. I feel warm and relieved by the decolonial, antiracist work that must have been done to make it happen.
a life - nomadic melodrama. Jenni-Elina von Bagh. Attended on 25 November 2017, Theatre Academy, Kallio Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 16 November 2017.
The space, the old Ryhmäteatteri space, is atmospheric. To enter it one descends a beautiful staircase down into the basement level, which for me produces a cave-like orientation. I think the show was intelligent, funny and inventive, and people had praised it to me in advance, but I still felt somewhat disconnected.
i ride with colour and soft focus, no longer anywhere. Jamila Johnson-Small. Attended on 18 November 2017, Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Kanneltalo, Helsinki. Premiered 8 October 2016.
The spatial arrangement feels a bit weird in this performance, the fixed auditorium and the wide stage. These kinds of auditoriums produce an audience that is somehow distanced (and bourgeois?). Its hard to point my finger on the specific source of this quality I feel. In the end part audience members are invited also on stage, I am one of those who choose to go.
Sijdsååbbar (Giličoahkkin / Village Council). Pauliina Feodoroff. Attended on 18 November 2017. Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Konepaja Bruno, Helsinki. Premiered 17 November 2017.
This village council meeting was bordering on whether it was a performance or not, since what took place was a real council meeting of the Skolt Sámi, with outsiders (an audience) like myself witnessing it. It gave me a feeling of being honoured to have been there, that I was allowed to take part. The gesture of opening the meeting for outsiders in the context of a theatre festival was strong and intertwined politics and aesthetics in a way that I am unable to detangle them. It was and it wasn't art at the same time, it showed my lack of involvement in the work for equality and yet I was involved through my presence, even if in a very minor way. While there is no need for any justification from white European philosophers, I want to point out the relation to Jacques Rancière's thinking, since he is a relevant reference in the context of my research. For him, politics takes place when we talk about the part of those who do not have a part in public discourse. This is what happened in Sijdsååbbar – in two ways, by showing the marginalized position of the Sámi people within the state of Finland and the irrelevance of my opinion in the matters that concern the politics of the Sámi region. It troubled the notion of community with a generous yet severe gesture of hospitality. It also showed that a marginalized people need the active work of the ruling majority to stop the structural violence excercised on them.
Think Much, Cry Much. Rima Najdi. Attended on 17 November 2017. Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, YMCA, Helsinki. Premiered 23 July 2017.
A gym hall, some marks on the floor, audience with headphones. The audio tracks guide us to move in the space, going through chapters, which invite us to experience some moments non- European immigrants encounter when crossing borders and behaviour they are subjected to.
Afterlife. Post-MJ-era Institute of Consciousness. Attended on 16 November 2017, Viirus Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 15 November 2017.
A kind of spiritual event remembering and honoring the pop star Michael Jackson. Partly installation, partly performance structure where we at times follow something together, like the speech of Tino Singh, sometimes go through stations, like meeting personally a Michael Jackson lookalike.
Autonomian aika. Pauliina Feodoroff. Attended on 15 November 2017, Baltic Circle Theatre Festival, Cirko Center for New Circus Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 14 November 2017.
A stage work dealing with the political question of the rights and the treatment of Sami people. This has been shadowed in my memory by the village council meeting, which was more important to me.
Mercurial George. Dana Michel. Attended on 4 November 2017, Moving in November Festival, Cultural Center Stoa Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 2 June 2016.
I find Dana Michel’s presence and style of performing very original. My audience experience is unsettling and ambigous. I cant really separate this work fully from Yellow Towel, which was the first fullscale Michel piece I experienced and a very special experience.
Blab. Sonja Jokiniemi. Attended on 3 November 2017. Moving in November Festival, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiere.
The auditorium was built in an original way as a non-symmetric L-shape. The work was bordering on visual arts, there were even paintings in the set, and the performers were communicating with materials and substances in a way that resembled that of performance artists, but with the techniques and style of presence that was familiar to me from the context of dance. So the work was intermedial on many levels, for example in its set design and the practice used by the performers.
Sleeping Beauty (work in progress). Reality Research Center. Attended on 30 October 2017. Eskus Performance Center, Helsinki. Premiered 14 November 2017.
A highly original audience position: the work was sort of an erotic encounter, a form of passive play, in the context of performing arts, framed as an art performance. The main idea was that there would be a 30-minute one-on-one encounter with a performer and one of us would be in a passive role (pretending to sleep), one in an active one. First I needed to make contact with one of the performers, who entered the lounge area of the venue in costume that gave connotations to the contexts of erotic performance or BDSM practices. When the contact was made, there was a dialogue with the performer, to agree on what will take place: which one of us takes the passive role, what are the boundaries of the both of us, especially the passive one. I chose the active role, since I felt that it would be more challenging for me. After the discussion, the performer entered the room where the encounter would take place and prepared themselves for the passive role. I received an alarm device from the master/mistress of the event, with which I could end the encounter in case I needed to do it fast for some reason. I entered the room and the performer was laying on a matress, eyes closed, in a nightgown of sorts. Also, as part of the beforemance arrangement, there was a non-recording video camera on a tripod, sending live video to a projector, which projected it on the wall of the room (and nowhere else). So I could also see myself in action from an external point of view. I was notified that the time was up after 30 minutes with a knock on the door and I exited the room. After that the performer re-emerged in the lobby for a private aftertalk. One of the authors, Elo, is my long time collaborator and a friend and we had been doing intimate experiential performances together previously, which rendered the situation totally safe and non-intimidating for me personally, and still it was an intense and complicated experience. I have written about it in the essay Dionysus in 18+ (Laitinen 2018b), published in the online journal Ice Hole.
Maailmannäyttely, osa 1: Sinusta tulee koivu. Koivuryhmä. Attended on 28 October 2017, Cultural Center Stoa, Helsinki. Premiered 15 October 2017.
A happening mixing different registers of performance from clownery to lecture. Our audience position changes during the show: we are seated, we can move and in the end we are laying down on pillows.
Kokimo altARS17. Kokimo. Attended on 20 October 2017, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
This was actually an event containing several different performances centered around experientiality. Two of them, both of which gathered an audience body around a table, were important to me. There was an ASMR karaoke by Lehmus Murtomaa: we were seated around a table with headphones, taking turns in reading poems and making sounds in the vicinity of sensitive microphones. Kokimo's performative dinner included a live cook onsite and we could physically digest elements of the artistic work.
Private Dancer. WAUHAUS. Attended on 20 October 2017, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Zodiak Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 13 October 2017.
The audience on two sides, facing each other, in between the performers Juha Valkeapää and Heidi Soidinsalo. We are wearing headphones, the performers are creating an intimate sound dramaturgy, we can hear everything very well, and the distance between the stage and the auditorium is altered/diminished/transformed.
Channelling. Outi Condit. Attended on 17 October Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiered 14 October 2017.
In a studio space, there are podiums of different heights and sizes for us and the performers to use. They are speaking, constantly, “channeling” something, articulating experiences, in a quiet voice, so I have to move closer when I want to follow the words of a specific performer. The work was pairing with The Actress. The Actress presented a single actor on a frontal stage, with a single direction of attention and an audience body situated in an auditorium as a tight unison group separated from the stage area. Challening, in contrast, was multidirectional, layering multiple voices that spoke simultaneously, disperesed the audience body across the space and forced its members to compromise the distance between them and the performers in order to hear the small voices. This contrast has persisted in my memory as a bodily experience long after the show.
The Actress. Outi Condit. Attended on 16 October 2017. Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiered 13 October 2017.
Pairing with Channeling, the work takes place along the same corridor the day before. I audience it twice during the run of performances and a third time the following spring. I wanted to re-experience it since it gave me an inspiring example of a way to intertwine discursive thinking and live performance, reflecting itself in real time. This way of de-seperating the research from the art was also what I wanted and would do in the future. Condit had in this way a very important influence on my research practice. The performance also had one gesture which was almost identical to one made in a performance I had directed years before (Solta by Kuriton Company, made in collaboration with actor Heidi Syrjäkari, dramaturge E.L.Karhu and sound designer Tuomas Rounakari): a fake mustache placed on a wall as a sort of a dominating male figure (a director maybe or even a divine being).
Kim, Lekki & Namwaan. Saara Turunen. Attended on 14 October 2017, Theatre Jurkka, Helsinki. Premiere.
A work made by artists with a Finnish a background (one of them my partner) with three female thai immigrants, based on their stories and performed by them. The decolonial aspects of the work situated me as a western, white audience member.
Performanssitaidetta Kalervo Palsan hengessä. Katri Kainulainen, Maximilian Latva, Antti Ahonen & Arttu Kurttila. Attended on 6 October 2017. Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
A performance art event inspired by the late artist Kalervo Palsa’s work. They have staged elements from his paintings into acts and actions using different props – it was like images came to life. An excellent example of intermedial referentiality (often the term intertextuality is used but in this case intervisuality would maybe be more appropriate). An original and memorable atmosphere, in the spirit of Palsa's dark aesthetics and humour. I became aware how I could sense the background of the performers from the quality of their presence: Arttu Kurttila has a background as an actor while the other performers, Kainulainen and Latva come from a fine arts background. In my experience, there was something different in how Kurttila was on stage, as if there was an inner process going on, one which Kainulainen and Latve did not require. Later on I heard that one of the performers, Maximilian Latva, also had known Palsa personally and Palsa had called him on the day of his suicide but could not reach him. Awareness of this re-organized my experience afterwards.
Miehen kosketus. Eino Saari. Attended on 29 September 2017, Kajaani City Theatre, Cultural Center Stoa Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 2 September 2017.
A documentary theatre piece based on a large interview material. Men interviewed about their relationship to and experiences of touch and touching. I was one of the men the director Eino Saari interviewed. Staging male sensitivity, which I could sympathize with.
Voyer. Joel Teixeira Neves. Attended on 26 September 2017, Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiered 22 September 2017.
A great example of esitystaide, based on a simple idea of a mirroring effect between the audience and the stage. As described in draft 7:
"They step in and encounter a wall-sized mirror
in a space with a carpet-covered floor
Slowly the lighting changes and the mirror turns into a
transparent window, revealing that the space is divided into two nearly identical halves
Ten performers, equalling ten audience members,
become visible on the other side of the window
For the duration of the performance, this relationship
between the stage and the auditorium, at the same time identical and different, is at play
The gaze of the spectators is directed both towards
themselves and the performers."
Amor Fati. Anna-Mari Karvonen & Anni Puolakka. Attended 16 September 2017. Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 9 September 2017.
A square stage with audience around, on stage a big chunk of clay and mostly two actors, one of them playing the actor Brad Pitt, the other one a journalist making an interview. This was a strong affective experience, the levels of acting and registers of performing overlapping and mutating. It is hard to pin-point the sources of this intensity, but I presume it has something to do with several idiosynctratic elements: the experimental approach of the group (they had for example worked with a group of kids with the clay in the process), the openminded linking of seemingly unrelated materials and the excellent skills of the working group. Also the seating had some importance, we sat on a small rising auditorium around the stage, as if mimicing a small community gathered around one of us, whose life and emotions are disclosed. And this one was the character of Brad Pitt, who as a Hollywood star is also in a parasocial way one of us in the globalized postcolonial world. When the actor Samuli Niittymäki, playing Pitt, was mimicing vomiting, I could smell the vomit.
Tight. Joona Halonen. Attended on 10 September, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Cirko Center for New Dance Stage, Helsinki. Premiered 6 September 2017.
The choreography felt ritualistic. It was centered around a rope, which the performers tightened between each other in different ways. Skillful and idiosynchratic. We were sitting around them, on three sides of the space.
”BABY WE CHANGING CULTURE”. Binyam. Attended on 10 August 2017, URB Festival, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 9 August 2017.
This was a concert, a gig by a young pop/rap artist, but it was situated in Kiasma theatre and spatially arranged in a way that there was a stage built in the center and we could move around it. The effect of the framing and the spatial design was that it slipped from the genre of music towards that of live art or esitystaide.
Burning Doors. Belarus Free Theatre. Attended on 12 August 2017, Tampere Theatre Festival, Tampere. Premiered 2016.
The most memorable thing in the show was that one of the members of the Pussy Riot group, Maria Alyokhina, was performing in it. The media attention of their provocation was huge and their courageous feminist disobedience to the authoritarian government of the country made them heros of my kind of people. The work itself was documentary theatre piece, which also dealt with the violent actions of the political regime of Russia and Belarus.
Church of Internet. WAUHAUS. Attended on 2 August 2017. Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
The spatial arrangement was stylistic, like it always is with WAUHAUS: a large, high square stage with audience in one row around it. The Facebook accounts of the audience were linked to the content, and as I don’t have one (I think there was just two of us in the whole audience), I was partly an outsider. The audience was invited to perform rituals on stage, but I didn’t feel like I wanted. Maybe due to my status as a non-member of the cult?
Kosto I-IX. Pirinen, Elina. Attended on 19 January 2017, Theatre Academy, Helsinki. Premiere.
In this graduation work of the master students of dance the stage-auditorium-structure is clear, even if the auditorium is also fully lit. We sit opposed to the stage and watch the dancers who have settled there and start to recite a long text. I am sitting in the last row and when the show starts the choreographer and apparently some other members of the working group sneak behind me to follow the performance. The text is potentially funny, playing with the contradiction between the cleanliness of the chosen music and stage aesthetics and the dirtiness of the text. Some giggles burst out in the audience. Soon I notice that those who laugh the most sit behind me, throughout the performance.
The laughter of the makers behind the backs of the audience is the most affective element of my experience, regardless of of impressive things taking place on stage and in the musical dramaturgy. The power relations that charge the space are tangible: dancers on the brink of their graduation performing challenging assignments before us; an emphatetic audience composed probably mostly of acquaintances of the makers; the authors laughing at their own work behind that audience. The composition directs me into contemplating my own position as a spectator, the tensions streching in the space like violin strings, the assumedly unintentional activity of the makers, shifting my focus from the stage to the space bahind our backs. Is contemplation my position? Is it part of the ontology of performance that I play my part as I assume the work suggets, the makers suggest? Should I do something? How do I know if this laughter is intentional or a part of the show? How to read the situation? Do I have the skills for its interpretation?
Rave. Blaue Frau. Attended on 28 November 2016, Gallery SIC-SPACE, Helsinki. Premiered 25 November 2016.
The performance was a durational 72-hour work during which performers moved slowly in a post-industrial space. Audience could choose to attend either for 1, 3 or 4 hours, during which they could not exit the space. The work also required that audience members stay seated on their chairs for the duration of their stay. I chose 4 hours. It gave the feeling of being imprisoned and communicated a deliberate intention on behalf of the makers to propose self-inflicted discomfort to the audience members. This is a quite rare experience nowadays when an attempt at making art accessable for people with a wide variety of needs is typical. There was a high threshold for leaving before the agreed duration since it would not have been supported by the structure of the performative arrangement. The submissive and seemingly passive audience convention was intensified by the agreement to sit silently for several hours and follow the slow development of the performance. An interestingly out-of-date experiential setup.
[An anonymous performance]. Milja Aho & Anna-Mari Karvonen & Anna Mustonen & Emmi Venna. Attended on 29 April 2016, Kutomo Contemporary Art Space, Turku & in 20 November 2016, Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Helsinki. Premiered 28 April 2016.
A great example of esitystaide and how the performers play with the role of the audience body and their relation to it. There was nothing special about the format, four performers with us in a room, talking and moving, but it was very special in the way they sculpted us through their words and actions. Also, it is a unique gesture not to give a title to a performance. A quote from draft 7:
Anna Mustonen starts to talk in the foyer:
”The show starts with no problems, just like this. I have in advance thought of several different options for this en-counter. I want this to succeed. I’m afraid that you have to support this situation too much. I hope that no-one needs to carry the weight of this moment. I may be pre-tentious, too aware of everything. I’ll open everything up so there will be no lack of clarity. I’ll open everything up: windows, doors, curtains, paintings, furniture, lamps, the ceiling, the floor, the clothes we wear, the slight tremble moving across the chest, the tongue which would like to lick my dry lips.”
Mustonen and the other authors invite us to become part of a temporary community
with the warmth, care, social pressure and need for normalization that comes with being in a community
we watch them
we watch each other
we are being watched"
Staged Larceny. Reality Research Center. Attended on November 2011, Baltic Circle Festival, Helsinki at the same time with, at the same location with and as a kind of parasite of
more than enough. Doris Uhlich. Attended on November 2011, Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival, Helsinki.
A work initiated by game designer Pekko Koskinen, Staged Larceny was a series of works that experimented with the idea of theft in the context of esitystaide. Staged Larceny framed different cultural phenomena as art works, for example the public appearance of politician Timo Soini and the televized Independence Day Reception from the Finnish presidential castle. In the Independence Day Reception I collaborated with Koskinen. The television broadcast of the event is very popular in Finland and it in a way performs the nation through a staging of the elite to be witnessed by the people. The television broadcast includes a constant voice-over commenting the participants of the celebration and the way they are dressed. We did our own live broadcast version of the voice-over, but with instead of costumes and identities of the elite, we commented on the performative and ritualistic aspects of the event, highlighting its (unpronounced) status as an esitys. The playful level of the work was that we claimed that the whole event was organized by Reality Research Center and what we did was like a director's commentary of it.
The third variation of Staged Larceny was the theft of another art work, Doris Ulich's more than enough. As the audience of Staged Larceny, we were an audience within an audience, like spies secretly infilterated in the midst of a seemingly uniform audience body. In a way, we did not break the conventions of audience membership, since the way we tacitly experience art work is not regulated. At the same time, we applied conscious practices within a parapractice.
Each of us had a deck of cards. Each card had a short written instruction, suggesting a way of audiencing. It was similar to my deck of cards in the Audience Body. Also my experience was similar to what Maria Oiva articulated in the discussion after Audience Body, work-in-progress 2: each card was like its own performance and since there were tens of them, it was like audiencing tens of performances, one after another, resulting either in a series of superficial experiences or an excess of strong experiences.
Reindeer Safari. Other spaces -group. Attended between 6-17 October 2010 & 14 January 2017, public space, Helsinki. Premiere 6 October 2017.
I have attended performances by Other Spaces since 2004 or 2005. They have created a distinct style by staging practices which are aimed at transforming the participants into something non-human. The first shows were basically a series of excercises that the group members executed on stage, but soon they already crafted larger compositions such as the space voyage Aniara (2006) and kafkaesque Odradek variations (200).
Reindeer Safari was a landmark work regarding the audience relation, in which the performers teach their audience how to transform into a pack of reindeer. After the introductory workshop a transformational ritual is executed after which the pack roams freely in urban nature for some hours. The performers take the role of reindeer-herding dogs, which take care of the safety of the pack. In the end their is another ritual, transforming the pack back into a human audience, and a debriefing session.
The work is a literal example of liminal dramaturgy in action.
The Wall. Eero-Tapio Vuori & Risto Santavuori. Four different versions:
1) Talvisunnuntain hämärä. [Eng. The twilight of a Winter Sunday] Date unknown, 2011.
2) Lapsi valon katseessa [Eng. A Child in the Gaze of Light] 3 April 2011
3) Kevätiltaan kangastuvaa [Eng. Miraging in a Spring Evening] 7 May 2011.
4) Ikuinen äitienpäivä [Eng. Eternal Mothers’ Day] 8 May 2011.
All at Reality Research Center, Helsinki.
In 2011 Reality Research Center was located at a penthouse space the large windows of which opened towards an inner year. Opposite to the windows, there was a brick wall, unbroken by windows and several stories high. Vuori and Santavuori staged in front of the window a suggestive work The Wall.
Santavuori welcomed the audience into the space and oriented us for opening our minds as the stages on which the performance woudl take place. There were chairs in front of the window, one for each member of the small audiences. After Santavuori’s prologue, we sat on the chairs and started looking at the wall. That was it. Everything that happened in the mind of the audience, when looking at the brick wall, became the content of the work.
I attended several version of the work, in different lighting situations: at winter and spring. One of the events was for children and their parents—we were three fathers with three boys, sitting immobile staring at the wall for 45 minutes. While the other ones had a duration of an hour or so, the last one , The eternal Mothers’ day, lasted for the whole day. I was sitting there for several hours with only Santavuori as my company.
This series was another ingeniuous example of consciousness-based works which through their minimalism highlight some aspects of beforemance art (see also Mail Order Experimance and Gateless Gate). The act of audiencing, with a simple framing done by the makers, is enough to induce a beforemance.
Conte D'amour. Nya Rampen & Institutet. Attended between 22-29 May 2010, theaterszene europa festival, studiobuehne koln, Cologne. Premiered May 2010.
Dealing with the much mediatized tragedy of the family of Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned and sexually abused his children in the basement of their home for 24 years. The basement is staged with a construction site scaffolding, creating two floors. The lower one, the basement, which is on the level of the stage floor, is covered with a translucent fabric, revealing the shadows of the performers moving behind it. The performers behind the veil have two videocameras, one set stationary in the corner, one moved by hand by them. The streams of both of the cameras are projected on the wall of the upperfloor. Thus we see the performers throughout the show mediated by the videofeed and as shadows and sounds which travel through the fabric. Only the father climbs up at times and reclines on a sofa there.
This combination of distance and proximity, mediated and unmediated, creates an oblique, out-of-joint position for me as an audience member. Combined with the horrific back story and an acting style that disturbes the boundaries of fiction and fact the setting is a brilliant but deeply troubling, even if I am just sitting in the auditorium as in any play. Unlike is common in theatre, the audience is informed in the beginning that we can come and go as we please, visit the bar or have a cigarrette or anything.
Bakkantit 3. Und er libet -group. Attended between 22-29.5.2010, theaterszene europa festival, studiobuehne köln, Cologne. Premiered 22 April 2009.
Loosely based on Euripides' The Bacchae, the work traverses through atmospheres of excess, loss and closure. The members of the group come from diverse backgrounds in the fields of theatre, dance and contemporary music and that shows: a rave party changes into a live hapsichord solo and a sentimental pop song into a funeral. It is choreographed with precision and staged in a cool and minimalist style and yet it seems to take very much place in the body, its exhaustion, emotional overload and collapse. The way the show disturbes genre divisions disturbes my habitual audience position.
Chronopolitics — III Memo of Time. Attended between 19-27 March 2010. Tuija Kokkonen / Maus & Orlovski. Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered 19 March 2010.
One of the long series of performances directed by Tuija Kokkonen, questioning the human scale of performance and instead suggesting endless, nomadic and non-human structures. First we were guided to the underground vaults of the Zoological Museum to witness massive amounts of animal remains archived there. Then we can wander to the "workroom" of the group where several simultaneous scenes take place: reading of poems to plants, practice of Qigong, communication with a robot dog and so on. Lastly, there is a star show and a discussion with an astronomer at an observatory.
The frame of esitys was expanded in the work in many ways: it could take place in multiple places simultaneously, it could exceed our lifetime, it could confuse the typical distribution of agencies across the boundaries of human and non-human, art and non-art, live and non-live.
Lovers' Match Making Agency. Teatteri Naamio ja Höyhen. Attended on 17-20 August 2009, multiple sites, Helsinki. Premiere.
Partly a participatory performance, partly a live action role play, partly a match making agency. Performers as pimps, audience members as customers of a blind date agency. When registering for the experience, I had a one-on-one meeting with one of the pimps. She makes a profile of me, containing my preferences for the dates. There is a list of different date formats, from which I could choose the ones that interested me. Then, during the following days, I received several suggestions from the pimps, for a blind date for me to attend, with a specific format, time and meeting place.
As an esitys, it was a risky one, with the makers having not much control over what would take place on the dates, which were one-on-one meetings between two audience members (well, the pimps also dated, I heard later). The "cruise host" Aarni Korpela even stated that "we created a monster and that monster is you". We were given a "lens of a lover" - a sort of a consciousness technique, with which we would look at our dates with love. At the same time, there was a vague ethical principle that we should not expect a sexual encounter. We were left to negotiate these partly contradictory guidelines.
I had a date on which we traveled to a place where none of us had gone before, a picnic date and a sauna date, which ended up lasting overnight. It was exciting, confusing, erotic and awkward. It was definitely a prime example of the playful and perilous possibilities of esitystaide.
Sleepover. Sidestep Festival. Attended on 7 February 2009. Zodiak Center for New Dance, Helsinki. Premiere.
An overnight performative event composed of several components and activities. It was a part of Sidestep Festival, the focus of which was social choreography. The curators thus expanded the notion of choreography to include also the movements of the audience and the movements that take place outside of the frame of art.
There was Social Dreaming Matrix session, led by the (currently late) group dynamic analyst Gordon Lawrence, who had also been also the pricipal creator of the method. There was a dance performance in the lounge area of the venue. There was a lottery for a performance (which later on was revealed as Dream by Janina Rajakangas) that would take place during the night, but that could fit only a small audience, and I won a seat. We could sleep in the Zodiak black box. At some point during the night someone woke me up and guided me upstairs for a performance, in which there was a table set for us, we ate and danced with the performers. It was a dreamlike experience, entering a fictional world in that drowsy and dazed condition and then returning to sleep right after. The body-mind of the audience was softly yet effectively manipulated through the long duration of the event and through conditioning us with sleeping in the venue.
International Butosummit 2008. Reality Research Center & Circus Maximus. Attended on 6 December 2008, Zodiak C4, Cable Factory, Helsinki. Premiere.
The performance (or the "summit") took place between 6-7 am on the Finnish Indepenence Day. I attended with my son, who was five years of age at the time. We had to get up at 4.30 and travel across the city to the venue. There were few people attending. The studio was almost dark and the "curator" of the summit, Uuno Turhabuto, who is a bizarre character by the artist Pasi Mäkelä, started to growl some opening words to a microphone. It is too scary and we have to leave after some minutes.
Inhabitors. Nora Rinne. Attended between 8.-11.10.2008, Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiere.
It was a performance installation on the stage of Kiasma Theatre, a half-built cabin, like a small house, that contained furniture, objects, projected video works. The artist was maybe engaged in building the cabin while the audience was there. I attended with my son, who was 5 years old at the time and it was a very interesting set-up for him. The work experimented with the borderlines of the theatrical experience through being placed on the stage and yet temporally using the format of opening hours of the museum instead of a specific performance hour. And yet, it was open for only four days, so also distinguished from the temporal normal of the exhibition context.
Mail Order Experimance. Risto Santavuori & Eero-Tapio Vuori / Reality Research Center. Attended on an unknown date in January 2008, in the toilet of my home, Helsinki. Premiered 24 January 2008.
A work that was delivered in an envelope to the home of the audience member. The envelope contained another envelope, which read the specific date and time when it should be opened (following the convention of the context of theatre, where the play would normally start at 7pm and suggesting that there may be other audience members doing it at the same time). In the second envelope there was a booklet. I was instructed to enter a toilet and close the door – it woud be the venue of the piece. Then the booklet guided me through a process of creating a performance for myself, using my imagination with the help of the suggestive dramaturgy offered by the booklet.
I experienced the work several times, first a couple of times during the process in 2007 and then when it was finished in 2008. The work anticipated my artistic research methodology used in this study and although I did not consciously take it as an example when developing the methodology, it has obviously been there in my subconscious as an important source. Especially the way the work addresses the reader and the way it is built on a dramaturgy of turning pages have been very inspirational.
There is a reflective article dealing with the work written by the makers in Finnish: Vuori & Santavuori 2011. See also The Wall and Gateless Gate.
Pimeä Projekti. Live Art Society. Attended between 20-24 September 2006. Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Premiered spring 2005.
Convened by the lighting designer Tomi Humalisto, the working group created a performance taking place in the dark. The audience is thus deprived of their spectatorship and yet something is performed before them. There is a set and there are performers, but since taking away the sense of sight also compromises the benefits of distance, the audience members are allowed to move in the space with the help of their hearing and touch. The work is thus encountered as sounds, materials on skin, kinesthetic sensations and such. Clearly it was experimenting with the borderlines of esitys through kind of an inversion of the theatrical disposition.
Terminaali. Terike Haapoja. Attended between 19-24 September 2006, Kiasma-theatre, Helsinki. Premiere 16 September 2006.
Among the printed programs that I have saved from hundreds of performances this is one of the diamonds that arise above the masses. Terike Haapoja, while focusing on distribution of time and place and especially on ethics of presence, has been sensitive enough to see to the future as well. The work, veawing into Kiasma Theatre (situated in the very center of Helsinki) sites from periferic Finland north and east through real-time video feeds. Questions regarding the rights of indigenous Sami people or the way forests are "tended" by timber industry are not less acute in 2024 as they were in 2006.
Haapoja's masterful short essay, included in the program, charts well qualities of audience bodies, pursued in this research: "An image [in a realtime video feed] is not a face, it is a mask, behind which there is an interruption, a gap." The articulation describes the disembodiment of audiences in remote settings that proliferated during the pandemic.
Rosvot. Teatterinturvajoukot. Attended in December 2005, Kajaanin harrastajateatteri, Kajaani. Premiered March 2005.
An anonymous group of performing artists, calling themselves The Theatre Security Forces, perform with balaclavas hiding their faces. Their aggression is directed towards anything that would threaten the work of theatre artists, they for example tie a sack filled with something on a chair and personify it as the theatre critic Lauri Meri. The Meri-sack is then abused and beaten up with baseball bats. Anonymity is used as a cover, to say and do inappropriate things.