How Audience Bodies Form

Tuomas H Laitinen

This artistic doctoral research approaches art, not as a variety of artworks or performances, but as a variety of collective bodies that are summoned. It addresses the subordinate and complicit way collective audience bodies form in relation to artistic performances. The commentary introduces the concept of an “audience body”, emerging when individual bodies gather to become an audience. Audience bodies are described through preconditions that are needed for one to appear, conditions that contribute to its subsistence and variables that determine the primary qualities and the degree of actuality of that audience body. More specifically, the commentary addresses the local genre of “esitystaide”, developed especially in the Helsinki-area during the last 30 years. Neologism “beforemance art” is introduced due to a lack of an English equivalent. Esitystaide/beforemance art is the artistic context of this study and is presented as a genre of art, in which the complicity of audience bodies is a fundamental material of artistic creation. The Finnish word “esitys”, being the medium of the genre of esitystaide, is defined as the sum of a performance and an audience body. The theoretical approach towards audience bodies is presented as impartial with regard to different genres of art, but the practice of research favours esitystaide/beforemance art. This leads to political conclusions that defend the exposed complicity of and the experimental relation to audience bodies which are characteristic for this specific genre. This theoretical argumentation has been developed through an iterative series of 30 drafts and two examined artistic parts, made by the author, as well as through a parapractice of audience membership. The drafts and examined parts are works of esitystaide/beforemance art, in which printed or digital texts are staged in different ways for audiences to read. The works and the thinking developed in them have been significantly affected by dialogues with audience members and their feedback. The commentary discloses how the process of thinking, resulting in the main arguments of the work, has evolved through this artistic research practice and how temporal, spatial, textual and material design of the events has been developed to address more adequately the phenomenon of an audience body. The parapractice of audience membership is introduced as a term describing the attendance of artworks made by others—a way of accumulating knowledge parallel to and yet different from practicing art. The arguments made in the commentary aim to provide conceptual tools for artists, scholars and pedagogues who attend the phenomenon of audience in their work. They can also serve as a basis for further research on the political significance of esitystaide/beforemance art and related art forms. Methodologically, the research offers an example of an iterative and dialogical artistic research practice and its presentation; the relationship between art and theory unfolds as both fruitful and troubled. Through the introduction of the parapractice of audience membership, it argues for using art, equally to the use of bibliographical materials, as reference material of artistic research. Through the use of a Finnish term and its local context as part of concept-creation in English, the work defends the importance of local thinking, which links artistic research to the land upon which it takes form.

Audience Body

the second edition

at New Performance Turku Biennale, Art House Turku

September 2023

In September 2023 Audience Body was performed at New Performance Turku Biennale, curated by Leena Kela and María Villa Largacha. The work was performed at a large space in Art House Turku. Due to the quality of the space, the auditorium was divided into two long rows of chairs, facing each other and situated in front of two long walls with large windows. The work was performed twice during the 9th of September, with a maximum of 70 audience members. The first show took place in the light of the day, while sunset was included in the second. We calculated with Nanni Vapaavuori the right hour for the rays of the setting sun to land on the back wall during the performance. Alexander Furunes Eriksson drew the plans.

Antton Kainulainen setting up the lights.

The painting on the window of the door on the back wall of the space was painted by my late grandmother Helmi Luomi. The hands are most probably Eino Luomi’s, who was my grandfather.

The wooden box contained a mix of soil. Part from Pie Kär’s work Social Soil, in which Pie composted some material remains of the Moving in November festival, part from my home compost. On the soil there was a metal container with ashes from the letters destroyed by the audiences of the first edition of Audience Body in November 2022. I had burned the remains of the letters on the Winter Solstice, on the 21st of December 2022.

The following seven photos from the beforemance itself by Jesper Dolgov / New Performance Turku Biennale.

In the end of the Love Letter, I asked the reader to destroy the letter and leave the remnants somewhere for me to find. The audiences were inspired by this to create a garden of art works of their own.