
How to do things with performance?
In this project, we ask what can be done with performance - what actualises when a performance takes place, when it is documented, and when it is written about. Through these epistemological questions, we address the ontology of performance: in what ways can we understand 'performance' today, as a new materiality, as presence, and in the international, multilingual context where words, documents, and practices connote differently but are shared in online environments. We seek to update the theory of performativity vis à vis new materialist theories of agential realism and non-philosophy.
Miten tehdä asioita esityksellä?
Projektissa kysymme, mitä esityksellä voi tehdä - mitä aktualisoituu kun esitys tapahtuu, kun se dokumentoidaan tai siitä kirjoitetaan. Näiden epistemologisten kysymysten kautta pohdimme esityksen ontologiaa: millä tavoin 'esitys' voidaan ymmärtää juuri nyt, uutena materiaalisuutena, läsnäolona, ja kansainvälisessä monikielisessä kontekstissa, jossa sanat, dokumentaatiot, ja käytänteet ymmärretään eri tavoin mutta jaetaan internetin välityksellä. Tavoitteenamme on päivittää performatiivisuuden teoriaa suhteessa uusmaterialistiseen teoriaan.
Abstract
How to Do Things with Performance? brings together four views on artistic research in performance. By asking what can be done with performance as research, the project partakes in recent discussions in artistic research, in performance philosophy, and performative and performance writing as well as in the emergent discussion of performance studies in Finland.
Through performing research, artistic research defines what is the context or the world where this performance takes place. Hence, a critical attitude towards the political, social, economic, and philosophical premises of research is inherent in the process – not as given, but as produced and articulated in and as the acts of research. Moreover, artistic research does not produce only postulations about the world; rather, its processes and performances will actualise in the world as real and material events.
By focusing on such material-discursive practices, the project tests and develops further ideas related to the agency of matter and to performance, refuting the separation of the material and the textual-discursive. The project therefore continues the critique and rethinking of the meaning of performativity developed by Karen Barad in the tradition from Foucault to Braidotti, albeit with a focus on practical investigations and experiments as well as texts and academic performances. An inherently collaborative project, the project seeks to enact changes in the institutions in which the project takes place: in academia, in art, in archives and museums, in public spaces like libraries, and in relation with the larger socio-economic changes, such as migration and labour. The practical working method of creating performative writing (in the expanded sense) together will lead to joint presentations as well as solo work, to performances and workshops as well as academic publications and symposia.
How to Do Things with Performance?
Miten tehdä asioita esityksellä?

The research team:
2018
2016
Annette Arlander:
“Agential Cuts and Performance as Research”.
In Annette Arlander, Bruce Barton, Melanie Dreyer-Lude, Ben Spatz (eds.) Performance as Research: Knowledge, Methods, Impact. London and New York: Routledge 2018, 133-151.
“Introduction to Future Concerns. Multiple Futures of Performance as Research.”
In Annette Arlander, Bruce Barton, Melanie Dreyer-Lude, Ben Spatz (eds.) Performance as Research: Knowledge, Methods, Impact. London And New York: Routledge 2018, 333-349.


kick off seminar 4th october 2016
First "hoppings" (internal working session) on Monday 10 October, led by Pilvi Porkola and Annette Arlander.
Hanna Järvinen: "Democratic Bodies? Reflections on ‘Postmodern Dance’ in the United States and in Finland" in Nordic Journal of Dance
Jeux, uudelleen kuviteltu, re-imagined
choreography Liisa Pentti,
advisor Hanna Järvinen
Performances in Turku 19-21.10.2016
Performances in Helsinki 4-6.11.2016
Puhetta Performanssista - Conversations on Performance Art
Muu gallery 26.2. 2018, Annette Arlander & Leena Kela
Conference presentation on the Jeux
project at Congress on Research in
Dance & Society of Dance History
Scholars Conference Beyond
Authenticity and Appropriation,
Pomona College, CA
Second "hoppings" (internal working session) on 14th November, led by Tero Nauha and Hanna Järvinen
Pilvi Porkola: Kirjastoesseet osa 1.
(The Library Essays, part 1.)
Thursday 15.12. 2016 at 6 pm and 6.45 pm
Thursday 12.1. 2017 at 6 pm and 6.45
Consept, text, performance, space: Pilvi Porkola
Technical realization: Pauli Riikonen
Place: The Old Library of Maunula

Research Day II: Materiality of and in Performance 2 March 2018
call for presentations http://www.uniarts.fi/en/events/wed-31012018-1135/research-day-ii-materiality-and-performance
A Thought of Performance
Tero Nauha
Published in the Performance Philosophy online journal, Vol. 2, No 2 (2017).
2017
Annette Arlander: "Mitä tekijä voi tehdä?" [What can an author-maker-factor do?]
published in Annette Arlander, Laura Gröndahl and Marja Silde (eds.) Tekijä - teos, esitys ja yhteiskunta [Author - Work, Perfromance and Society]
Hoppings 6.2.207 10 am - 12 noon
room 512 Theatre Academy
presenting: Tero Nauha, Annette Arlander
Annette Arlander: “Performing Landscape – Swinging Together or Playing with projections”.
Body, Space & Technology Journal. Vol.16. http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol16/
(NB. flash needed)

"Lentämisen alkeet" [Learning to Fly]
TOTEM-teatteri, käsikirjoitus ja ohjaus [script and directing] Pilvi Porkola.
Kouluissa kiertävä esitys 6-12 vuotiaille. Ensiesitys 17.1.2017 Kausi 2017.
A performance for children aged 6-12 touring in schools. First performance January 17, 2017.
Information (In Finnish)
http://www.totemteatteri.com/ohjelmisto.html
Hoppings 6 March 10 am to noon at Theatre Academy, room 526.
Hanna Järvinen presented the working process of Jeux - re-imagined.
Recordings from the Second Research Day - Materiality in and of Performance 2 March 2018
Welcome & Opening: Pilvi Porkola, Performing Arts Research Centre (Tutke)
Keynote Rick Dolphijn:How Art Objects
Pauliina Hulkko: Materiality and Performance Dramaturgy Five Years After
Hanna Järvinen: On the Postcolonial Materiality of Dancing Bodies
Tero Nauha: The interval between matter and perception of ‘something’ in a performance
Pilvi Porkola: A Study on Objects
Annette Arlander: Return to the Site of the Year of the Rooster
(no recordings made)
Mirko Nikolić: apparatus x assemblage x common: minoritarian intersections
Jaana Laakkonen: Material(-Discursive) Strangers Demanding for Better (Material-)Discourses!
Max McBride: Becoming Fluid: a Performance Prospect
Julia Adzuki: Resonant Bodies – somatic and sonic ecologies
Jay Mar Albaos: “Becoming” through Artistic Immersion: The Bayanihan in Helsinki
Christiana Bissett & Josh Widera: The Truth of the Matter – Materiality and Inaesthetics
Olga Spyropoulou: Speculative dialogues with matter: being in Conversations
Tero Nauha: Presentation of paper "Digital archives and the learning processes of performance art" at the Digital Humanities in Nordic Countries, March 7-9, University of Helsinki
Mitä esityksellä voi tehdä? [What can be done with perfromance?]
short interview about the project on the Academy of Finland website by Suvi Ruotsi
http://www.aka.fi/fi/akatemia/media/Ajankohtaiset-uutiset/2017/mita-esityksella-voi-tehda/
Hoppings 24 April 10 am to noon at Theatre Academy, room 525.
Annette Arlander invited the participants to create a voice over to her video Year of the Monkey - Tomtebo. Hanna Järvinen invited to re-imagine and play with a historical photo from Jeux.
What is Given?
A three-hour collaborative session by Nauha, Porkola, Järvinen & Arlander at the SAR (Society for Artistic Research) Conference Please specify! at the University of the Arts Helsinki 28-29 April 2017
Tero Nauha: Presentation of paper ”The experience of ‘something’ in performance” at the Arts and Experience, March 26, Aalto-University, Helsinki.
Arlander, A., (2018). Dune Dream - Self-imagining, Trans-corporeality and the Environment. Body, Space & Technology. 17 (1), pp.3-21. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/bst.293
Ice Hole - Live Art Journal Issue # 6
edited by Pilvi Porkola, based on presentations at the kick off seminar in october 2016
Hoppings 8 May 2017 from 9 to 11 am at Theatre Academy, room 615
Pilvi Porkola presented her recent works, Library Essays and Learning to Fly and invited a discussion about them.
"Regurgitated Perspectives" (performance 60 min.)
at the 9th SAR (Society for Artistic Research) conference Artistic Research Will Eat Itself 11th to 13th April 2018, University of Plymouth, UK
A Sermon
A Wake
A Communion
A Hymn
Accessing Performance
A two-day event with contributions by Arlander, Järvinen, Nauha & Porkola at the Artistic Research Pavilion on Giudecca in Venice 17th and 18th May 2017
program research-pavilion-accessing-performance
schedule here
blog post on accessing-performance
more here:
Annette Arlander: "Practicing Art - As a Habit?"
Ruukku Journal Issue 7, 2017.
Pilvi Porkola:
"Elephants Are Always Drawn Smaller Than Life" Writing on a Performance Essay.
GENESIS Helsinki, Helsinki University.
http://www.finlit.fi/en/research/critical-editions-edith/genesis-helsinki-2017#.WXxqHMaB3dQ
Tero Nauha: "A Critical Posture of Performance" at the Dialogues on Dance, Philosophy, and Performance in the Contemporary Neoliberal Moment, June 1-2, University of Coventry.
Tero Nauha: “Fictioning a performance” performance and lecture, ADiE: Talking Thinking Dancing, June 6-8, Dance4, Nottingham.
Tero Nauha: Article "Fictioning and Fabulating the Real" with Ilona Hongisto for the Emerging Affinities: Possible Future of Performative Arts, published by Jagiellonian University Kraków, Poland. Coming out in 2018.
Presentation at Performance Studies International PSI in Hamburg
As part of "Excess and Abundance of Artistic Research" organised by the Artistic Research Working Group. See program on the working group blog
Images, here.
PSi PERFORMANCE AND PHILOSOPHY WORKING GROUP: Philosophy of the Refugee
Amir Aharon, Sara Zaltash (UK), Hilan Bensusan (BEL), Will Daddario, Milton Loayza, Jon McKenzie (USA), Janhavi Dhamankar (IN), Yana Meerzon (CAN), Rima Najdi (DE), Tero Nauha (FIN), Theron Schmidt (AUS), Aneta Stojnic ́ (SRB)
Audio recordings:
"How to do things with Performance?"
Presentation at the Sao Paulo Escola del Teatro 6.7. 19.00
Pilvi Porkola: Library Essays ....
Hanna Järvinen: Jeux re-imagined ....
Annette Arlander: Performing with Trees? (introduction) with screening of The Tide in Kan Tiang
Tero Nauha: The unstable 'fictioning' in performance and philosophy
Performance by Pilvi Porkola Finlandia
12.7. 12.30 Prainha
at IFTR conference Sao Paulo
https://www.iftr.org/news/2016/october/iftr-conference-2017-universidade-de-são-paulo-10-14-july
Presentation at IFTR conference Sao Paulo
Performance Philosophy 11.7. 14.00
Tero Nauha: The unstable 'fictioning' in performance and philosophy
Annette Arlander: How to do things by performing with plants?
Hanna Järvinen: On the Historical Materiality of Performance, Past and Present.
https://www.iftr.org/news/2016/october/iftr-conference-2017-universidade-de-são-paulo-10-14-july
Presentation at IFTR conference Sao Paulo
Body, Space and Performativity 13.7. 14.00
Pilvi Porkola: "Library Essays - from representation of space to performative space."
https://www.iftr.org/news/2016/october/iftr-conference-2017-universidade-de-são-paulo-10-14-july
New Perfomance Turku
7 October 2017
http://newperformance.fi/festival-programme/?lang=en
How To Do Things With Performance -seminar Annette Arlander / Hanna Järvinen / Tero Nauha / Pilvi Porkola Titanik Gallery 4.30 pm to 7 pm
Pilvi Porkola, Nomad Library
http://newperformance.fi/pilvi-porkola-the-nomad-library/?lang=en
Tero Nauha, An Advent of Performance
http://newperformance.fi/tero-nauha-an-advent-of-performance/?lang=en
Arlander, Annette. "Data, Material, Remains”.
In Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Teija Löytönen & Mark Tesar (eds.) Disrupting Data in Qualitative Inquiry. Entanglements with the Post-Critical and Post-Anthropocentric. Peter Lang Publishing 2017,171-182.
Tero Nauha: “A Performance Entangled with Philosophy” Nivel: Poetics of Form, vol. 8. Helsinki: Uniarts Helsinki.
Pilvi Porkola (ed.) Performance Artist's Workbook: On teaching and learning performance art - essays and excersises.
Theatre Academy Helsinki Publication series nro 61.
Press release here
On facebook, here
The Helsinki launch of the book at Muu Gallery on 11 October 2017, info here and here
The book is available as pdf: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/224586
Annette Arlander: Once Again - Video works from Harakka Island and Kilpisjärvi
Muu Gallery 6.10.-12.11.2017 See http://www.muu.fi/site/?p=10612&lang=en
Arlander, Annette. "Maisema, materia ja muutos. Harakan saaren luontokulttuuria dokumentoimassa." [Landscape, Matter and Change. Documenting the Natureculture of Harakka Island]
In Mari Mäkiranta, Ulla Piela and Eija Timonen (eds.) Näkyväksi sepitetty maa. [The Land Narrated Visible] Kalevalaseuran vuosikirja 96. Helsinki: SKS 2017, 23-39.
Hanna Järvinen: "On Archive and Repertoire, Reconstruction and Re-Imagining"
Congress on Research in Dance and Society of Dance History Scholars conference, the inaugural conference of Dance Studies Association
Transmissions and Traces: Rendering Dance
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
19–22 October 2017
http://www.sdhscordconference.org/

Full video here, opening & Bojana Cvejić
Full video here, Katariina Numminen et.al. & Natalie Waerden
Full video here, Hanna Järvinen, Elina Seye & Lea Kantonen
Full video here, Mieko Kanno, Elisabeth Belgrano & Susanna Hast
Full video here, Tero Nauha, Annette Arlander & Pilvi Porkola
2019
Tero Nauha: “From schizoproduction to non-standard artistic research” in The Dark Precursor: Deleuze and Artistic Research. Eds. Paulo de Assis & Paolo Giudici. Leuven: University Press
"Vetäytyminen"
Internal seminar in Riga 8-10. 12. 2017
"Miten tehdä asioita esityksellä - annetuissa (työpaja) olosuhteissa" [How to do things with performance - in given (workshop) circumstances] in TAHITI 3/2017
see whole issue here https://tahiti.journal.fi/issue/view/4820
the text in Finnish as pdf here https://tahiti.journal.fi/article/view/68927/30592
2020
Tero Nauha: "Ajattelun mahdollinen talous"
[The possible economy of thinking]
In Mustekala 4/2017, Vol 69. Issue on Taide, työ ja kritiikki [Art, Work and Criticism]
Annette Arlander: “Calling the dragon - The five avant-gardes today?” Synnyt 3/2017, 1-12.
https://wiki.aalto.fi/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=128679213
Hanna Järvinen & Liisa Pentti: Koreografian ja historiankirjoituksen uudelleenkuvittelua [Re-imagining choreography and history writing]. Tiede ja Edistys 4/2017, 318-334.
Annette Arlander & Mika Elo: “Ekologinen näkökulma taidetutkimukseen” [An Ecological Perspective on Research in the Arts]. Tiede ja Edistys 4/2017, 335-346.
Annette Arlander: “Performing with the Weather”. Global Performance Studies Issue 1.2. Performance Climates http://gps.psi-web.org/issue-1-2/performing-with-the-weather/
2018 continues here
**