On the Potential of Exercises in Live Art Pedagogy

Kristina Junttila

This exposition is a web of exercises which have been part of different participatory performances, -installations and -workshops. The projects were undertaken during the years of 2014–2019 and are part of my artistic pedagogical research about the potential of exercises in live art. By extricating exercises from their original context and placing them in a rhizomatic map alongside other exercises, I want to examine exercises as an important tool in creating the future of live art and new realities. A tool that can be used to create new performance art works and imagining the future. The exercises in live art pedagogy has potentials in imagining and creating new realities. Each exercise can also have value as an artwork in themselves, as a performance event score. The exercises in this exposition can be looked upon as traces of earlier works, and by cross-contextualising the exercises I look for how they are interrelated and what the materiality or technique of an exercise can be. In this cross-contextualising I look for the agency of the different exercises. I have selected the active performative agents that best characterise fo the exercises. These are the formulation, objects, performer, audience, place, and time as such agents.

MAP OF

EXERCISES

This is the map of exercises. The exercises have been developed for different particpatory performances, installations and workshops from 2014 - 2019. The exercises are clustered according to which project they merge from. By holding the hover over the title of the project, you can read a short synopsis of the work the exercise derived from.

Further, I am looking for how the exercises are interrelated with each other apart from through the specific projects or context. Each exercise is complex and consists of different performative agents. By cross-contextualizing the exercises, I look at similarities and differences of how they are mediated. Based on this I have analysed which performative agents that repeats as dominating. The performative agents that I emphasize are the formulation, objects, performer, audience, place and time. Each agent has a colourcoding on the map, you can click on it and read more in the page agents in exercises.

TIME as performative agent

PLACE

as performative agent

AUDIENCE

as performative agent

PERFORMER as performative agent

MATERIAL

as performative agent

FORMULATION as performative agent

Maths exercise: figure out how likely it is that you will quit high school if you start today.

Find a text from the book. Read this text to the person next to you.

Tag on the chairs with markers.

Sit on a red chair and sleep.

Talk with Wilde, the youth, on Skype.

Go to the audience seating and take a groupie for the Facebook-chat.

Write a list of what you want to learn.

Hang out with Linda

Learn how to make fortune cups and tell the future to a friend.

Call one of your parents and tell them that you are going to quit school/your work. After a couple of minutes you tell them that this is just an exercise in quitting.

Describe a day at school by using emojis. Send this as a message to a friend or put a ring around the emojis you would have used.

Exercise in not quitting. Tape yourself to a green chair.

Exercise in not quitting.

Material: tape and unfinished article

Create a performance which is meant for only one viewer at a time.

SPEND THE DAY WITH YOUR CHILDREN

Go to Rakel, the sound designer. Find a text and read it into the microphone.

Music exercise: Compose music to the text. The song can be played on Rakels mini-keyboard

Sit at a place where you can feel the weather. Set the alarm on 7 minutes. Feel the weather until the alarm sets off.

Go together two and two. Change clothes with each other. Be in each others clothes for a while, for an hour or for 24 hours.

Walk for an hour with no purpose. Let yourself be disturbed.

Do an impossible action with an object

Observe a day of silence

(also written)

Make a portrait of yourself and plan how you destroy it.

Be a living sculpture as a comment to the site for an hour

Tell about yourself through presenting what is in your bag

Count in cycles of 7 in your mind through the whole day, no matter what you do.

Do an action which adds something to a chosen place

Do not worry about performance for 8 hrs

Don’t show up for the class. Document what you did instead and show it to the class later.

Reconstruct a picture of yourself

Write a list of all your identities

Exercise for playfulness

Before the lecture:

Grab a cup of coffee

Find a place in the building where you like to be

Sit there while you drink your coffee

Say your name and tell a story that relates to your name

Time. Use 15 minutes to write your name on an envelope without letting the pen leave the paper. You can make a detour.

Experiment with all possible actions you can do with white sheets of paper. Write a list of these actions. Make a composition of the actions. Perform.

Find an action that leaves visible traces. Repeat this action.

Silent walk. Wear earplugs and walk a different way in the morning than your normal route. What do you notice?

Write a performance score for someone else in class which is going to be performed for an invisible or non-human audience. Put it in an envelope and on the outside of the envelope you write time and place for the performance to happen.

Imagine a stage and an audience.

You are going to perform something that is very important for you.

What do you do?

Stand under the bridge. Close your eyes. Listen.

Climb the fence and up into the little tree.

LINE

draw a line with a stick while walking

FOR MANY

walk in a long line by holding on to each other

IN A HURRY

put your alarm on 6 minutes and do all the exercises during that time

BACKWARDS

walk backwards the whole way

NATURE

pick a stone for each tenth meter

Ask someone how they wish this place to be in about ten years.

Walk backwards while looking towards the shipyard.

FEET

walk with blue protection covers on your feet.

INBALANCE

turn fast around for one minute before you walk. Repeat this before you find your balance again.

AVOID PEOPLE

hide at the nearest hiding place as soon as you see someone else

Take a selfie with the Shipyards sign in the background.

AFFECTIONATE

give all the houses a hug while you pass them

DISTANCE

walk as close as possible to anything that interests you

Smell the plants. Taste and see if you think it smells good.

ASK FOR ADVICE

ask people you meet if they can tell you where the closest playground is

Sit down. Write a text message to someone you know and describe what you see.

Throw stones into the water. Throw further for each stone you throw.

RIGHT WING

let anything that is blue lead your way

LOW

crawl or walk very low.

LEFTIST

let anything that is red lead your way

FOR TWO

tie yourself together before you walk

A SEA OF TIME

stop and look out to the sea, often.

FLY

make a paperplane, throw it and let it lead you by throwing it in front of you

THE EAR

walk with ear protection

BOAT

count how many boats you see

READ OUT ALOUD TO YOUR NEIGHBOUR: "I’m thinking of silence, cause at daytime it´s almost never completely silent, but when i´m supposed to sleep it´s silence enough to hear my own thoughts. What’s stupid about my thoughts, is that most of them are negative. Mostly I’m thinking of the stuff that stresses me the most." Youth 15 years

HIGH

walk as little as possible on the ground

GO TO THE SECOND FLOOR AND HAVE A PILLOW FIGHT. You are three people who get this message at the same time. When you are ready, put your alarm on 3 minutes and start.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT: Are you afraid of dying when you cannot sleep?

GO TO THE BIG BLACK ROOM ON SECOND FLOOR. Find yourself a place to sit or lay down. Just stay there and hang out with sleepless youth.

Shades of Coffee

Order coffee if you are

drained

social

angry

charmed

fed up

curious

liberated

anxious

adventurous

and see how it affects the strength of your coffee

FED UP

Revolution

Make a revolution in Kahviland.

Argue why one should stop drinking coffee.

The sound of a vacuum cleaner can have a calming effect on restless people. TURN ON ONE OF THE VACUUM CLEANERS IN THE STAIRWAY AND LEAVE IT RUNNING.

DRAINED

Energy Gathering Point

Sit down on the sun chair

put the coffee cup onto the center of your body

breath

feel your strength returning

A giraffe needs only two hours of sleep, while a brown bat needs almost 20 hours of sleep every day and night. How much do you sleep? ASK SOMEONE ELSE THE SAME QUESTION.

Are you sleepy? FIND A SINK AND SPLASH SOME WATER IN YOUR FACE.

Anxious

Do you want to feel better?

Enjoy your cup of coffee

Show it to the world

Hold a rainbow in the sky.

Take a sip of coffee,

take a selfie,

smile!

GRAB THE MEGAPHONE ON THE KITCHEN SHELF ON THE FIRST FLOOR AND ANNOUNCE "I CANNOT SLEEP!"

CALL SOMEONE who knew you as a child and ask how you slept when you were a child.

On first floor, in the room furthest in, I have hidden a bag of candy. You are five people recieving this message. BE FIRST! RUN ALONG AND FIND THE BAG OF CANDY!

ADVENTUROUS

Coffee refuel

1 take away cup – you are in Kuhmoinen

4 cups – you are in Lappenranta

8 cups – you are in St. Petersburg

70 cups – you are in Novosibirsk

142 cups – you are in Bejing

LIBERATED

My Ode to Freedom

A shirt, a sock, a scarf, a shoe,

take one of your clothes,

raise it up the flagpole.

Drink the coffee as an ode to freedom

lower the cloth.

MENU:

VIDEO / of Exercise in not Quitting

TEXT / on the Potential of Exercises

MAP / of Exercises (this page)

AGENTS / in Exercises

VIDEO / of Exercise in Quitting

The Cow is gaming on the first floor. JOIN THE COW.

Welcome to “Sleepless”! During your stay here, I will disturb you with several text-messages, so keep your phone within reach and with the sound switched on. Messages with LARGE LETTERS are actions for you to do.

Exercise in quitting.

Material: tape and finished article

CURIOUS

I want to try everything

Open the hatch. Peek down.

Drink your coffee with a person on the other side

SOCIAL

Small talk

Take two cups of coffee and settle at the coffee table

1. someone is sitting at your table: offer one cup of coffee and spill one cup of coffee to the table. Tell what you see in the coffee smudge.

2. the table is empty: spill one cup coffee on the table, call a friend and tell what you see in the coffee smudge. Enjoy the other cup of coffee.

ANGRY

Sweet revenge

Think about Him / Her

Imagine Him / Her behind the glass

Throw your coffee at Him / Her

Tip

Tip