Esitys 3:2010 - Esitys-lehti - Todellisuuden tutkimuskeskus

ESITYS
8€
3/2010
1
ES
Published by
Todellisuuden tutkimuskeskus
Nahkahousuntie 3
00200 Helsinki
www.todellisuus.fi
ESITYS nro 10
3/2010
The
“I would like to suggest that each artistic discipline, writing,
or rather literature, among them, with their specific
histories and developments and points of collapse and
regeneration should be read more and explored more, not
merely according to their specific discourses and histories”
– Caroline Bergvall
editors in chief Pilvi Porkola
and Johanna MacDonald
editorial staff Anna-Mari Karvonen,
Tuomas Laitinen, Katariina Numminen,
Janne Pellinen, Janne Saarakkala
“Firstly, writing and reading are acts and events: they have
to be done and to operate through time, just as other
‘performances’ do. Secondly, the doing of reading (I’ll leave
writing to one side) itself does things to the bodies that
read. Thirdly, writing is socially and historically contingent:
on the fullest possible context of semiotic behaviour, on
social traffic and interchange, on the already-written,
on the being written, on the means of production and
reproduction of writing, on the means of dissemination, on
who reads, on networks of exchange between readers”
– John Hall
graphic design and lay-out Ville Tiihonen
printed by Miktor oy
Editorial....................................................................................................................................................................3
Reality Research Center is a new kind of
’performing arts garage’ in Finland. It is run by
theatre/performing arts professionals
who are devoted to question the prevailing
concept of reality.
Performance Writing.......................................................................................................................................... 4
ESITYS is member of Kultti ry
A letter to people of Finland..........................................................................................................................14
Issue 3/2010 is made in collaboration with ANTIfestival and it’s exceptionally in English.
Numero 3/2010 on tehty yhteistyössä ANTIfestivaalin kanssa ja tämä numero ilmestyy
poikkeuksellisesti englanniksi.
www.antifestival.com
Caroline Bergvall
Do Not Ignore: Order-words in domestic and public spaces................................................................ 8
John Hall
“Thank you for inviting me back after my clumsiness of the
past, and I hope I will be less awkward with you this time. I
hope that suaveness is not what you need most and that any
awkwardness that I cannot banish will be seen for”
– Heather Kappalow
Heather Kappalow
Home for Shadows...............................................................................................................................................16
Maija Hirvanen
“It’s worst when you get whipped in a group,” the Children
say to you, “because then you never know when it’s coming.”
“Yeah, I hate that.” “Yeah,” and in the same breath, “Can
you draw me a horse?”
– Johanna MacDonald
[ ] and Lies.................................................................................................................................................... 20
Mary Paterson
Notebook................................................................................................................................................................ 22
Leena Kela
“Are you longing to be understood?”
– Joel Verwimp
experiences, discussions, documents
Hell is other people SIGNA: Salo, Copenhagen......................................................................................... 24
“Looking back, I cannot find a preposition that links
writing to the live events without suggesting a mistaken
hierarchy of place and time. Writing about or on the festivals
marks the absence of something, at the same time as the
document usurps its position. Writing from performance
relegates the live to the inspiration for a distinct textual
event; writing with performance suggests a reciprocal
relationship that does not exist. And all of them ignore the
difference between the simultaneous time of experience,
and the linear time of text.”
– Mary Paterson
Johanna MacDonald
In Search of the Future Theater................................................................................................................... 38
Tuomas Laitinen
Odd in the woods................................................................................................................................................ 30
ESITYS SAI
KUNNIAMAININNAN KULTIN
LAATULEHTIKILPAILUSSA 2010
ESITYS@TODELLISUUS.FI
WWW.TODELLISUUS.FI/ESITYS
VUOSITILAUS 4 NROA 28€
TILAUKSET NETISTÄ
editorial
Pilvi Porkola
SF: Tampereella performanssi voi hyvin.................................................................................................... 32
Janne Saarakkala
Artventures: Pride – lisää kaasua............................................................................................................... 36
“Vihaan hippejä.”
– Masi Eskolin
Masi W. Eskolin
Ikoni: Minä ja Stuart Hall............................................................................................................................... 38
Suvi Parrilla
2
3
Johanna MacDonald and Pilvi Porkola
chief editors
T
his keynote was written in 1996 to open the first
Symposium of Performance Writing that I co-organised with Ric Allsopp at Dartington College of
Arts in the UK. Practitioners from performance, poetry, music, theatre, installation arts, digital arts met
for 3 days to share thoughts and ideas about this new development
within writing practice and its pedagogy. Writing was confirming
itself as an artform no longer tied only to literary history and its
models, but also to other arts and performance models. It was also
responding to distribution and context developments within what
is now called social media. Nearly fifteen years on, one might wonder why it is useful to reproduce such a text. For the simple reason
that the questions asked here are still live, still vibrant and still ask
relevant speculative and methodological questions about the cultural placing of writing when it bridges from the literary to other
cultural environments. It is certainly not a coincidence that at the
same time as it is being printed here in Finland, it is also being relaunched as part of a conversation among performance writers in
England (through the Live Art Development Agency in London).
The role of writing is connected to the value one places on language,
and as such it is an intensely charged socio-politial issue. Especially
at present where anything that does not follow rules is deemed to
be foreign. Literature of course has long been a foreigner to, or at
odds with social practices of language. But the fact is that today
many publishing houses are keeping writers (and readers) from exploring language and writing in forms that are unusual, powerful,
uneasy, unfinished, uncontrolled, and difficult to house on the conventional page. Times are a-changing. A page makes a paper-plane.
Writers need to keep on taking their methods and fields of production to environments where they can find for them a relevant scope
of activity. Language is a powerful tool for change and investigation, and must not be left to stiffen with conventions and prejudice.
Caroline Bergvall, London, August 2010.
T
his being a keynote, an opening gesture I won’t dwell
too long nor go into too much depth. I suppose it will
suffice here to air a number of questions and provide some
overall pointers as a general background for the papers and
panels and work we’re going to be engaging with for the
next two days.
it is none of the above. Mostly you might think that the dialectics of either/or induce a slight irritation, some vague deja-heard. That at a deeper level what is at stake might be less
a question of classification than one of applied definition.
I
wouldn’t like you to think that as soon as I read “This
is not a pipe” I go “Oh Performance Writing”. Well, I
might. But bearing in mind that, for all the push of shove
of postmodern practice and discourse, the overall historical
classifications (music, literature, theatre et al) are proving
all the time less appropriate to read formally and place critically the kind of language work which is being produced,
some concerted excavation of the intradisciplinarity of
much textual work, or work which features writing in one
form or another, is called for. To establish through and beyond the literary, a broader understanding of writing, its
structural and functional strategies.
P
art of the pleasure in wishing to establish cross-disciplinary dialogues around a resonance such as Performance
Writing is the fact that we all, as practitioners and critics
meet here in the knowledge that only the very diversity of
at times seemingly incompatible starting-points, in both
theory and practice, can turn the possibility of Performance
Writing, beyond a BA degree, into a culturally networked
area of investigation.
I
suppose this is the time to ask why are we here, exactly.
I think we all have a vague sense of what Performance Writing might entail, which we can link back to our
own work and approaches but what of the overall idea that
brings us here. Is there an overall idea. What is Performance Writing.
I
would like to suggest that each artistic discipline, writing, or rather literature, among them, with their specific
histories and developments and points of collapse and regeneration should be read more and explored more, not
merely according to their specific discourses and histories,
with the inevitable narrowing down and cocooning which
ensues, but as so many criss-crossings of sophisticated skills
borne out of these histories and questioned through the
mental and material constructs of textual contemporaneity.
I
think that’s a good starting-point so let’s do a Gertrude
Stein on it and talk about it for what it is not. This won’t
stabilise any answer particularly but it will hopefully guarantee that it doesn’t get looped into itself prior to the question
being fully asked. So, what is Performance Writing not?
Is Performance Writing not writing?
Is it writing which performs not writes?
Is it not performance which writes?
But then does writing not perform?
And when does writing not perform? And what kind of
not performance are we talking about? Is it not performance to write or is it not writing to not perform?
T
he contemporaneity of the notion of Performance
Writing is that it can only locate itself as part of the
atomisation of literature, music, theatre and so on. In that,
of course, it inscribes itself in line with the aesthetics of
suspicion, disruption, and reappraisal which have to such a
large extent determined the frame of mind of this century’s
effusion of experimentality. In this sense, Performance
Writing needs to highlight the many kinds of tensions
which arise from the concerted pooling of differing writing
practices. And explore the kinds of relationship text-based
work entertains when developed in conjunction with other
media and other discourses.
S
KEYNOTE: WHAT DO WE MEAN BY PERFORMANCE WRITING ?
ome examples. Is it not Performance Writing to site
some text in a space or on a wall or on electronic boards
or is that not installation art? or is that not public art? Is it
not Performance Writing to treat spoken writing as part
of a sound composition or is that not music? or not sound
art? Is it not Performance Writing to inscribe words on a
canvas, spray them on a wall, layer text into photographs
or carve them into wood, steel or other solids or is that not
visual art? or is that not graffiti art? or is that not poetry? Is
it not Performance Writing to use text as part of a bodyrelated piece or is that not performance art or is that not
dance or theatre? Is it not Performance Writing to bleed
a word into flesh or is that not Jenny Holzer? or is that not
tattoo art? or is that not activism? Not is it Performance
Writing to generate text for the page or for the screen or
for a book or is that not video art? or is that not literature?
or is that not visual art? or is it electronic art?
T
he act of writing becomes then as much a question
open to literary analysis as one open to the broader investigation of the kinds of formal and ideological strategies
which writers and artists develop textually in response or in
reaction to their own time and their own fields.
I
’m aware that much has been and is being written along
those lines. But it all remains generally dispersed across
so many fields and tucked away as so many side-projects
that, unless one happens to make cross-disciplinary textwork a specific area of research, the likelihood is that much
will escape one’s attention.
Y
I
ou might be starting to think that Performance Writing is all of the above, or you might start to think that
4
t is also important to point out that, although much theoretical and poetic work has been done, this is especially
5
I
true of exploratory poetry and deconstructive philosophy,
to widen the literary debate and incorporate to it various
notions of materiality (and the materiality of writing is an
essential aspect of Performance Writing), it is largely true
to say that the whole approach to writing remains in these
fields primarly located on the page. This ignores and cuts
short the debate on all writerly work which extends beyond
the page.
don’t know whether the idea of Performance Writing
can in itself provide the means to instate theoretical
grounding and clarity of practice in the cacophony of textual cross-disciplinarity but I certainly hope it provides a
step on the way.
S
o rather than entertaining ideas of aesthetic orgy or formal fusion, anything goes as long as there’s something
like a bit of something which looks like writing in it and
leaving it at that, my sense is that Performance Writing
would wish to inscribe itself within debates that revel in
conflict.
T
he poet and critic Johanna Drucker points out that if
much post-structuralist analysis has usefully conceptualised the idea of textuality and textual performativity, it
still falls short of addressing and critiquing the range and
scope of materials available to writing and how this range
may affect the very idea of writing.
C
onflict at a formal as well as an ideological level. The
conflicts and tensions at work within and between any
of the elements a writer may choose to explore, sometimes
collaboratively. The conflicts and tensions exposed by the
expressed or subextual semantics of such a piece. The way
it resonates at a local-subjective as well as a wider cultural
level. Performance Writing would be about detail. A close
attention to the workings, the sitings and the political dimensions of atomised writing practices - whether on or beyond the page.
M
arcel Broodhaers’s work is a useful case in point. Indeed a large part of his work concerned itself, sometimes at a sarcastic level, with the investigation of poetic
means and poetic conventions. However, he chose to do
so by locating a writerly activity not primarely on the page
but into objects and spatial constructs. He would locate the
points where objects and words, syntax and architecture apply direct, difficult pressure onto each other. Both in intent
and product, his work displays an awareness of the act of
writing and of its points of fission. So is the literary field’s
indifference to his work an example of literary blindspot?
Is it lack of vocabulary? I would argue that along with the
development of a shared terminology, it is a shift in attitude
with regards to what defines the writerly that we should
wish to operate.
I
t is in this complex and responsive reading of the performance of writing that one can most clearly make
sense of this field, not primarily as a unified academic discipline, not even necessarily as one delineated, hybridic
artform, but rather as an area of joint practical and critical
investigation of the many uses writing and language are being put to and push themselves into.
In this sense, Lorna Simpson’s stylised photographic
combines of portraiture and verbal cliches, Heiner Goebbels’ text-sound theatricalities, Gary Hill’s conceptual
use of text and video as sculptural environments, or Susan
Howe’s acute paginations of some of her poetic texts, to
name but a few, do not merely read as inherently divergent
or potentially parallel activities. More importantly, they
read in relation to the act of writing, the performance of
writing itself.
The extent to which its litterarity is sine qua non (or not)
to both the process and production of the overall piece
whatever its media and context of reception.
A
number of debates in the visual and performing arts as
well as in cultural studies have applied deconstructive
theories to question and articulate the importance of the
contextualisation of practice, the siting of work, the locations (and relocations) of identity in the contemporary arts.
It is questions like these which could provide the extra-literary pointers we need to get to grips with the wider implications contained within the idea of Performance Writing.
Hence the textual does not only throw up the question of
the literary, it also urgently prompts an interrogation of the
impact the use of writing applies on visual, sonic or movement arts. And vice-versa.
It is also paramount that the impact of this cross-fertilisation does not remain fixated at a formal level, but that it
acutely and insistently, one might say intravenously, makes
a point of examining the personal motivations and urgencies for work, the ways in which such forms are used and
function in their relation to social, cultural modes of identification and, often oppressive, models for representation.
Indeed, writing’s link with language inevitably forces the
appraisal of writing as so many activities which at one level
or other grapple with the psycho-social and political violence of any collective language, however localised.
A
s Susan Hiller could have said, a frame is not square
by nature. Similarly could one not argue that there is
more, not less, to writing than the page, more, not less, to
writing than language, more, not less, to text treatment than
syntactical or morphological experimentation. And that to
engage with writing in such extensive material terms, both
as writers and readers, is what inscribes the performance of
writing. A performance of itself at a relational level.
Y
ou might think that all of this really provides a very
stretched out definition of performance. And doesn’t
6
fully address the writing traditions which come out of theatricality and are still being carried through in much live
work. Should theatrical writing be privileged in our appraisal of Performance Writing on account of its long-standing
history? If anything this does make writing’s relation to performance more strenuous and difficult to disengage from
established conventions of production.
increasingly highlights the tensions between the visual and
the verbal aspects of writing. One could take this further
and say that practitioners which engage with a process of
writing inevitably forward an intervention of language and
of reading which destabilises and refocusses the processes
of looking and/or of listening.
O
f course, we might start to wonder whether writing
can function as a sound-effect or as a mark-making
device. Whether writing can be fetishised into a word-thing
or a word-sound. Whether reading can be turned into looking and listening.
T
his is a long debate. Indeed, how do we clarify the
ambiguity between performed textuality and spoken
writing. Perhaps I could sketch it out in terms of process.
What is the process of live performance in its relation to
writing. Is it writing’s role, in that context, to function as
a guiding background, as the blueprint of a live piece? This
would mean that the text remains absorbed, subsumed by
the live performance.
I
said earlier that writing’s link with language inevitably
forces the appraisal of writing as an activity which grapples with the psycho-social and political dimensions of any
collective language. Only at the risk of turning writing into
a look or a decorative device can this be played down.
W
hat if the writing were to openly interfere with the
live piece? What if it were to force a disjunction
between performing a hidden text and performing writing?
Can one turn the hour-glass and argue for the specificities of a live writing (I use the term with caution) where the
performer’s presence is cut open, emptied out, absented
by the writing’s own presencing (mise-en-presence), much
like late-Beckett, The Wooster Group, Laurie Anderson,
Forced Entertainment’s Speak Bitterness would seek to
instigate. I remain excited by this idea of a live situation
where writing is another performer and as such needs to be
addressed explicitely. During and as part of the live piece.
W
n other words, the performance of writing would be
this observation which seeks to locate expressedly the
context and means for writing, both internal and external
to language, whether these be activated for and through a
stage, for and through a site, a time-frame, a performer’s
body, the body of a voice or the body of a page.
riting questions the authority of language with
language, through language, as well as beyond language. No performance of writing takes place without it.
This is part of the responsibility which comes with writing.
What makes writing, writing.
For at its most direct, writing (whether visual or spoken)
takes its cue from the social body of language, however distended this cue may be.
This may generate or force up formal, ideological unreadabilities, aesthetics of erasure or aesthetics of presencing,
extreme dislocations, specific realignments of language
through writing which does occur as a response to the psycho-social situations it highlights or undermines. Whatever
the context or materials, the overt tensions and dynamics
between language and writing are difficult to ignore. So can
language be used as an image, can the text function as an
object? Is that still writing?
T
W
I
his does not really imply spontaneous and magical multi-layering, simultaneity of process and product, cooking and eating at one and the same time. But it does rest
with the idea that everything about a piece of work is active
and carries meaning. Any treatment, any font, any blank,
any punctuation, any intonation, any choice of materials,
any blob, however seemingly peripheral to the work, is part
of the work, carries it, opens it up, closes it in, determines
it. This is its performance. Its points of impact.
hat of language occupies the writing, what enables
it, what prevents it, what forces its relocations,
what makes a piece readable, what occupies the making and
the performing of writing, and what occupies the reading,
the reception of writerly activities?
W
ith this, I’ll ask again: Where does a text start?
where does it not end?
*****
S
o where does the text start or end? In the case of a text
for the page, does it start and end at the words? at the
fonts? at the presentation lay-out? at the edges of the page?
or in the case of a text-sound piece, does the text start and
end at the recitation? at the vocal treatments? at the overall composition? How are we to articulate this? The critic
Marjorie Perloff talks of contemporary poetry as an activity which increasingly defers the activity of reading. Which
Friday 12th April 1996
7
DO
NOT
DO
NOT
IGNORE:
IGNORE:
Order-words
in
domestic and public
spaces
MM
any, at least in the UK, will recognise the combination of design and
wording in Figure 1 and some will do so with a spasm of irritation. For
those lucky enough not to recognise it, it cites the kind of Penalty
Charge Notice that is issued for a parking offence on a public highway
in the UK. Other words in the notice can include this: IT IS AN OFFENCE FOR AN UNAUTHORISED PERSON TO REMOVE
OR INTERFERE WITH THIS NOTICE. For those on the receiving end this is a threatening and unsettling message, with details of an unwelcome fine
almost certainly in the packet. The negative command, DO NOT, usually in the focal
centre of these notices, is not only unsettling; it is also, I find, unsettled, as a language
game. There is so much missing, which relies on implicit authority to fill it out. It is an
order and only authorised persons can issue orders such as these. Who commands? Ignore what? Who is addressed? In practice, these answers are provided by the situation,
by the context. Southwark Council in London (for example) commands; the notice
itself must not be ignored; the owner or driver of the car is the implied You.
A
t the end of this article I shall offer a few other recent visual texts that I have made
that also borrow the design conventions and orders of discourse of signs in public
places. Before that I shall look at some examples of sources for works such as this and
I shall approach these in the light of the topic of the 2010 ANTI festival – public space
– and also of the title of Esitys, which I am told translates as performance.
M
y visual poems tend to relate to the domains of both writing and (visual) art, but not
in any obvious sense to performance. Their licence for access to a journal bearing
that name lies, I hope, in the term performance writing, which is becoming increasingly
8
familiar now and is intended to offer a multiple
perspective on performance and the related term,
performativity. Firstly, writing and reading are
acts and events; they have to be done and to operate through time, just as other ‘performances’ do.
Secondly, the doing of reading (I’ll leave writing
to one side) itself does things to the bodies that
read. Thirdly, writing is socially and historically
contingent: on the fullest possible context of semiotic behaviour, on social traffic and interchange,
on the already-written, on the being-written, on
the means of production ‘and reproduction of
writing, on the means of dissemination, on who
reads, on networks of exchange between readers.
No writing or reading can cleanse itself of the pictures it has already seen, the songs and music it
has heard, the performed stories it has witnessed.
Performance writing, as a term, acknowledges
that writing is embedded in almost very aspect of
social, cultural and economic life. The literary is
only one provenance and affiliation1.
A
bove all, perhaps, I am hoping here that the
term performance writing will bring together
the (common-)sense idea of performance associated with music, dance, theatre or live art with the
idea of the performative developed by the ‘ordinary
language’ philosopher, J.L. Austin. Put at its simplest, ‘speech acts’ exert a force, some more than
others. They ‘do things’.2 This widely influential
idea was taken up by Deleuze and Guattari in A
Thousand Plateaus as ‘order-words’:
F
or fifteen years or so I have been particularly interested in the
performativity of symbolic objects, especially photographs and
cards, in domestic spaces, and have produced texts that are intended to play alongside these4. While ANTI Festival’s expressed
interest is in public rather than domestic space, I see each as being
understood as not the other: contemporary ideas of public space assume the co-existence of spaces with different degrees and types of
privacy – closed or locked doors, coming off, as it were, the public
square, or even the willed privacy signalled by the act of reading
a book – as against a poster, advertisement or shop-window – in
a public place. Does the domestic belong to the order of the ‘private’ or is it a third order, firmly linked to coupledom, family, and
the idea of ‘private life’ (with the workplace as a possible fourth)?
Within contemporary capitalist societies the home, going back at
least to the home-delivery of newspapers, has become the primary
receptor site for public address systems. For my purposes, what is
at stake is the interrelation of these differing orders of space more
than their separate identities. What happens, for example, when
the conventions and protocols of one are dragged across into another, either literally or virtually?
I
do not myself live in a city5. I live two or three kilometres outside
a small town, big enough to have a handful of shops, a post office,
four pubs, several places of worship and a one-way traffic system.
My nearest neighbours are a five-minute walk away. The road that
goes past my house has no name – at least to my knowledge – and
yet it is a public highway. That means that anyone can use it and
also means that its use is subject to regulation and etiquette.
1) For fuller discussions of performance writing, see, for example, my Thirteen
Ways of Talking About Performance Writing (Plymouth: Plymouth College of
O
rder-words do not concern commands only,
but every act that is linked to statements by a
“social obligation”.3 (Deleuze 1992, 79)
T
his leaves open the familiar double sense of
order (as verb): (1) to give an order; and (2) to
behave in an orderly (socially responsible) manner. The first will always imply power and authority; the second implies co-operative acts of social
cohesion, including consensual protocols for networked behaviour.
Art and Design, 2008) and the Performance Writing entry in the A Lexicon
issue of Performance Research Journal (Vol 11, No 3, September 2006, pp. 8991, where other references are given.
2) Austin, J.L. How To Do Things With Words Oxford: Clarendon, 1962
3) Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
schizophrenia London: Continuum, 1992, p.79
4) Examples of and links to others can be found on my own website: www.
johnhallpoet.org.uk
5) I have in mind this, from the brochure for ANTI 2010: ‘For this edition of ANTI
we concentrate on how artists working with writing and language navigate,
read and inhabit the city.’
9
T
here are four publicly sited texts within a few metres of my front
door, with one of them tucked away in the summer growth of a
hedge6. The first example is the name of the house, carved into a
stone that is part of the wall. Names make up a significant element
in public texts: places, streets, businesses (often also the names of
people), buildings. Names in public places are always performatives, they ‘do things’. In this case, the name on the wall gives a
nameable identity and means of reference to a habitation, a unique
address for letters and visitors, a way-mark for those passing on,
a short-hand for all the associations with the domestic location, a
metonym for much more than the building.
Figure 5
Figure 1: Do Not Ignore
T
he second text is a road sign (fig 2), a form designed to communicate instantly, with no need for conscious reading, using diagrammatic coding, simplified pictorialism, and writing only where
necessary and preferably in an international code. In this case the
written elements are both the number and percentage sign and the
assumption of a left-to-right reading to indicate an ascent rather
than descent. The red triangle is an international convention for
a broad category of warning signs. Warnings can be interpreted as
commands or instructions but they are often milder and contingent: you are expected to adjust your behaviour in readiness but are
not explicitly ordered to. At one extreme they are indeed orders; at
the other they are merely informative. Public space must contain
due warning if only to protect those legally responsible for its order.
ig 4 is the third example. It combines the coded diagrammatic
and pictorial elements of bright yellow, black triangle, jagged
arrow sign for high voltage, and a simplified drawing of a falling
(male) body, with two verbal phrases. The first, DANGER OF
DEATH, is a warning; the second, KEEP OFF, is a command that
follows from the warning and, like Do Not Ignore, the command
is silently completed by the position of the notice8. There are two
other poles in the privately owned space of my garden, which also
carry these warnings and commands. Who is authorised to issue
such commands? The authority goes without saying.
T
Figure 6
Figure 2
T
he bottom of the slope signalled by this sign is also a sharp bend.
The combination of slope and bend has contributed to several
accidents over the years, mostly of cars coming downhill in slippery
conditions. There is no warning sign from above about either slope
or bend. Fig 37 shows the missing bend sign: no word, no number to
indicate tightness of curve. In the terminology of C.S. Peirce, the
thick line operates iconically, mimicking the curve in the road. The
pointed end is at least in part ‘symbolic’ within the same system of
terms, relying for its indication of direction on a widely held convention; so widely held, indeed, that many would probably think of
it too as iconic – though metaphorically so – invoking an arrow and
its direction of flight. Various senses of direction and directionality – command and orientation – are in play.
F
he other immediately local example, drawn on to hint at something of a typology and also to make the point that no one has
to go very far to start ‘reading’ public space even if they live in a
remote rural part, is the bunker in fig 5, placed there last winter by
the authority responsible for road safety in the area. The category
is that of the label on a container that identifies concealed contents. Even though Grit and Salt are concrete nouns and not proper
names, there is some resemblance between this label and signs announcing village names. An enclosed container must have a means
of entry – a lid, a door, a gate, a boundary. The name-plate for the
village is not only an endlessly repeatable naming ceremony; it also
marks the point of entry and implies a boundary.
W
Figure 3
Figure 7
alking eastwards, the only reading matter for 200 metres is
one house-name. Then I reach the top of a hill where there is a
cross-roads, a place for decisions about direction, at least by strangers. The multi-directional signpost (fig 6), readable from all sides,
features the upright name that locates it and horizontal names of
places in am indicated direction and at a stated distance. Far from
operating as commands, these work within the logic of if-then: if
you wish to get to Scorriton, then turn right and continue for two
miles. Such signs are usually emotionally neutral, not intended to
promote desire or fear, though the indications of distance can be
either encouraging or disheartening and the brown cycling signs
supposedly indicate pleasurable activity.
6) Do sociologist and market researchers yet use a standardised measure of public text-density as an indicator of wealth and social status?
I would guess, for example, that an urban context with a low public text density would be one with wealthy residents.
7) Downloaded from http://www.dft.gov.uk/trafficsignsimages/imagelist.php?CATID=4 (UK Crown copyright).
8) When a referent relies on the context rather than surrounding text (such as in the use of the words here and now),
Figure 4
10
this is known as deixis in linguistics.
11
JM: Can they really be visual poems? By the roadside?
PP: very nice idea
JM: I mean, I remember from the bike tour that a 20% incline sign will also mean something incredibly physically memorable. it
correlates to something I will feel and see and walk my bike up. And then when the poetic versions, the playful versions come up, I feel
compelled to make them real, to find the hill that they relate to.which is probably just the point, that these are order-words, signifying
order in reality, and also ordering us to pay attention to it
PP: do we have same in Finland?
JM: http://www.tiehallinto.fi/pls/wwwedit/docs/7729.PDF
PP: just beautiful
T
he next junction in the direction to which a missing board would be
pointing also used to have a post, but this, having been buried in the
hedge for some time, has been removed. It marked the spot known as Five
Oaks. Where Hockmoor Head is still a ‘head’ – the top of a hill – , any
stranger looking for Five Oaks should not be literal about it, for there are
no longer five obvious oaks. And it is strangers who need these signs; local inhabitants should know anyway, unless they are blow-ins, ie strangerresidents. A road sign of this kind, before it says anything, is an official
attitude to strangers. It ‘says’ too, that this is an orderly world: there is a
road ‘system’ in which everywhere leads rationally to everywhere else and
all positions are marked. You don’t have to ask; you can read the signs.
And it also ‘says’ that a ‘system’ looks after the ‘system’. Within regulatory
constraints you can even put your own signs up. Only an authority can put
this one up.
F
igure 7 introduces the regulatory category of discretion or exceptionality and explicitly refers to the notion of ‘access’, a key term in the
regulation of space and in the determining of what is and is not public. A
modern home, that human container with lockable doors, is by virtue of
convention and law a place of restricted access. But then so, for practical
reasons, is a narrow road.
Figure 8: Avoid avoid
Figure 10: Enough (restricted)
T
hese signs, these visual texts, are all in public space, are in full view,
and they – or ones belonging to the same sets – are encountered daily.
They have a clear message, possibly enforceable by law, and must all offer
up their entirely situated meaning and purpose to a single glance, without
ambiguity, suggestiveness or multiple meaning. “Do Not Ignore”, for example, is full of potential ambiguities, suppressed only by force of authority and context.
kansainvälinen teatterifestivaali
international theatre festival
DooD PaarD (hol)
Gob SquaD (enG/Ger)
HanS roSenStröm (fin)
InStItutet & nya ramPen (sWe/fin)
LeIf HoLmStranD (sWe)
maIke LonD & rIIna maIDre (est)
obLIvIa (fin)
teater 90° (fin)
toDeLLISuuDen tutkImuSkeSkuS (fin)
vaLkeaPää & Hoffren (fin)
von kraHLI teater (est)
T
he pieces with which I shall end this essay assume a familiarity with
signs like these and what they get up to. I can make this assumption
with confidence because they are part of the everyday and belong to a
category of instrumental or pragmatic knowledge that needs to be free
from the uncertainties of speculation, of essays (trials) of thought. And
it is partly for these reasons that I like to make thought with them. My
pieces have not (yet) been designed to be put in public space. So far they
have been in homes and a gallery. What I want of them is that they should
offer ways of thinking – of sensing – across different orders of space; for
example, public, domestic, literary, fine art. And that they should offer
themselves at a glance only to invite a second and third glance, and so on.
Figure 9: Except for access
Figure 11: Enough (de-restricted)
helsinki 17.-21.11.2010
LounGe every nIGHt at unIverSum
John Hall
4th August 2010
12
13
WWW.balticcircle.fi
I
n 2004 Heather Kapplow, began a
relationship with Finland, through
engagement with some of the
country’s (very talented) artists,
that went awry. She tried her best
to build a meaningful connection,
but there were cross-cultural
misunderstandings, and in the end,
when things got awkward, she was
passive and she let the relationship
dissolve... (Have we not all had
experiences like this? Moments when
we don’t know where to go next, so
we just let time pass and take control
over the outcome of a situation?)
Heather finds now that she still has
tender, and slightly electrical feelings
for Finland. So she is coming to ANTI
FESTIVAL 2010 to apologize, and to try
to start a new kind of connection. She
will say nothing but “I’m Sorry” for
the duration of her time on Finnish soil
and hopes that the wind will carry her
chant into the country’s inner ear and
heart somehow.
14
“Dear Finland,
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other and I’m starting to feel a little bit
nervous about our next encounter. We are both older now and I know we’ve both been
through a lot of changes in that time. Will there still be any kind of spark between us?
How are you different?
Maybe it doesn’t matter how you are different. When I close my eyes, I can still see the
February fog hanging over your gulf, smell your crisp forest air, and feel the sharp
buzz of your artwork’s intelligence--but I have barely known you. I reacted to you from
gut instinct--reaching out to you almost involuntarily. I was jolted into doing it by
the electrical shock of recognition in that first moment of exposure. But then what? How
does a person go about having a relationship with a country? Where do my arms go when I
want to embrace you? How do we respond to one another? I feel as if I am right up against
the edge of what is possible when I think of you.
All I know is that I didn’t get it right the first time. I was so young when you caught
my eye and I was thrust toward you without expecting it—I was not prepared but had to
move forward anyway. You should know that I have never tried to do again what I tried to
do with you. It was a tremendous effort to try to pull off singlehandedly, with no time
off from work to do it in. No one else has even come close to making me want to try. You
sparked a unique urge in me, but I should have resisted it until I had enough experience
to act on it with more grace. But can you blame me for not being able to resist you? I
just couldn’t.
Thank you for inviting me back after my clumsiness of the past, and I hope I will be less
awkward with you this time. I hope that suaveness is not what you need most and that any
awkwardness that I cannot banish will be seen for what it is—a sincere desire to find
and feel your heartbeat.
Maybe we both know ourselves better now. At least this time I am putting my feelings on
the table: I had them, I continue to have them--I just don’t know what they mean, or
where they will take us. Or if you have them too...
Even if you don’t, I want to make peace about our past so that we can have fond, open
feelings about our history instead of aborted ones. I hope you will accept my apologies...
Heather”
PP: I just hope they will make it to work again... i'm for happy endings, you know
JM: ha ha ahaaa
PP: what, you are not?
JM: I, well, I can't say I was optimistic. My own relationship with Finland falls under It's Complicated
15
E
H
Edge of Europe – Home for Shadows
S
omeone writes on a piece of cross-ruled paper.
Divides it in two parts, puts one part in a hip
pocket, and drops the other carelessly on the
floor. I pick up the fallen one, read it, and
make it the title of this writing.
Home for Shadows. I’ll start from that.
Della Pollock writes about performative writing
(‘Performing Writing’ in The Ends of Performance): “...
It is a space of absence made present in desire and
imagination, through which readers may pass like
shadows or fiends (or like the kids in my fourth-grade
class): tentative, wild, demanding, almost always and
never really free.”
You are one of the shadows. This writing is the basis
for your temporary reflection. Edge of Europe is a
home for shadows, the presences of readers/writers
that disappear into time. The edge of your shadow is
changing too, now and now. That’s why we can’t get a
hold of each other, except now and now. Temporarily.
Another angle: Edge of Europe is a shadow itself,
and as a collection of actions more about sitting in
shadows than frying in theatre lights. The attempt has
been to create more dark areas, places to write and
perform.
General maps locate places on the edges of pages,
and other ones in the middle. Finland and the Nordic
Countries are also on the edge. However, we tend to
locate our whereabouts in the center of our being.
Like the architect Juhani Pallasmaa puts it in his
book Eyes of the Skin: “My body is truly the navel
of my world, not in the sense of the viewing point
of the central perspective, but as the very locus of
reference, memory, imagination and integration.”
The name Edge of Europe comes from the relations
and contradictions of edge and center – in fact, there
should be a question mark in the end. An edge doesn’t
necessarily mean marginal or periphery. Like an edge
of a shadow, it changes and moves. Edge, borderline,
conjuction, threshold, zone.
maija hirvanen
16
17
In other than one’s mother tongue(s) one limps,
and is linguistically younger than one’s age. Mistakes drop from fingers and mouth. Strange
wirings, glidings on the surface. A ‘foreign’ language affects performing; the whole body is in
a state of searching, is unsecure. For writing
and performing, this is interesting. Limping
language is more straightforward: when failure
is inevitable, linguistic sovereignty turns into
fumbling, sounds, efforts towards communication. But “international” English, if it exists, is a
territory of its own, a no-one’s land or mother
tongue. Everyone here speaks strangely.
Yea – English is (in all its controversy) the second, if not the first, working language of the
younger generations of artists. When most of
the writing and literature connected to one’s
professional field hasn’t been translated, when
the work groups are multilingual; if the context
of one’s practice as an artist is to be found in the
international as well as the national scene, one
starts to think and dream in English. Language
borrows words and sentences and gives birth to
local concepts, such as esitystaide (performance
art/Live Art, but something else) in Finland.
Living in complexities of languages needs shadow zones, performances, cross-ruled papers,
clumsy sentences, language that cannot be immediately understood when it’s born. Edge of
Europe has operated particularly in English and
Finnish to crash into the relationship of a small
language and a main language, familiar from
TV, over and over again.
I’ve written performance texts, essays, reviews
(thinking to be the last person suitable for this
task), descriptions, memos, letters and so on. I
keep practicing. Like many of us. Edge of Europe was born out of questions originating from
writing itself and in a specific timing and specific set of dialogues with different people, for
example folks at Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki. Kiasma Theatre has the habbit of inviting artists
over to coffee table talks and that makes certain
kind of events in between ’institution’ and ’individual’ or ’free-field’ to take place. Also, particular encounters with artists and texts during the
past 15 years, that have affected my own writing
and performing, have had a role in setting up
Edge of Europe. The list is long, but here’s just
a few sentences stored in my memory:
“Performance’s only life is in the present.” Peggy Phelan
“Now, imagine an interruption to this space, write it.” Matthew Goulish
“Where does a text start? Where does it not end?” Caroline Bergvall
“Dear Participant,…What I ask you to do is simple: find three texts and
bring photocopies of them with you when we start on Tuesday morning…”
Annette Arlander
“What do you like looking at? What do you see behind closed eyes?” Lisa
Nelson
“An open book is also night.” Marguerite Duras
So, questions. Where and through what kind of modes does writing get created? What does it produce around itself? I was interested in writing as something that loses its most important form into
time, creates moments spent together (together? With whom?). As
something that has first of all corporal and embodied materiality.
As something where spoken language and writing get mixed up. I
wanted to pay attention to the space that is not the space of the
page or a web document, but a space formed by people in a same
room, writing.
This space is in a continuum with the phenomena of artists taking
to the streets and making efforts to democratise art. In the 1960s
and 70s, collaborative practices aimed at readjusting some ideas of
what an artist does—where, how, and why. So-called post-studio art
emerged; the artist was not seen as the genius creator, but rather
a worker, a discusser. In Edge of Europe, it is not only the writing practice in itself that has been of significance but also the way
in which the participants themselves have given their writing and
work a frame through which it can be looked at. Together and individually. It’s a bit of a different approach to the community art/
post-studio art of the 1970s, with its emphasis on ‘process’ and the
focus on political/cultural context of that process as the main thing.
Some parts of Edge of Europe, mainly the public presentations,
could be looked at not as but in relation to what has been talked
about as ‘relational aesthetics’ since the end of the 1990s. Relational aesthetics seems to place (to put it very simply) social relations
and experience into the center of art works. And it’s paradigmatic
in nature. For Edge, ‘process’ and ‘structures’ are not in front of
‘composition’ and ‘contents’. For Edge, they’re parallel and co-dependent. Edge has not tried to activate the reader or viewer, but
its participants and writers – itself, really. You, reader, are already
active. You’re reading already; the shadow is moving.
Most of all, Edge of Europe is about collaboration. In one of its
most profound meanings, collaboration is exchanging influences
with something. It is also working together with someone, or a result of this work. Collaboration can be taking place between two
instances, such as people, institutions, states or even ideas. According to Charles Green, challenging the image of the lone artist and
contemplating the constructions of artistic identity are characteristics for a number of collaborations since the 1960s. Different
18
forms of collaboration have, since the beginning
of 20th century, created a space where the contemporary ‘laboratories’, ‘work shops’, ‘think
tanks’, and ‘projects’ have their own space. In
this space, the economic and cultural modalities and protocols change greatly depending
on the case. ‘Laboratory’ doesn’t necessarily
have that much to do with democratic decision
making and ’Project’ doesn’t necessarily always
differ from an ‘Art Work’. Edge of Europe is intendend as a space of crafting and work (which
can be pleasure) - not a product of experience
economy. It’s not about process over contemplation, but process and contemplation individually and together.
we are, as humans, social, is in a way self evident. What kind of energies does writing produce? What kind of experiences, memories, or
geographical dimensions does it give birth to?
How does writing affect the relations of time
and place? How does it affect the construction
of identities that are located on the edge? These
questions are the starting point for future activities. Edge of Europe is a base where writing can
once again disappear. You, shadow: you pass it
or pass though it in the way you want to.
Maija Hirvanen
Written in summer 2010, in Kruununhaka,
Helsinki, Rautalampi, central Finland,
ImPulsTanz/8:tension residency, Vienna and
Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.
Edge of Europe has not tried to create any collective language or codes about the relations of
writing and performance. It has tried to create
situations where differentiating manners are
displayed in the same physical space. So I’ve
crapped, typed and moved letters from docuEdge of Europe is a social, pedagogic, and experimental
ments to other documents, talks to texts, I’ve project in the areas of performance and writing. The project
written 1693 emails, learned bits of code for explores the artistic and critical possibilities of the currently
web. All of this alone, so that something would changing culture of writing and its relation to contemporary
happen ‘together’. In Edge of Europe, the art- performance. During the years 2008-2010 it operates through
ist is a designer, maker, and organiser. Writer, laboratories, texts, seminars, and performance presentations.
coffee maker. Performer, debater. Every parThe main focus is on artistic writing.
ticipant has affected the form of the project
– forms that have been included language
www.edgeofeurope.net
games such as Word Association Game or One
Minute Lectures, or Diaries of Questions writEdge of Europe activities 2008-2010:
ten during Ong Keng Sen’s lab. Or transcribing performances into texts. And experimental Upcoming: a publication (November 2010), ed. Maija Hirvanen,
presentations. And a paper publication (watch
several writers
for it; it’s coming out soon!).
Co-curation of the seminar at ANTI festival 2010
Back to the cross-ruled paper. Writing has a
duration and it happens in some environment.
Artists’ laboratory ‘Is Performance the Future Craft of the
It’s bound to the body, the physical state of the
21st Century?’ (led by Ong Keng Sen)
body, to the senses. Writing on a cross-ruled
paper is slow and inefficient. Papers get lost Lectures (inc. Ylva Gislén/Dramatiska Institutet, Stockholm,
easily, get smudged, drop onto floors. What
Riikka Pelo)
stays in one’s mind of them is important, and
what happens at the moment of writing. Edge
A writing circle open to anyone
has created spaces that are more about different rhythms and lengths than deadlines and Two visiting performances to the performance art seminar of
premises.
the Finnish Critics Union
Now two years after starting Edge of Europe,
Texts born within the project have included essays,
I’m interested in what ways people are in the performance texts, descriptions, scripts, poems, memos, letters.
same space, other than socially. The fact that
The participant list is at the home page.
19
I
T
T
his is a lie.
his flow of words from left to right, top to bottom – this ordering1 of things. I didn’t discover
these sentences, but built them deliberately. They do not represent my thoughts, but direct
them. Language does not reflect experience, but acts on it.
T
his is what the philosopher Giorgio Agamben means when he talks about the ‘impossibility
of speech’.2 It’s what the performance studies historian Peggy Phelan means when she says:
‘Just as quantum physics discovered that macro-instruments cannot measure microscopic particles
without transforming those particles, so too must performance critics realise that the labor to write
about performance (and thus to ‘preserve’ it) is also a labor that fundamentally alters the event.’3
A
s Phelan points out, the disparity between lived experience and written text is particularly obvious when the text is related to performance – a type of experience that is self consciously live
and tied to the body. In contrast, writing is virtual. It travels across time and space, along ‘vectors of
decomposition and reconstitution’ (says the philosopher Brian Rotman), ‘… whereby processes are
wrenched free of their governing temporalities and original milieus to be displaced, recontextualised and relocated in a virtual elsewhere …’4
A
nd yet this is the power of writing – to transport ideas, if not to preserve them. As the cofounder of Open Dialogues, a writing collaboration that works mainly in relation to performance, I have been exploring ways to reconcile these two aspects of writing – its power and its fatal
flaw.
I
n 2008 and 2009, for example, Open Dialogues worked with the Swiss curatorial project Performance Saga, which ‘transmits and updates the history of Performance Art on many different
levels and promotes a dialogue between the generations.’5 We gathered a group of writers to respond to two Performance Saga festivals. Our writing was part of the venture to document Performance Art and pass on knowledge.
B
ut we also wanted to match the liveness of the performance in the festivals. We wanted our
texts to be sat upon, torn up, creased and commented on. First in Berne in December 2008, and
then in Lausanne in February 2009, we wrote [ ] Performance Saga, publishing to a blog and
in low-fi, fast turnaround printed broadsheets within 24 hours of each performance (www.performancesaga.blogspot.com). In this project, and in others like it, Open Dialogues wanted our writing to
have the texture of a stranger’s body: breathing and unpredictable.
20
n other words, we wanted our writing to be
self consciously live and embodied. Not simply to echo the concerns of Performance Art,
but also to make room for the reader. While
writing may be virtual, reading is not. Reading is
an act of perception – live sense-making – which,
like all acts of perception, cycles the known into
the unknown within the body of the individual.
By inserting flaws, mistakes and cracks into the
unity of the ‘scriptural economy’,6 we hoped to
draw attention to the only function this system
serves: to inspire meaning.
the same way on everyone’s experience. Or our experiences themselves are shaped by the language we might use to describe them (just
like this article, which will stop soon, as if 1000 words is all I have
to say). Clearly, all the moving, funny, meaningful texts written for
Memory Exchange are lies, or works of fiction.
T
B
his is also how [ ] found its way into
my descriptions of Open Dialogues: Performance Saga. Looking back, I cannot find a preposition that links writing to the live events without
suggesting a mistaken hierarchy of place and
time. Writing about or on the festivals marks the
absence of something, at the same time as the
document usurps its position. Writing from performance relegates the live to the inspiration for
a distinct textual event; writing with performance suggests a reciprocal relationship that does
not exist. And all of them ignore the difference
between the simultaneous time of experience,
and the linear time of text.
L
eaving room for [ ], problems and
mistakes, hwoever, reveals the part they
play in the way that writing communicates. They
conjure up the live and let the act of perception
begin. This means that it’s not just the virtuality of writing that gives it a role in the construction of history. It’s also the non-virtual qualities of reading – that unique context in which a
text is re-imagined by the reader, alongside the
variable, living relationship reading has to the
past. (My retrospective description of writing
[ ] Performance Saga is itself a creative
act of reading, only made possible by writing’s
ability to travel in time.)
B
ut this also means that, while the deconstruction of language is important, its lies
are valuable too. (Not to mention pervasive.)
The most surprising aspect of a recent work I
made called Memory Exchange,7 is that everyone can take part. Participants are invited to
write down a memory and receive another in return. And they all do – everyone accommodates
their memories to 40 or 50 words that fit on the
back of an index card. It’s as if language acts in
T
his is the paradox of any self-conscious writing practice: it must
notice the system and still use it to carry meaning. The written text is both a building block and function of the Imaginary – the
place where meaning arises, with and for the chimera of a contained
self. In other words, the written form is experience, which means
that it creates meaning precisely because it pretends to transpose it.
rian Rotman would go one step further, to say that language is
what calls divinity into being. The alphabetic symbol, he says,
is what makes it possible to imagine a single, ‘disembodied, supernatural agency’, conjured by the standalone potential of the letter.8
This means that writing does not just build our social communities.
It also (de)constructs our metaphysical ones. Text delivers our gods.
[ ]
T
his is a lie.
Mary Paterson is a writer and producer based in London.
www.opendialogues.com
mary@opendialogues.com
1) Order: n 1. An instruction that must be obeyed. 2. A state in which everything is
arranged logically, comprehensibly or naturally. Collins Compact English Dictionary
(London: HarperCollins, 2nd edition, New edition 1994).
2) Quoted in The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs: Selections from the Atlas Group
Archive (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2008), p. 2
3) Peggy Phelan Unmarked: the Politics of Performance (Routledge: Oxon, 1993), p. 146
4) Brian Rotman Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts and Distributed
Human Being (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 111
5) http://performancesaga.ch/?m=1&l=e retrieved 4th August 2010
6) Michel de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1984)
7) Mary Pateson Memory Exchange, for ART WRITERS FIELD STATION curated by
VerySmallKitchen, part of Away Day at Wandle Park, curated by Post. Wandle Park,
Colliers Wood, London. 31st May 2010.
8) Rotman passim. Quote from p. 16
JM: something i feel is the tension between writing and performance.
i mean, it often seems like writing takes a back seat to the live event;
writing is just the documentation afterwards and i like that they were
working with this frustration with Performance Saga
PP: "this is the paradox of any self-concious writing practice: it must
notice the system and still use it carry meaning"
JM: nice image!
PP: what is divinity in finnish?
JM: hm, jumalolento?
PP: vau
21
Pages from Leena Kela's journal a project
“Goldilock's Peep Show”
notebook
22
23
EXPERIENCES, DISCUSSIONS, DOCUMENTS
EXPERIENCES, DISCUSSIONS, DOCUMENTS
I
SIGNA: SALÒ| COPENHAGEN
“HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE.” –SARTRE.
f there was one thing that filled me
with despair, it was not witnessing the endless whipping, shit-eating,
deprivation, humiliation, and depravity that was the rule in the Villa. It was
watching hundreds of people being
faced with this, and seemingly all of
them—us, hundreds every night, over
five thousand in total—looking for a
simple answer for how to deal with it,
solve it, ignore it.This is a place where
humans can be a profound disappointment, and of course you can take part
in this, too.
S
I
t’s day three. I’ve finally managed to be on the Duke’s
balcony during the physical exercises, amongst a couple
of Masters dressed in smart suits and a bunch of people like
me sporting black or red ribbons. Below, four of the Children are running naked in the snow, clutching themselves for
warmth and making sounds of misery. I am going to be awful
right now, because after all there is nothing I can do to stop
the torture, and it is only a play, anyway. I think it might be
a good idea throw a golden rock—the Childrens’ only currency—down at them, so they can scramble for it on their
way back inside. The Magistrate also finds this amusing, and
throws one of his own, saying “Children! A golden rock for
you!” They are too distracted to see where it went. “There
are two! No, three! It’s over there, right there—no, over there
somewhere! No, I was mistaken, it’s not there at all! You’re
too stupid.” They somehow get it into their heads that they
must find a golden rock before they can go inside. That wasn’t
my idea, but how can I take it back now? They wail and shiver. A Fucker in fatigues finds one first and tosses it to the
other side of the yard. Audience members—the ones with
yellow, blue or pink ribbons ,who weren’t allowed on the balcony—are starting to help find it. It’s taking far longer than
I intended and watching Claudio, beautiful Claudio who not
two hours ago gave me a mesmerising private performance
of poetry in Russian, picking his way through the dead trees,
naked and unlucky, looking for a rock that I know isn’t there,
I feel like the worst kind of sadist: one with regret. This isn’t
a funhouse. Sometimes I forget that.
T
here are a couple of things that make writing about Salò
difficult. Primarily this: I consider it a masterpiece,
perhaps the only theatrical one I have ever seen in my life. I
spent four days in February and three in March living in the
Villa, where a 24/7, 360-degree-illusion1 interactive installation performance based on Pasolini’s film (which in turn is
based on de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom) delivered nonstop libertinage, debauchery, humiliation, titillation, confusion, and
guilt. So much happened during my time there that it would
be somewhere between irresponsible and stupid to try to
sum it up in a thousand words.
24
24
alò is created by Signa and Arthur
Köstler with Thomas Bo Nilsson,
all of whom live and perform, alongside 30 other people, in a many-roomed
Villa in Copenhagen for the duration.
Four performance weeks correspond
with four “circles” of debauchery: Mania, Shit, Tears, and Blood. There are
always performers awake, and so the
fiction is never interrupted. There are
four Masters, who have purchased the
services of the Villa for their own explorations of complete “libertinage”;
four Madams, who run the house; six
Fuckers, who answer the door, function as bodyguards, are perpetually
horny, and sport strap-ons that nearly
reach their knees; six Maids, who work
interminably in the kitchen and all
speak dreamily in Slavic accents about
going to America; and ten Children.
The Children wear underwear, dirty
socks, and not much else. They play instruments and sing, live in bunk beds in
two rooms, tell stories about what they
can remember before being sold, kidnapped, or tricked into the service of
the Madams, and they get fucked and
whipped, sometimes in scenes inspired
by only the sickest kind of imagination.
All audience members wear a coloured
ribbon signifying the caste of their host.
1) See Johanna Koljonen’s 2007 essay Eyewitness to the illusion: an essay on the
impossibility of 360° role-playing, available
online here: http://www.liveforum.dk/
kp07book/lifelike_koljonen.pdf
Guests may exchange ribbons if they
like. Many people get very involved in
the game of status; guests of the Children, for instance, may get kicked out
of a room, and would certainly have to
give up a seat for any other guest. The
ribbons, essentially, give the guests a
power game to play. Ultimately, however, I find it makes no difference. No
ribbon can make decisions for you on
how to behave in such an environment.
T
he days begin nearly peacefully.
The kitchen is a flurry of coffee
and dishwashing. Children, sitting on
the floor to eat porridge, bicker about
who is ugliest. The two Masters who
get up before the afternoon engage
pretty much in only casual torture, instead of the organised nastiness of the
evening’s weddings, tableaux vivants,
and deflowering ceremonies. The
Fuckers are usually in a good mood,
and will chat about their past or play
cards. The Madams, in their lavish bedrooms, offer tea and cherry wine and
sell golden rocks while furnishing a few
audience members with long stories of
passion and fleshly delights. Cruelty is
random and petty. Some other recurring audience spend daytimes here,
too, smuggling sweets or fruit from the
outside, offering a friendly ear. Some
of them are adored by the performers,
as they basically justify being there in
the first place and don’t treat the place
like a museum, rubbernecking into
rooms without saying hello. It’s only
after 2 or 3 in the afternoon, when the
Magistrate and Bishop are awakened
with their splitting hangovers (they
are, by rule, not allowed to go to sleep
unless drunk), that the Villa becomes
gruesome. “It’s worst when you get
whipped in a group,” the Children say
to you, “because then you never know
when it’s coming.” “Yeah, I hate that.”
“Yeah.” And, in the same breath, “Can
you draw me a horse?”
T
here is no space to do justice to
the performers’ excellent work in
Salò. The thing is, half of everything
you see is fake. Maybe more. The shit is
25
25
expertly made in the clandestine lower
kitchen and isn’t half bad (but the smell
is impressive); all rape is simulated using strap-ons (but they’re used in such a
way that one really has to look to confirm this, and that the overall image only
convincingly suggests penetration);
the screaming and weeping is exaggerated—stomach-turningly exaggerated.
But there are welts, bruises, splashes of
vomit and urine, and who knows what
kind of private anguish. Salò looks, on a
superficial level, like an S&M dungeon
with voyeurs, but the image is of nonconsent, of real rape, of true abuse. The
connection to real-world situations,
from human trafficking to child abuse,
is easy and clear. This is easy to say. It’s
quite another thing to be in the house.
On average, you will not be proud of
yourself.
M
any people watch something
eagerly for a while, and then
you can pretty much see when the
torture has moved from entertaining
to sickening, and they leave the room
without saying anything. Some watch,
disturbed, and then offer the Child a
golden rock as consolation, so that they
might use it to buy a shower or some
time alone, which naturally ends up
looking like the audience member has
paid for the abuse. Disappointingly few
guests ever interrupt; when they do,
there might be some words exchanged
and then the torture simply continues.
Nobody was able to stop it, although
many, many people spoke of stopping
the abuse. Are we audience? Voyeurs?
Are we really implicated in the rape if
we watch and don’t stop it?
O
f course, it’s fake. It’s play. It’s—
let’s be honest here—often hilarious and a great place to meet new
friends. Laugh too loud, though, and
some nastiness will appear in the door
and drag someone off for torture. I
spent most of one day in the kitchen,
thinking it was the place in the house
where the fewest abuses occurred, and
that if I was not watching, perhaps it
would not be so bad. This, too, had to
EXPERIENCES, DISCUSSIONS, DOCUMENTS
be abandoned as a nice thought at the
time, but utter bullshit.
T
he Villa puts you in an impossible situation. No matter how you
choose to interact, the show goes on.
You’re horrified but you can’t be all the
time. It’s hilarious but you can’t laugh
at it. Action draws you like a moth to
a flame, and once it’s over, you wish
you hadn’t seen it. Nothing you do
helps anyone. There really is no exit.
The frustration and anger directed not
only at others but at one’s own pathetic
inefficacy; the horror of being entertained by it—and the rigorous thought
that if you’re entertained by half of it,
shouldn’t you have the decency to be
entertained all the time; these and a
whole lot of other questions sit heavy
for long after Villa Salò closes its doors.
I haven’t felt so pushed around by my
own emotions since I was seventeen,
and overflowing with righteous dissatisfaction about the compromises adults
make. Which is precisely why I used
the word masterpiece: any artwork that
has the power to bring back those feelings is so good it’s witchcraft.
U
nfortunately, now that it is over,
the Danish press and chatrooms
are buzzing with comments about the
morality of putting on such a show.
That the discussion centers around the
ethics of violence in art and not about
violence itself and our collective ability
to look the other way when power is
having its way with someone else in real
life is a massive disappointment—also
to many of the performers, who write
as such on their blogs and on Facebook.
I
t’s the final Sunday. Hundreds of
people are trying to get into the
house; they wait for hours outside, just
like they have every day this week. I
have been crying all day, as have a few
other people I now call my friends in
the house. I am sickened by the people
who want to get in here, even though I’d
sooner cut off my own arm than leave.
We have had teenagers in the house
(some of whom have been the sweetest,
most intelligent guests you could imagine), BDSM enthusiasts including 24/7
masters and slaves (most of whom leave
very soon as they realise it’s not the party they were looking for), the curious,
the artistic, a few saints, and the truly
horrific: Umberto the Fucker tells me
over a cigarette about a man who was
masturbating in the corner during a
rape scene. He never drops out of character, but somehow he can no longer
pretend to find this in any way amusing
or acceptable. Madame Vaccari (Signa
herself), on this day, screams at people
when she finds them laughing.
I
s this still theatre? There is something deeply tragic about her; a
woman whose faith in people seems
like it was the last thing holding her
together. Someone cracks a joke about
nipples, and she crosses the room, ripping her dress open and baring her
breasts. “Are these funny? Laugh, then!
Laugh at them!” she screams. A dead silence falls. For what seems like two full
minutes, nobody leaves or enters the
dining room. Nobody speaks or smiles.
It is as though nobody in the room will
laugh ever again, and I swear to you, I
swear that if hell exists it existed right
then and there in Villa Salò. It was no
tragedy; it was the abyss.
Johanna MacDonald
PP: i wonder how did you feel after that experience
JM: It's so funny to say this when the issue is about writing, but honestly, no words
can describe. I loved people and hated people, I mean fully and violently and
passionately and did not want to forgive anything
PP: how did you feel about "reality" after the performance?
JM: the thing about being there is that you know it's a fantasy; that it's all pretend. i
was always aware of the double fact that it was possible for me to behave differently
from my "reality" self, but through that it highlighted exactly what my reality self
was going through. it makes reality feel like a game, in a good way, i think, in an
empowering way. And I end up seeing that we're stuck in habits that we don't care
enough to break. We're bored, we're secure, and we do what is easy. And then I feel
like I'm seventeen and pissed off, because if the world has so many possible outcomes,
why not try for a better one than this?
26
26
27
EXPERIENCES, DISCUSSIONS, DOCUMENTS
EXPERIENCES, DISCUSSIONS, DOCUMENTS
M
festival. The wall had come down some months before and
the reunion was some months later. And during our BritishGerman festival in 1997, Forced Entertainment played for
the first time in Germany.”
rosek acknowledges that the festival’s mission is paradoxical. “I don’t think you can predict the future. We
will never know if what we now think is the future of theatre
will actually be the future of theatre. The only thing you can
say is that maybe some groups who come here change how
theatre is perceived a little. And maybe some groups won’t;
there is no guarantee. It’s like a quest without an end.”
“
Step by step, year after year it has become more professional.
It’s not student theatre anymore, but if we find wonderful
experimental and great student theatres we would invite them,
that is still possible. And normally, except for some special
performances, 70-80 percent of our audience are students.”
IN SEARCH OF THE
FUTURE OF THEATRE
BINATIONAL FESTIVAL
THEATERSZENE EUROPA 2010 IN COLOGNE
W
hen asked about the Finnish scene, Kobboldt appears animated. He says it definitely possesses its
own personal characteristics. “Performance studies started
quite late in Finland compared with other parts of Europe.
Especially here in Germany, a lot of discussion about postdramatic theatre went on earlier. It was necessary, but after
two or three years it was boring. So you in Finland had a wonderful situation, you could start your new work with the results of these discussions as your basis. A lot of theatre you do
is very physical – it’s not brainy but physical – it’s fresh, and
has a lot of humour. It’s also totally different from the things
we have seen in Germany or France or Britain.”
I
n addition to mapping some of the most interesting performances from one country each year, the festival also
provides a particularly fruitful meeting place for artists. The
invitation to perform is on a condition: to stay for the whole
week, organise a workshop connected to the performance
and its methodology, see all the other performances if possible, take part in the other groups’ workshops, and attend
the various discussions held during the week.
“
We hope that there will be a lot of new relationships, for
theatre work especially. If you just come in for your performances, maybe you get to know the staff, but we think
that’s not enough,” says Kobboldt.
K
obboldt and Mrosek discuss the effect of Hans-Thies
Lehmanns Postdramatic Theatre on the professional
scene. Mrosek feels the use of theory is a matter of personal
taste. “People who do physical theatre are as important as
people who do contemporary drama theatre or dance. Or
the post-dramatic guys, Rimini Protocol and so on. Actually
there is no truth. It’s obvious. My problem with that kind of
book is that it tries to tell the truth, but it only sums up tendencies and developments that have come rather naturally.”
“For lot of people in mid-Europe it has been the bible,” Kobboldt says. “But no one has to believe in it,” finishes Mrosek.
M
T
T
he festival is directed by Dietmar Kobboldt, who has
been working with it since the beginning. Tim Mrosek, also the director of Schwarzes Tier Traurigkeit, works as
the dramaturg of the festival. The two sat down to unpack
their thoughts about the festival. Kobboldt started with
theaterszene europa’s small beginnings.
heaterszene europa is a binational festival organised by
studiobühneköln, a theatre that functions independently under the administration of the University of Cologne.
The festival has been active for almost 30 years, and every
year since 1987 it has presented performances from Germany
and one other European nation. In 2010 the visiting nation
was Finland, with 14 Finnish and German performances and
accompanying workshops and discussions.
“
The festival started in 1982 as a German student festival.
After 4 years we wanted to make it a bit more international but not a real international festival. And we decided with
Georg Franke, the former director of the theatre, to try the
binational approach. We started in 1987 with Poland, and at
that time it wasn’t the Poland you have today.
F
inland was represented by the baffling and ingenious Conte D’amour by Nya Rampen and Institutet, the touching
and skillfull Anatomia Lear by Anatomia ensemble, and the
desperate party of Bakkantit 3 by Und er libet, among others.
From Germany there was a participatory game-structured
Express Fight Club by post theatre; a minimalist choreography
based on a massacre scene from the movie Bonnie and Clyde
called memor i am by Deter/Müller/Martini; and a precisely
timed verbal play Schwarzes Tier Traurigkeit by studiobuehne.
ensemble.
“
Some years are especially memorable for me, for example
the Israelian-German festival. It was interesting that the
discussions weren’t about German history and the Jews, but
about the current ongoing situation between the Jewish and
the Palestinian Israelis. In 1990 we had the German-German
28
28
rosek continues,“there should be even more input
from everyone. There could also be more workshops.
Maybe we should do a second festival for them, or have two
or three days within the festival with just workshops. It would
be great if everyone were able to attend as many of them as
possible. I think it’s one of the most important aspects of the
festival—that you not only get to see the performances, but
also to get to know why and how the artists do them and learn
from that. Through that you can get a new perspective on the
work you do yourself. Or learn new techniques.”
T
he future of the festival seems as promising as its past
has been satisfying. The university provides the infrastructure, and the city of Cologne the funding for the artistic
work. Next year’s visiting nation has not yet been decided,
but Kobboldt gives a clue:
I
t is tempting to wonder if organising the festival allows
them to see a bigger picture of the European theatre
scene. Are there certain characteristics in different areas that
become visible through the performances? Is there something that unites us as Europeans? Kobboldt says that a ‘one
European theatre scene’ does not exist.
“
It will probably be some part of the former Yugoslavia,
possibly Croatia or Serbia. We will start working with it
when this year is over.”
“
www.studiobuehne.eu
Sometimes just inside one country it’s very, very different.
What we try to find out is what makes up new independent theatre in Europe. Not the established independent theatre, but a new one. If we take a group like Rimini Protocol...
one of their first performances, when they were still students,
was invited to the festival. Now it would be difficult to invite
them. In a way it would be great, but it’s not really what we
try to do. We just look for what could be, not what is. What
could be the future of theatre. Rimini Protocol is the present
of the theatre. So what could there be five years from now?”
Tuomas Laitinen
JM:i LOVED the part where they say that finnish theatre is very
physical and not brainy. i just loved it.
29
29
EXPERIENCES, DISCUSSIONS, DOCUMENTS
EXPERIENCES, DISCUSSIONS, DOCUMENTS
ODD IN THE WOODS
A
hovel in the field, North-Karelian countryside. You
hear someone playing a Jew’s harp. A man comes down
from the roof of the hovel, spreads a huge tarpaulin on the
field, and starts to paint in pink. At the edge of the field there
is a woman dressed in something white, moving towards the
man; slowly, very slowly. The day is sunny and very hot. We
are about ten people as an audience. The householder is driving a lawnmower; joining us to see the rest of the performance.
Nowadays, her dream is for an ongoing residency; it seems
everything is ready except the funding. Malkki also believes a
permanent residency and things around it would give a lot to
local people and businesses. She’s already had workshops and
courses in her homestead, where locals have been active participants, too. So far, her experiences of the have been very
good; the only thing she has to complain about is a public
transport between small villages, which is incoveniently infrequent.
T
B
T
I
his is Revonkylä, a village next to Joensuu, Eastern Finland, with fewer than 100 inhabitants. International
Triangle-Symposium is finishing their 5-day workshop. The
woman behind the workshop is artist Merja Malkki and this
is her homestead.
eside her other works, Malkki is keeping up her collaboration with Zhestovskaya by hosting performance workshops in Finland and Russia. In the long time frame they
aim to increase exchange between artists in both countries.
And they dream about being able to employ people for the
project.
riangle-Symposium is so named after the three places
where the project is put into practice: Helsinki, Revonkylä, and St. Petersburg. It calls artists to come together
to think about climate change and locality, and how these
things relate to an artist’s work. It started in 2005, when Malkki met Russian artists Natalia Zchestovskaya and Grigory
Glasunov from a group titled OddDance. Since then they
have been working together now and again on butoh painting.
n the evening we come to the bay. There is a man with
only a towel around him, playing an electric guitar on a
floating dock. Marshall amplifiers repeat the sounds to the
balmy summer night. On another dock, in front of us, there is
another man (Glasunov), wearing jeans. He is moving slowly
to a floating boat in the waterfront. He is moving with the
boat, slowly; they seem to be dancing together. Next he gets
on to the boat and starts to row. Rowing is like dancing too,
very sensitive and masculine at the same time. Sounds echo
from the woods. In the middle of the lake, the man stands up
and raises his hands up to the sky. It’s hard to say if he is celebrating or asking for mercy. We are looking at the sky and
waiting to hear how the Karelian night will answer.
B
utoh painting combines butoh dance and painting. After graduating as an artist, Malkki started to consider
the question of live paintwork. In butoh painting aesthetic
movements and theatricality are important parts of the act of
painting, an act based on a specialised state of mind. Usually
group work is important.
C
ollaborating with her husband, Malkki has built a studio, a gallery space, and rooms for accommodation.
Pilvi Porkola
30
30
31
mikko keski-vähälä
Helinä Hukkataival esiintyy
Performanssifiestassa 2010
SUOMEN
KIRJEENVAiHTAJA
Tällä palstalla Janne Saarakkala haastaa väitteen, jonka mukaan esittävää
taidetta tehtäisiin (hyvin) vain pääkaupunkiseudulla. Raportteja Suomessa
tapahtuvan esitystaiteen tilasta, suunnista, tapauksista ja tekijöistä.
TAMPEREELLA PERFORMANSSI VOI HYVIN
K
un Janne Rahkila valmistui Kankaanpään taidekoulun kuvataidelinjalta vuonna 2004 ja muutti Suomen teatteripääkaupunkiin Tampereelle,
siellä ei performanssi- ja esitystaiteellisesti, tapahtunut mitään, Helinä
Hukkataivalta lukuun ottamatta.
”Aikaisemmin oli ollut performanssiyhdistys joskus 1990-luvulla mutta se oli hiipunut”, Rahkila kertoo. ”Pari vuotta siinä kärvistelin ja sitten päätin että täytyy ite
alkaa tekemään.”
Samoihin aikoihin aktivistit, joista monet olivat kuvataitelijoita, saivat kaupungilta lainaan vanhan Hirvitaloksi kutsutun puutalon Pispalassa. Laina muuttui vuokrasopimukseksi ja vuokralaiseksi nimettiin vasta perustettu Pispalan Nykytaiteen
Keskus. Kesällä 2006 siellä järjestettiin ensimmäinen Performanssifiesta. Pian sen
jälkeen, alkuvuodesta 2007, Rahkila ja Tuomo Rosenlund järjestivät ensimmäisen
Perfo-klubin Kulttuuritalo Telakalla. Tänä päivänä ne muodostavat Tampereen performanssiskenen säännöllisen selkärangan.
KANSAINVÄLINEN PERFO-KLUBI
erfo-klubin virallinen järjestävä taho on Kankaanpäässä 2002 perustettu
T.E.H.D.A.S. ry, jonka aktiiveihin Rahkila kuuluu. Yhdistyksen päämaja sijaitsee Porissa, Galleria 3h+k:n takahuoneessa. Tästä syystä Tampereen ja Porin performanssikentät ovat tiiviissä yhteistyössä.
”Kun T.E.H.D.A.S. järjestää toukokuussa Porissa Perf! -tapahtuman niin me pyritään järjestämään tämä Tampereen Perfo samaan aikaan niin, että ulkomailta kutsutut taiteilijat voi esiintyä molemmissa tilaisuuksissa”, Rahkila selittää. Esimerkiksi
keväällä 2009 eestiläinen Non Grata -ryhmä vieraili sekä Porissa että Tampereella.
Eli Tampere hyötyy aina välillisesti siitä mitä Porissa tapahtuu – ja päinvastoin. Samanlaista ”järkeistämistä”, josta Rahkila puhuu paljon, pyritään toteuttamaan myös
kansainvälisesti. Yhteyksiä luodaan parhaillaan Baltian maihin ja kauemmaksikin.
”Jos joku tulee jostain Etelä-Koreasta niin ei ole mitään järkeä lentää Tallinnaan
esiintymään ja palata sitten heti takaisin”, Rahkila sanoo ja kertoo että T.E.H.D.A.S.
on mukana kehittämässä kansainvälistä verkostoa niin, että performanssitaiteilijoiden kiertueet pitenisivät ja levittäytyisivät laajemmalle. ”Non Gratan kautta tuli just
keväällä tyyppejä Etelä-Koreasta ja Japanista.”
Kontaktien syntymistä Rahkila pitää niin luonnollisena osana performanssitaidetta, ettei mitään hampaat irvessä -verkostoitumista tarvita.
”Kontaktit tulee sitä kautta, että itse käy jossain esiintymässä ja tutustuu muihin
esiintyviin taiteilijoihin, vaihtaa yhteystietoja tai saa Facebookissa kutsun kaveriksi
ja ne taas tuntee jotain muita tyyppejä, joita ne voi suositella ja niin edelleen.”
Perfo-klubi järjestetään pääsääntöisesti Kulttuuritalo Telakan toisen kerroksen
tilausravintolassa, toisinaan myös muualla.
32
tommi taipale
P
33
”Esiintyjänä mulla saattaa olla herkempi itsetunto arvostuksen suhteen mutta järjestäjänä taiteilija, joka tulee esiintymään, on se keskeisin asia – ja että se
voi hyvin”, Rahkila sanoo. ”Enemmän mä järjestän tätä klubia taiteilijoille kuin
yleisölle. Kun taiteilijalla on nastaa ja se pystyy keskittymään siihen olennaiseen, niin ilta on hyvä ja yleisö saa parasta.”
SUORA LÄHETYS SYDÄMESTÄ
PERFORMANSSIFIESTA
erfo-klubiin liittyy sellainen moderni
erikoisuus, että sitä voi seurata netistä
suorana lähetyksenä T.E.H.D.A.S. ry:n sivuilta. Rahkilan mielestä se toimii hyvänä
tiedotuskanavana erityisesti ulkomaisia yhteyksiä ja taiteilijoita ajatellen, mutta muuten nettistreamaus tai media esityksenä eivät Rahkilaa sytytä.
”Keskeisin asia on se, että on yleisö ja
esiintyjät”, Rahkila sanoo.
Sen täytyy olla Perfon järjestäjille sydämen
asia, sillä kukaan järjestäjistä – joista mainittakoon Rahkilan lisäksi Eero Yli-Vakkuri
(buukkaus, nettistreamaus), Manu AlaKarhu (videot, bändit) ja Teemu Kangas
(valokuvat) – eivät saa työstään mitään palkkaa. Perfoon ei myydä pääsylippuja, se lepää
täysin apurahojen ja tekijöiden selkänahasta
revitys työn varassa.
”Kaikki raha mitä me saadaan, menee
suoraan taiteilijoille, jotka esiintyy”, Rahkila selittää. ”Rahaa on aina niin vähän, ettei
voi maksaa edes esiintymispalkkioita. Mutta
alusta asti kaikki kulut on korvattu; asuminen, ruoka ja muutama juoma.”
Kun kysyn, tunteeko Rahkila saavansa
tarpeeksi arvostusta kovasta työstään, hän
sanoo ettei kaipaa sitä. Perfo ei tarvitse
esimerkiksi lehdistön huomiota, Rahkila
ei edes lähetä lehdistötiedotteita. Julisteet,
flyerit, Facebook ja viidakkorumpu riittävät
riittävän yleisön saavuttamiseksi Tampereella.
ispalan Nykytaiteen Keskus on pieni puutalo, jossa on galleriatilan lisäksi
äänitysstudio, omakustannekauppa, oleskelutilaa ja muuta vapaata toimitilaa. Ympärillä on jonkun verran pihaa ja vieressä tyhjä tontti. Performanssifiestan lisäksi Hirvitalolla järjestetään näyttelyitä, erilaisia tapahtumia sekä
alakulttuureihin ja aktivismiin liittyvää toimintaa. Keskuksella ei ole muuta
organisaatiota kuin kokous joka keskiviikko, johon kenellä tahansa on vapaa
pääsy ja oikeus ehdottaa haluamaansa toimintaa. Kokous käsittelee ehdotukset
ja toimijat vaihtuvat valintojen mukaan. Eräs keskuksen keskeisistä päämääristä on säilyttää tarjottava toiminta ilmaisena. Niin myös Performanssifiesta,
joka vuosi järjestettävä 1-2 päivän festivaali, jossa esiintyy sekä kotimaisia että
kansainvälisiä taiteilijoita. Fiestan ohjelmisto on aikaisempina vuosina koottu
sellaisten teemojen ympärille kuten esimerkiksi tanssi tai usko. Viime kesänä
teemaa ei ollut, vaan ohjelma koostui järjestäjien mielenkiintoisiksi katsomistaan töistä ja tekijöistä, kuten Ville Karel, c.n.o.p.t, Ig Noir, Baka, Kaarel
Kytas, Steve Vanoni, Suva, Philip Pedersen, Helinä Hukkataival, Juurikasvu, Taina Valkonen, Peter Rosvik, Roi Vaara ja Sami Maalas. Fiestassa
käy Perfo-klubiin verrattuna enemmän yleisöä, noin 100 kävijää vuorokaudessa ja yleisöä saapuu kauempaa, mm. Helsingistä ja Lahdesta.
P
PASSELI TAMPERE
T
ampere on sen verran suuri kaupunki, että Perfo kannattaa järjestää 4-5
kertaa vuodessa. Yleisömäärät ovat tilaan nähden sopivia, noin 40-60
ihmistä per klubi. Suoraa nettilähetystä seuraa nykyisin (palvelun tarjoajan
mukaan) noin 200 ihmistä. Perfossa ei Rahkilan mielestä pyöri samat naamat,
vaan väki vaihtuu. Yleisössä on enimmäkseen tamperelaisia ja tietysti tuttuja Porista. Rahkila pitää Tamperetta myös tarpeeksi pienenä siinä suhteessa,
että eri ryhmien ja järjestöjen yhteistyö sujuu mutkattomasti. On helppo saada
yleiskuva mahdollisuuksista kun järjestää jotain. Ihmiset tuntevat toisensa ja
toimivat monissa eri rooleissa, aivan kuten Rahkila itsekin. Hän oli viime kesänä ensimmäistä kertaa mukana järjestämässä Performanssifiestaa.
”Ylpeyttä pitää olla omista tekemisistä”, hän sanoo, ”mutta mustasukkaisuutta en pidä järkevänä, se kaventaa resursseja, jotka on enimmäkseen ihmisissä.”
P
POIKKITAITEELLINEN TAMPERE
T
oki Tampereelta löytyy muitakin poikkitaiteellisia keskittymiä kuin Pispalan Nykytaiteen Keskus ja Perfo-klubi Kulttuuritalo Telakalla. Teattereista Rahkila mainitsee Teatteri Telakan ja Teatteri Siperian, joissa on viime
vuosina nähty haastavia esitystaiteellisia esityksiä, samoin kuin tuliteatteri
Flammassa. Kuvataiteellisesti mielenkiintoinen paikka on Rajatila-galleria,
joka ylläpitää kunnianhimoista näyttelytoimintaa, julkaisee ½ lehteä ja järjestää mm. mediataidetapahtumaa nimeltä Mediapyhät, joka tapahtuu sellaisten
pyhien kuten joulun ja pääsiäisen aikaan, jolloin missään muualla ei tapahdu
mitään. Tampereen Taiteen ja Viestinnän Oppilaitoksen (TTVO) opiskelijat
ovat aktiivisia esitystaiteen ja performanssin saralla ja myös aktivistipiireissä
syntyy kantaaottavia mielenosoitusperformansseja, kuten esimerkiksi viime
kesänä lisäydinvoiman rakentamisesta.
34
LINKIT:
www.tehdasry.fi
http://7for1.blogspot.com/
www.hirvikatu10.net
www.rajataide.fi
www.puolilehti.fi
www.telakka.eu
www.teatterisiperia.net
www.flamma.fi
www.hukkataival.fi
www.ttvo.fi
MESSIAANINEN VISUAALISEN ETIIKAN
TUTKIMUSKESKUS
R
ahkilan oma työ performanssitaiteilijana
on toimintaa ryhmässä nimeltä Messiaaninen Visuaalisen Etiikan Tutkimuskeskus
(MVET). Siihen kuuluu nykyisin Rahkilan
lisäksi kaksi kuvataiteilijaa Jussi Matilainen, Simo Saarikoski ja yksi historiantutkija
Asko Nivala Turun yliopistosta.
”Vaikka lähtökohtamme on kuvataiteessa,
pyrimme perustelemaan teokset itsellemme
kirjoittamalla tekstejä”, Rahkila kertoo. ”Leikimme kielellä ja tieteen ja taiteen tutkimuksen terminologialla. Siksi me kutsutaan itseämme tutkimuskeskukseksi.”
Ryhmän viimeisimpiä töitä oli yhdessä
saksalaisen performanssitaiteilija Johnny
Amoren kanssa helmikuussa toteutettu esitystaiteellinen tutkimusmatka Berliinistä
Rotterdamiin, Seven For The Price Of One –
Accumulating Value. Siinä seurattiin vanhoja
kauppareittejä ja tutkittiin kauppaa ja performanssia, katoavan taiteen kaupallistamista.
”Kaupallistaminen on vieras asia meille kaikille mutta yritimme ottaa siihen neutraalin
suhteen ja leikkiä sillä, pelata sitä kauppapeliä”, Rahkila kertoo. Tämä tarkoitti käytännössä sitä, että kunkin esityksen tuotolla
ostettiin seuraavan esityksen materiaali tai
lähtökohta ja pyrittiin näin kasvattamaan pääomaa ja havainnollistamaan aihetta.
Rahkilaa eivät kiinnosta määrittelyt, onko
MVET esitystaidetta vai performanssia.
”Mun mielestä on vaan nastaa sotkea määritelmiä ja koota jutut monista eri aineksista”, Rahkila toteaa. Mutta se on varmaa, että
MVET ei ole teatteria. Miehet eivät näyttele.
Sen sijaan heillä on missio: Jos uskoo johonkin
tai on jotain mieltä, niin sen asian puolesta pitää myös toimia.
Juuri niin Rahkila on tehnyt, hän on eräs
tärkeä tekijä pysyvän performanssikentän
luomisessa Tampereella.
Messiaaninen Visuaalisen Etiikan
Tutkimuskeskus (MVET) ja Johnny Amore:
7 For The Price of 1 – Accumulating Value,
performanssiesitys ja tutkimusmatkan
katalogin julkistamistilaisuus Porin
taidemuseossa 1.10.2010.
tommi taipale
”Esityksellisesti Telakan tila ei ole maailman paras, se on matala, täynnä tolppia ja
mitään kauhean sotkuista ei voi esittää kun
tilalla on muutakin käyttöä”, Rahkila sanoo
mutta vaikuttaa varsin tyytyväiseltä yhteistyöhön Telakan kanssa, joka tarjoaa Perfon
käyttöön tilan lisäksi tekniikkaa ja miksaajan
bändeille. Sen lisäksi alakerrassa on ravintola
ja terassi täynnä ”tavallisia” ihmisiä.
”Kun me käydään ilmoittamassa että klubi
alkaa, niin me saadaan usein yleisöä, joka ei
muuten ikinä lähtisi katsomaan tän lajin esityksiä”, Rahkila kertoo. ”Ja jotkut taiteilijat
haluaa päästä kohtaamaan ihmisiä autenttisissa tiloissa ja siihen alakerran baari tai terassi on hyviä paikkoja. Ja jos joku ei halua
nähdä performanssia, voi jäädä alakertaan.
Kakkoskerroksessa on kohdeyleisölle turvallinen ja kotoisa ympäristö, jossa voi keskittyä performanssiin intensiivisesti.”
35
GONZO HENKISIÄ HUOMIOITA TAITEEN MAAILMASTA
ARTVENTURES
todellisen taiteen jäljillä
PRIDE – LISÄÄ KAASUA
K
okemuksia etsiessäni eksyin Pride-kulkueen varrelle. Imin
sisääni paprikasumutetta ja puolustin homoutta. Ajauduin
homobaareihin, burleskiin iltaan ja Pride-festivaalin dragjuhliin. Hetken ajan epäilin oikeutustani olla mukana ilossa, välittömyydessä, hetken ajan epäilin itseäni ja motiivejani. Oi että, kun homot ovat niin välittömiä. Hetken ajan ajattelin, että
etsin itselleni vain lisäarvoa muiden silmissä. Mutta vakuutuin pyyteettömyydestäni katsomalla heitä silmiin ja ymmärtämällä, että he ovat ihmisiä
ihan niin kuin minäkin. Oi sitä yhteyttä, kohtaamista ja riemua! Hetken
elin ja koin sateenkaaren kaikkia värejä. Tai melkein kaikkia: yksi sateenkaaren väreistä olikin kielletty! Yht’äkkiä ymmärsin, mikä katse noiden
homojen, lesbojen, trans-ihmisten, biseksuaalien, epäsikiöiden, nekrofiilien ja lapsiinsekaantujien silmissä oli ollut – he vihaavat minua! He katsovat
kieroon, koska heidän mielestään olen viallinen, saastunut ja mikä pahinta,
vailla omaa tahtoa alistunut heterouteen! Olen siis hetero ja heteroita ei
lasketa sateenkaaren alle, heterous ei ole yksi sateenkaaren väri.
Vihaan hippejä.
heidän vihaansa. Vihaan heidän ylimielisyyttään, herkkähipiäisyyttään. Vihaan uskovaisia, jumalaan katsomatta, vihaan sitä,
että he ovat niin epävarmoja uskostaan, että kestävät ympärillään
vain oman tapansa uskoa. Vihaan sitä, että he saavat arvostella
arvojani ja maailmankuvaani, joka vertautuu uskoon. Minullakin
on jumalani, henkisyyteni, henkilökohtaisuuteni. Voiko arvostusta ilmaista vain olemalla samaa mieltä, muuttumalla vähitellen
heiksi, heidän kaltaisekseen?
Vihaan sitä, että hippejä vihataan.
Vihaan tuollaisia ”syvällisiä” kysymyksiä.
Vihaan Jeesusta, Jumalaa, Allahia, Muhammedia, Buddhaa, Ahtia, Väinämöistä ja Mikki Hiirtä.
Vihaan Pride-aatetta, joka sulkee minut, heteron, ulkopuolelleen. Vihaan
Prideä, koska aatetta kannattavien kanssa en voi olla ylpeä heteroudestani,
en voi olla ylpeä seksuaalisesta suuntautumisestani. En voi juhlia heidän
kanssaan seksuaalisuuttani, lahjaa, joka minulle on suotu. En voi juhlia
rakkauttani naiseen, en voi juhlia himoani naiseen, en voi juhlia sitä, että
minulla on penis ja haluan välillä tunkea sen pilluun. Tai jonnekin ylemmäs. Pillua saa nuolla vain toinen nainen. Saatana. Ihan kuin heterouteni
olisi jotain epänormaalia, sairasta ja likaista, ja ainoastaan heteroudestani
pidättäytymällä voisin lunastaa paikkani heidän keskuudestaan. He vannovat seksuaalisen monimuotoisuuden nimiin, mutta sulkevat minut pois.
Vihaan taidetta ja taiteilijoita. Vihaan näyttelijöitä.
Mutta he eivät olekaan taiteilijoita. Vihaan nukketeatteria, nykysirkusta ja nykyteatteria. Vihaan draamaa.
Vihaan miimiä ja klovneriaa. Vihaan kontakti-imrovisaatiota, joogaa ja Intiaa. Vihaan Todellisuuden tutkimuskeskusta, joka on taantunut joukoksi eripuraisia,
teorialla runkkaavia teinejä, joiden live-tekeleet ovat
yhtä kliseisiä kuin niihin liitetyt teoriatkin. Vihaan
Toisissa tiloissa-ryhmää, joiden kalsarihiippailuissa
ei ole edes akateemista arvoa. Vihaan Ylioppilasteatterin pullistelua jolla ei ole mitään perustaa, vihaan
Zodiakin ohjelmistoa, vihaan Tampereen Teatterikesää. Vihaan Eero-Tapio Vuorta, joka haluaisi oikeasti
olla myytti. Vihaan kaikkia, jotka jaksavat ylistää Felix
Ruckertia. Vihaan Juha-Pekka Hotista, koska hän ei
kehunut minua viimeksi tavatessamme. Vihaan AnnaMari Karvosta, Riko Saatsia ja Milja Sarkolaa, koska
heitä kehuttiin Helsingin Sanomissa lahjakkaiksi. Ja
tuosta lehtijutusta on jo aikaa, mutta viha vaan säilyy!
Vihaan Lauri Tähkää ja Luhtaa.
Oi näitä raakalaismaisia aatoksia.
Vihaan kaikkia, jotka väittävät tekevänsä jotain.
Oi tätä loukattua sydäntä, jonka pumppama musta veri pakkautuu tätä kirjoittaviin sormiini.
Vihaan sitä, ettei saa vihata. Vihaan niitä, jotka eivät
osaa ottaa vastuuta omista tunteistaan. Vihaan niitä
rättipäitä, jotka loukkaantuvat erimielisten ihmisten
olemassaolosta. Vihaan sitä Oululaista imaamia, joka
väittää kaikkien tajuavan väärin häntä ja heitä. Vihaan
PS.
Oi pettymystä.
Oi vihaa.
Koko Pride-aate pitäisi lakkauttaa. SETA pitäisi lakkauttaa. Ja NATO.
Samoin pitäisi lakkauttaa homoseksuaalisuus ja feminismi. Pitäisi lakkauttaa tasa-arvo ja äitimyytti. Vihaan Pride-kansaa. Vihaan sitä, että heidän
tympeät draginsa ovat tyhmiä, muka-hauskoja (koko drag on yhtä ja samaa
venytettyä vitsiä!), rumia ja aneemisia. Vihaan koko dragin ideaa. Vihaan
36
burleskia ja läskisiä rumia ämmiä sen äärellä. Vihaan
sitä, että he ripustautuvat siihen kauneusihanteeseen,
josta haluavat eroon. Vihaan sitä, että heillä ei ole
muuta kuin se vastustaminen. Vihaan ”feministi”-äitejä, jotka miehen tullessa lasten hiekkalaatikolle ottavat lapsensa sieltä pois.
Vihaan vihaan vihaan.
Vihaan sitä, ettei saa vihata.
Vihaan John Travoltaa.
Vihaan.
Ja miksen vihaisi?
Aidosti suvaitsevaa ja moniarvoista yhteiskuntaa rakentaen,
Masi W. Eskolin
viimeinen hetero
Vihaan myös Lapin puita kaatavia metsureita ja heitä
vastustavia Greenpeacen väkeä, vihaan prekariaattia, nynnyjä, kapitalismin metafysiikkaa, hikeä, koulukiusaajia
ja heidän vanhempiaan, mustalaisia, ”Kiitos 1939-44”-paitoihin
pukeutuneita miehiä ja naisia, vasemmistoon kallellaan olevia
taiteilijoita ja kaikkia, jotka väittävät olevansa ”pienen ihmisen
puolella”.
37
PP: minäkin vihaan hippejä
JM: i really do, i really really do. ja sitten myös
vihaan, että vihaan hippejä, i wonder how many
we should have
PP: indeed
ikoni
STUART HALL
JA MINÄ
Asuin pienenä Helsingin Pakilassa, vitivalkoisella omakotitalo-alueella. Päiväkodissa
minulle valkeni erilaisuuteni suhteessa muihin lapsiin. ”Ai miten suloiset suklaanappisilmät!
Onkohan isäsi jostain etelästä?” kysyi jokainen uusi tarhatäti. Myöhemmin koulussa minua
luultiin romaniksi. Vielä viime vuosina olen kuullut näyttäväni espanjalaiselta, italialaiselta,
ranskalaiselta, venäläiseltä, intialaiselta ja turkkilaiselta noin muutamia kansallisuuksia
luetellakseni. Eivätkä nämä kommentit ole yksin suomalaisesta suusta, vaan myös ehtaa
turkkilaista ihmettelyä Istanbulin lentokentällä: ”Luulimme vastaanottavamme vaalean
skandinaavin, mutta sinähän oletkin aivan turkkilaisen näköinen!”
V
ajaat 10 vuotta sitten löysin Turun Taideakatemian kirjastosta
kulttuurintutkija Stuart Hallin teoksen Identiteetti (1999), joka
auttoi ymmärtämään näitä kommentteja ja avarsi näkemystäni
piilorasismista. Hallille identiteetti on itsensä yhä uudelleen
määrittelevä käsite ja rakentuu keinotekoisesti. Sillä ei ole stabiilia, paikalleen sidottua olemusta. Hall ei niinkään tuota uutta tietoa, mutta yhdistelee taitavasti jo olemassa olevaa identiteetti- ja valtatutkimusta selkeäksi
kokonaisuudeksi. Hall osoittaa antropologisen, sosiologisen, psykologisen
ja filosofisen tutkimuksen rotueroja tuottavaksi diskurssiksi, jolla työstetään eroa meidän ja muiden - länsimaalaisuuden ja muun maailman välille.
Päiväkotiopettajien otaksuma ”suklaanappisilmä” = ”ulkomaalaisen miehen
lapsi” liittyy Hallin käyttämään hybridikäsitteeseen. Kulttuurin järjestys
häiriintyy kun asiat eivät ole oikeassa järjestyksessä tai kun ne eivät mahdu
oletettuun kategoriaan. Täten esimerkiksi mulattien kaltainen ryhmä on
häiriötekijä, eikä ryhmän edustajaa voi rajata mihinkään ”puhtaaseen” kansallisuuteen kuuluvaksi.
H
38
E
delleen tiedämme miten suosittu
aihe medioissamme on islamilaisten
alueiden tai idän kulttuurien vajaavaisuuden spekulointi suhteessa länsimaiseen
demokratiaan. Viimeksi Ranska kielsi kasvot peittävien huivien käytön. Ehkä postkolonialistinen Pariisi alkoi muistuttaa liiaksi
Dubain esikaupunkialuetta. Ranskalaisuuden
identiteetti oli joka tapauksessa häiriintynyt.
H
all pitääkin toiseuden diskurssissa
olennaisen tärkeänä stereotypioiden määrittelyä, sekä niiden kytkemistä representaatioon, eroon ja valtaan.
Stereotypialla pystytään esittämään lyhytnäköinen yleistys, joka kuittaa massaksi kokonaisia ihmisryhmiä ja yksilöitä. Esimerkkinä
vaikkapa islamilaiset naiset, jotka ovat alistettuja ja joutuvat siksi käyttämään huivia. Huivi nähdään stereotypian kautta ensisijaisesti
alistamisen symbolina jolloin unohdetaan tai
riisutaan, sekä vaatteelta että sen käyttäjältä,
kaikki muut ominaisuudet. Huivipäisestä naisesta tulee alistettu nainen, joka ei koskaan
ole ollut tai tule olemaan muuta. Hall yhdistää stereotypioiden käytön edelleen Michel
Foucaultin teoriaan vallan ja tiedon pelistä.
Me tiedämme, että on olemassa huivin käyttöä koskeva säännöstö ja me oletamme, että
tämä säännöstö koskee yksinomaan naisten
kontrollointia. Jotta tämä säännöstö voidaan
purkaa, on poistettava huivi naisten päästä.
Näin olemme ottaneet vallan vieraalta kulttuurilta, samaistaneet kyseisen kulttuurin
ranskalaisuuteen.
M
ielenkiintoista on, että Ranska puuttui nimenomaan
naisten pukeutumiseen, eikä vaikkapa perinteiseen
pohjoisafrikkalaiseen miesten kaftaaniin. Huivi muuttui fetissiksi. Fetisismi korvaa subjektin objektilla, pilkkoo kohteen palasiksi, irrottaa siitä osan. Hallin käyttää esimerkkinä
hottentottien Venuksena tunnettua Saartje Baartmania, joka
tuotiin Afrikasta vuonna 1809 näytteille Lontooseen ja Pariisiin.
Baartman kastettiin ja hän avioitui myöhemmin Manchesterissa,
mutta olennaista oli sekä yleisön että tiedemiesten (luonnontieteilijät ja etnologit) kiinnostus hänen ruumiiseensa ja siihen, miten se erosi eurooppalaisesta kehosta. Baartman oli 137 cm pitkä
ja hänen ruumiinsa, mukaan lukien sukuelimet, olivat aikalaisille
osoitus luonnon (seksuaalisuus) ja kulttuurin (sivistys tai sen puute) yhteensulautumasta. Baartman kuoli 1815 isorokkoon, jonka
jälkeen hänen ruumiinsa otettiin ”tieteelliseen” käyttöön, pilkottiin osiksi ja säilöttiin - osoituksena rodullisesta erosta. Hänet
muutettiin konkreettisesti fetissiksi.
A
ikuistuttuani olen toisinaan saanut kuulla olevani tumma
ja tulinen, niin yliseksuaalinen kuin myös frigidi nainen.
Tällaisista kohteliaisuuksista voisi jopa olla imarreltu,
elleivät ne sisältäisi allekirjoittaneeseen kohdistuvia yleisiä ennakkoluuloja. Olen viimeaikoina uudelleen syventänyt suhdettani
Stuart Hallin ajatusmaailmaan työstämällä näitä stereotyyppisiä
sekä fetisistisiä mielikuvia. Myös performanssi taiteenlajina elää
osalle yleisöstä näiden mielikuvien alamaailmassa, joten uskon
myös mediani tukevan yhä uudelleen hajoavan identiteettini introspektiota.
Suvi Parrilla
Taiteilija, objekti ja fetissi
inoki
allille länsi on joukko kuvia. Se on diskurssi, jonka tarkoitus on
tehdä eroa kulttuurilliseen toiseuteen. Se on tarina teollistumisesta, uskonnosta ja sivistyksestä. Sen tarkoitus on pilkkoa osiin,
relevantiksi ja käyttökelpoiseksi tietomassaksi muut kulttuurit, valloittaa
kaukaiset maankolkat, ihmiset ja kielet hallitakseen ja todentaakseen eroa.
Esimerkiksi tuttu TV-antropologi Bruce Parry, joka seikkailee maailman
viimeisimmissä neitseellisissä kolkissa, joista eräässä hänet initioidaan pieneen heimoon. Initiaation jälkeen hänen silmänsä loistavat ja muistuttavat
meitä siitä, kuinka olemme kadottaneet jotain ”aidosta” itsestämme.
L
ännen tarinan alkutaipaleen kivuliaimpia epäkohtia oli islamin-uskon synty.
Islam oli ennennäkemätöntä kansansuosiota nauttinut poliittinen ja uskonnollinen menestystarina. Huolta eurooppalaisille
aiheuttivat ensisijaisesti islamin pyhät paikat,
jotka sijaitsivat samoissa osoitteissa kristittyjen sekä juutalaisten kanssa. Islamin vastainen diskurssi onnistui niputtamaan lopulta
käsitteen ”itä” yhtenäiseksi kokonaisuudeksi,
joka puhekielessä kattaa kaiken Marokosta
Kiinaan.
39
Teatteri Venus: KUDOSKLUBI # 5 la 25.9. 21-02
For free, for all. SPECIAL GUESTS
Suomen riehakkain performanssiklubi
Rokkaa ja ruumistele - vietä erilainen lauantai!
Teatteri Venus: Det falska barnet / Valelapsi
extraföreställningar / lisäesitykset
21.-29.9. Regi: Max Bremer
Teater Mars: Faster Elses liv - och andra historier
Premiär 14.10. Regi: Joakim Groth
10th Baltic Circle - International Theatre Festival 17.-21.11.
LOUNGE at Universum. Check www.balticcircle.fi
Sirius Teatern:
I väntan på Godot av Samuel Beckett
Premiär 6.12. Regi: Niklas Groundstroem
www.universum.fi
Perämiehenkatu 13, Punavuori, Helsinki
liput: 09 611 003 & www.piletti.fi
Anni Leppälä, Garden, 2007
copyright
Bo Haglund
Kiitos kuudennen Art Fair Suomi -näyttelyn taiteilijoille, yleisölle ja yhteistyökumppaneille.
Jo vuodesta 2005 asti teosvälitystilaisuus Art Fair Suomi, jonka järjestävät kuvataiteen uusia muotoja edustavat taiteilijajärjestöt MUU ry
sekä Valokuvataiteilijoiden Liitto ry. Järjestöissä on jäseninä yhteensä lähes 1000 eturivin suomalaista nykytaiteilijaa.
Art Fair Suomi jälleen ensi vuonna.
www.artfairsuomi.fi
Esitys-lehti
40
41
/teatteri.nyt /theatre.now 6.–17.10.2010
Nathaniel Mellors GB:
The 7 Ages of Britain Teaser
Kiasma / Studio K
Video: 6.–10.10.
Nathaniel Mellors, taiteilijaesittely /
artist presentation 6.10. 17:00
Museolipulla / Museum admission
Gisèle Vienne / Dennis
Cooper / Jonathan
Capdevielle: Jerk
Kiasman Seminaari-tila /
Kiasma Seminar Room
6.10. klo 19:00
Esitys / Performance
15/10e
Meri Linna, Saija Kassinen:
Intermission
Kiasman aula / Kiasma’s Lobby
6.10.–10.10.
Esitysinstallaatio /
Performance installation
Maksuton / Free
Seminaari performanssitaiteen kritiikistä
Performanssi ja kritiikki
Kiasma-teatteri / Kiasma Theatre
7.–8.10. 10:00–16:00
Seminaari / Seminar in Finnish
Maksuton
Todellisuuden
tutkimuskeskus /
Reality Research Center –
Tuomas Laitinen,
Dasniya Sommer:
X Etydi ikuisesta elämästä /
X Etude on Everlasting Life
Kiasma / Rauha-galleria
8.10. 18:00, 9.10. 14:00, 10.10. 14:00
Yksi yhdelle esitys /
1to1 performance8 DESIGN ELEMENTS 4 LOGO
Museolipulla / Museum admission
Pimeä projekti 3 /
Dark Project 3:
LIGHT NOISE (demo)
/teatteri.nyt -klubi
/theatre.now club
Music to Please –
TJ: Tape Head aka Paul Divjak (AT)
Kiasma-teatteri / Kiasma Theatre
10.10. 19:00–23:00
Maksuton / Free
Kiasman Seminaari-tila /
Kiasma Seminar Room
9.10. 15:00, 10.10. 17:00
Esitysdemo / Performance demo
Maksuton / Free
PAVLOVAN KOE
PAVLOVA EXPERIMENT /
EXPÉRIENCE
Iona Mona Popovici RO:
Work in Regression
Kiasma-teatteri / Kiasma Theatre
9.10. 17:00
Soolo / Solo
15/10 e
Kiasman aula / Kiasma’s Lobby
Avoimet harjoitukset /
Open rehearsals
12.10. 10:00–12:00, 14.10.
10:00–12:00, 15.10.14:00–16:00
Intersection –
Intimicy and Spectacle
(EU-projekti / EU project)
Eeva-Mari Haikala:
One to one –
yksi yhdelle –
yksi yhdestä
Sodja Lotker (CZ): Intersectionesittely / Intersection presentation;
Terike Haapoja: Taiteilijapuheenvuoro / Artist Talk
Kiasma / Studio K, 10.10. 15:00
Maksuton / Free
Kiasma / Rauha-galleria
12.10. 15:00–16.30
Yksi yhdelle esitys /
1to1 performance
Maksuton / Free
Sara Pathirane:
Puhu hänelle / Talk to Her
Toisissa tiloissa
(Nälkäteatteri):
POROSAFARI /
REINDEER SAFARI
Kiasman aula, Kiasma’s Lobby
9.10. & 10.10. 14:00–17:00
Esitysinstallaatio /
Performance installation
Maksuton / Free
2.10.–16.10.2010
• Koulutus / training 2.10. 11.00–
14:00 Kiasma Seminar Room, 10e
• Porosafari / Reindeer Safari 3.10.
9.00–18:00 kaupunkitila, city space
• Porosafari video 12.–17.10.
Kiasma / Studio K,
Museolipulla / Museum admission
• Poroerotus (porosafarin
purku ja esittely),
Reindeer round-up defusing
Kiasma / Studio K,
16.10. 13:00–15:00
/teatteri.nyt kuvaprojekti /
theatre.now photo project
Bohdan Holomíček ja Eva Hrubá RO
”Projection by request”
Festivaalikuvat /
Festival photo projection
Kiasma-teatterin lämpiö /
Kiasma Theatre Foyer
10.10. 19:00
Maksuton / Free
(short version)
Colour applications of the logo
In addition to a colour version of 4C, further
versions of the logo are available depending on the
area of application.
Aune Kallinen, Laura
Murtomaa: Kansallinen
hanke. Yhteiskunnallisen
trilogian 3 osa. –
National Project. Social
Trilogy, part 3.
ANTIContemporary Art Festival
Kiasma-teatteri / Kiasma Theatre
15.10. 19:00, 16.10. 16:00
Esitys / Performance
15/10e
Kansainvälinen, yleisölle ilmainen
paikkasidonnaisen nykytaiteen festivaali
valtaa Kuopion kuudeksi päiväksi!
Theatre Cryptic SC: Orlando
Espoon Kaupunginteatteri /
Espoo City Theatre, Louhisali
14.10. 19:00, 15.10. 19:00, 16.10. 15:00
Liput: Espoon Kaupunginteatteri /
Tickets: Espoo City Theatre
Todellisuuden
tutkimuskeskus /
Reality Research Center –
Anna Jussilainen: Henki
Kiasma, Rauha-galleria
15.10., 16.10., 17.10. 14:00,
15:00, 16:00, 17:00
Yksi yhdelle esitys /
1to1 performance
Museolipulla / Museum admission
“Niin vähän
aikaa,
niin paljon
koettavaa.”
Eeva-Mari Haikala: Kiss me
Kiasma-teatteri / Kiasma Theatre
17.10. 15:00
Esitysinstallaatio /
Performance installation
Vapaa pääsy / Free
Syväsukellus
esitystaiteeseen
-yleisötyöpaja
Näe, koe, keskustele:
/teatteri.nyt, Baltic Circle,
Liikkeellä marraskuussa.
Työpajaan valitaan 10 henkeä.
Maksuton.
LOGO 3 DESIGN ELEMENTS
Lisätiedot: info@tanssiareena.fi
9
“Ihmettely
on tärkeä osa
ANTIa.”
Festivaalilla mm. juoksutapahtuma
ANTI Kymppi,
Oopperaa arkisissa paikoissa,
reality-tv:tä kahvilassa ja minuutin
lintubongausta. Esityksiä hisseissä ja
rakkauslauluja ravintolassa.
Tule nostamaan lippuja salkoon,
ottamaan vastaan anteeksipyyntö sekä
purkamaan graafisia koodeja.
“Jos tämä ANTI on
taidetapahtuma,
niin onhan siinä
jotain taiteen
piirteitä nähtävä.”
mm. John Court (UK/FI)
Rosie Dennis (AU)
Maija Hirvanen (FI)
Los Torreznos (ES) ja
Kira O’Reilly (UK)
with EU flag (long version)
KATSO JA LATAA KOKO OHJELMA:
1. Logo colour version
The colour version is used wherever printing is
in 4C, e.g. in all business materials and brochures.
1. Logo colour version
2. Logo greyscale
The greyscale logo is used for black-and-white
business materials. The greyscale version is
determined by colour depth.
www.antifestival.com
“On se aika
vuodesta.”
3. Logo greyscale “negative”
This negative form is used against black
backgrounds. The greyscale version is determined by
colour depth.
2. Logo greyscale
KIASMA NYKYTAITEEN MUSEO
Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki · www.kiasma.fi/teatteri
Ti 10–17, ke-pe 10–20.30, la-su 10–18, ma sulj. · Varaukset (09) 1733 6501
4. Logo monochrome version
The monochrome version of the logo is used when the
file size is to be kept as small as possible or printing
is to be especially economical.
5. Logo monochrome version “negative”
The monochrome version of the logo is used when the
file size is to be kept as small as possible or printing
is to be especially economical. This negative form is
28.9.–3.1
0.
2010
42
43
3. Logo greyscale “negative”
ITYS
44
esitys.todellisuus.fi
ISSN 1797-500x