Maija: I am a multidisciplinary artist soon graduating from the master’s program in Live Art and Performance Studies at the Theater Academy in Helsinki. I have worked with the Other Side Performance Art Platform for a while now, and was also assisting – as well as making notes for this article – during the festival days, and intend to make my ambiguous double role present and articulated in this text.

Dash: I am a post-Soviet immigrant trans performance artist based in Finland. I graduated from Live Art and Performance Studies and have been working in a cultural field as a teaching and performance artist. Previously I performed at Other Side Vantaa One-Day Stand as part of the Mean Time Between Failures duet with dance artist and archaeologist Suvi Tuominen. Maija invited me to attend the Other Side Festival and co-write the article after watching all the performances. I knew some of the performing artists personally or via seeing their work online, while others were completely new to me.

This text is the result of two people coming together through several phone calls, face-to-face meetings, failed and semi-successful attempts of using speech-to-text transcribing AI platforms as well as phone recorder device, affectual unfiltered conversations, and editing around 30 pages of raw material. After several weeks of being fully immersed into the text we asked two of our dear friends and colleagues, also performance artists, Raphaël Beau and niko wearden to proofread and give suggestions to this text. We are very grateful for them taking their time and energy to do it.

Some of the thematic treads that emerged when discussing The Other Side Festival 2025 performances:

Community art versus performance art, what is the difference?
What is the role of the audience? What is asked from the audience these days in the context of performance art?
Highly scripted performances versus loose open-to-chance performances
Ongoing themes of invasion and invasive species that reflects the socio-political tension in Finland right now
Performances as pictures, the tension between image-based performance and embodied presences
Framing something as performance art – is there a better format sometimes?
The presence of the body in a performance – whether it is needed or not

At some point during the discussion we were compelled to organize the inventory of overarching themes, actions and objects that repeatedly showed up in the various performances throughout the festival. This made us, half-jokingly, notice the predictability in performance art. Still, more so, it made us connect all these very different works together through the assortment and repetition of common objects and actions. We counted that besides humans the performing objects were:

two long sticks (one stick used to break piñata and one to deal with the water pump, we were wondering if that was the same stick or two different ones).
four knives (two knives were performing in stillness while two other knives performed while cutting the dough)
food or edibles (popcorn in one work and raw potatoes in two other works)
fake blood and real blood (in two different works)
reference to parasites and invaders (in three works)
stone that was used to crush different materials or objects (in two works) and still stones (in one work)
paint in relation to a performer’s mouth (in two works) and paint spread on surfaces (in two works)
lit candles (in two works)
wine glasses filled with water or wine (in two works)
plastic tarp used to cover the floor (in two works)
river that the performers submerged themselves into (in two works)
water drank during the performance (in two or more works)
white dress or white robe (in two works)

Maija: Okay, I'm recording. So what did we go through?

Dash: We talked about the festival and how it was different, perhaps, than other festivals. The festival took over the whole building – Kulttuuritehdas Vernissa in Vantaa, and around it, like in the outside staircase, outdoors in the front yard, on the bridge across the river, in the river. Everywhere.

M: Yeah, exactly. There also was a feeling of inclusivity and people really being together. Like building a community during the festival. At least that was the feeling I got coming from inside these art circles.

D: Yeah, in the previous conversation that didn’t get recorded unfortunately, we also questioned whether people from outside of the performance art field felt as included as us. Since we both studied performance and actually are performance artists trained at the same elite institution in Helsinki. So we talked about how statements of perceived inclusivity need to be made with some caution and knowing of our positions.

M: Absolutely, yeah. There was a shared dinner on the first evening of the festival, for both the artists and all guests. That really contributed to the feeling of inclusivity, but again, it is hard to tell whether it really felt welcoming or possible to participate in for people coming from “outside”. Nevertheless, it was a warm initiation to the whole festival.

Also, we talked about the interesting variety of the performers’ backgrounds and ages – where they were all at in their careers. The festival kicked off on Thursday with an extensive video screening of works by both contemporary and more established Latin American performance artists, curated and presented by Pancho Lopez, himself a renowned performance artist from Mexico. So in this screening the variety was already present. Pancho also did a surprise performance at the end of his presentation, where he performed with a video recording of himself drinking coffee by a table in front of the screen, made in the same spot some days earlier. Every object in the video was doubled by an actual presence of the same object on top of it. It was an interesting play with different levels of presence, a theme we encountered in some other performances of the festival as well.

D: Yes! And also, for example, there were seven artists that came from abroad, right?

It is quite big, I would say, for that scale of the festival to bring so many guests from outside of Finland. Then we started discussing the performances, for instance, the one by Veronica. It was the first one that happened on the second day of the festival. Could you say the full name again? Veronica…

M: Veronica Cordova De La Rosa was working with piñata practice. She built this piñata at the location, during the few days we had there prior to the festival. The piñata was incorporating Canadian geese. So there were recorded sounds of geese, and I guess you told me that the idea behind it was that Finnish people generally hate Canadian geese, so she wanted to bring them into an inside space. From your conversation with Veronica we gathered that nowadays she works with community art.

D: In the work Veronica moved around and touched the hanging piñata first to the soundscape of geese. Then she brought the blindfolds and offered the audience to take part by hitting the piñata with their eyes covered. It was very exciting and unnerving. As piñata usually is….

We also talked about the difference between community art practice and performance art practice. For example, is there a difference and does it even matter? Like now I'm thinking that you mentioned that Veronica’s practice is working with piñatas. To me, Veronica’s performance presented the piñata practice as given in a way, not deconstructed or subverted. The meaning of it was quite direct and somehow the poetics of other possible meanings didn’t come through for me. So, then maybe that's the difference from performance art, because in community-based art the action is taken as it is, literally as the social practice that brings communities together. And perhaps that's okay, because the performance did what it did. As the opening performance it set the tone for the whole festival of being playful, fun, and communal. It activated the audience, made us curious in some way about things to come.

M: During the performance, I remember you wondering what's going to be inside the piñata? Because usually there are sweets. And then it was just that – sweets. I couldn’t quite make the connection between this culturally specific community practice and the criticality of bringing this “invading” species indoors in the form of its sounds. Especially since the piñata represented the geese – and then we started beating it. To me, the Canadian geese represented invaders, or parasites, and this question of inclusion and exclusion, of entering spaces and who is allowed to do so – another important theme in many of the festival’s works.

D: Yes, there were several art works playing with the idea of invasive species or parasites. On the last day of the festival – and now I am jumping – we had a spider performed by Leik Silvestrini. The spider also brought people together, but simultaneously created tension and raised the question about who was allowed to be in the space.

M: Exactly, yeah. And Karolina Kucia, who performed right after Veronica, also had this approach to parasites, of exiting and entering, and working with the question of who is allowed to enter a space, and by what means. A lot of Finland-based artists are working with questions of exclusion right now, perhaps since the political reality in Finland and in the EU in general is, of course, that of harshening immigration laws and ongoing active exclusion. There is also the question of whether or not it actually is a choice to work or not work with these questions, and to whom. Is it that some people get to make art about subjects they are interested in, whilst others are so busy with daily survival, the art has to grapple with those survival questions in order to be temporally realistic?

D: And, yeah, what else did we say about Karolina’s work before? We talked about the sense of immediacy that she brought to the space. It did move the audience. It literally moved the audience outside.

M: Yeah, it did a lot of moving, in many senses. There were also the biblical references and a sort of alternative reading of the Bible, specifically the parasitic reading of the Jonah story and questioning what it means to be a parasite. “There is no unoccupied land”, and “there are other options besides obedience” were Karolina’s outtakes in the end.

D: Yes, that was very important, as you said. And then we also talked about Karolina’s artistic research on parasites she has been doing for several years. It is a recurring theme and practice in various performance settings. Therefore she has a lot of information and ways of dealing with parasites as kind of almost a community.

M: Yes! I actually didn’t know much about Karolina’s practice beforehand, but that was definitely present. So what happened in the performance? Karolina gathered us in the black box only to immediately start hustling us out with this urgency, showing signs that said things like “get your coats”. We went to the lobby and eventually outside, where Karolina sealed the main door with this huge white paper and gave everyone a note with different instructions on how to work as parasites, how to essentially find a position where entering the building would become possible. So we formed all kinds of smaller and bigger parasitic communities, holding hands or some climbing on each other's backs. Afterwards we gathered in the lobby for a closing conversation on our different methods of entering and what made us choose them.

D: Yeah… And after those two highly audience-involving performances, we had quite a traditional performance art piece by Sin Seeni. It felt like the work followed the specific lineage of many performance artists of the 20th century withstanding pain in a minimalist setting while the audience is watching. The performer set a burning candle in the center of a circle arranged with nails. He put a blindfold on, lit two other candles and held the ends of it to his eyes while walking on the nails. To me it felt like a very male act somehow, especially, maybe because there was a lot of dripped candle wax left after for the others to clean. The performance had a precise set of rules. We talked about how the performance was so scripted, that it felt almost too theatrical, with not much air in it. Even though that very air, from the air conditioner that was there in the space, actually broke the script, blew the candles off. Then it became interesting.

M: Yeah. We also mentioned the kind of weird tension between it being, like a very traditional performance, but also very much not performance art, due to its being so theatrical. For me there were definitely interesting things in the theatricality but that might be also due to my background in theater. I like when things are timed in maybe non-traditional ways – I don't know if that even was a non-traditional way, but I like things that make the performance’s duration visible and tangible, like burning a candle. But then there were these mishaps, quite a lot actually. And in the end, I realized that I wouldn't have liked the performance, not as much at least, if there wouldn't have been these mistakes or these things that were not supposed to happen. I think those were the things that actually made the performance for me, and made it a performance in the end, and the audience participation that was not supposed to happen was also a beautiful continuum of the other performances of the day. The fact that it couldn’t be avoided even in this very minimal, highly structured and visual work.

D: It made me think about the audience's care and the audience's responsibility. How am I responsible as an audience member for the performance to “succeed” or to continue? For example, I found myself not caring enough for the performance to continue according to its script. But then I was so fascinated by the other audience member's care, when they went to find a lighter to then light the performer’s candles back. Watching it, I was checking my level of care, and why don't I care? Or what should the audience care about in general? To just witness? To engage? To “fix” the work? And to what extent?

M: That's really interesting. That also stood out for me in many of the festival’s performances – the level of very precise care around the works and between the audience members and the performers. Like we were all making sure that the performances can happen and go on as they're supposed to, filling the water buckets for Tonya Fucking Björkbom, and assisting Thomasz Szrama in different ways.

D: And I think that this opportunity for the audience to perform, to be seen, to do things bodily, to be an affected audience also brings a level of togetherness. We are together in a space and in so many more embodied ways than just sitting and watching. I think there was this openness and desire to play throughout the festival. We were a very excitable audience.

M: Exactly. And then Tomasz Szrama, again, very much opposite from Sin Seeni’s work. But also, in a very different way, a traditional performance art piece as in it was very much this presence and action based work. Like, the body just being there and using different materials and working from the moment. And working the audience also, but in a different way, actually shaping the audience, bringing the audience in as a material. And also extending the performance space, or the space of the whole festival building as far as possible, and finally into the river.

D: True…. In the beginning, right before Tomasz started, he said to me that he had his knife with him. He said he always has a knife in the performance, because it scares the audience, or it, like, brings the feeling that something's gonna happen, yeah? I've seen his other works, there's always a knife. And then he said – I don't know how much of it is true – but he said he always has a starting point and he doesn't know where it's gonna go from there. But then I was talking with my partner about how we were sure that he studied the space, because there was this really sharp awareness of what is in the space and how those things perform. I think that kind of bodily familiarity around the space is what makes his performances so exciting. Because, yes, it's just a dude handling different objects, expecting way too much from the audience, but there's something really magical in the way he handles everything. He's almost like a juggler. Yeah, things occasionally fall, but mostly they stay in the air.

M: Yeah, it's true. It's weird that in this seemingly pure chaos, there's still this sense of very precise skill of handling the space, like being really comfortable and familiar in it, and claiming it, like you said. But there was also this kind of an interesting disruption in the end, where Tomasz went outside once again, and I guess, into the river to get the candles from there, and then people really didn't follow him anymore. I felt like up until that point Thomasz was very much in charge. But then there's this moment of fighting back. I would be interested to know if that is also a thing that he's working with, or predicting to happen at some point. I don't know if it matters.

D: But yeah, what's he working with? We had this short conversation, and he said, "When I teach my students, I always say that you don't even need to complete the action in order for the action to perform and be successful. You can just hint at the action, like when you have the knife, it's already enough. It doesn't really need to do so much, yeah, or you can just suggest that something might happen”. And I was thinking about it, because a lot of things were unfinished and yet some things did finish in full circle, like him going back into the water and bringing this tray.

M: Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. And there's also a connection I feel to some other works at the festival, at least in having this also kind of a traditional performance artist’s kit of materials and objects, and then that already creates certain expectations. I think that was present at least in Raeda’s and in Tonya's performances, that they had the kits but then ended up not using some of the items. And I was just wondering how intentional that is. And is the aim to set in motion an action that ends up being unfinished, or just create this expectation of an action – that is already, of course, an action.

D: Yeah, for Raeda Saade’s work, I was actually thinking quite a lot about her presence in the performance we saw as well as the legacies that she is coming from in her art. She's a well known Palestinian artist, I remember even showing some of her artworks to my performance students before. As I understand she comes from a visual art background with a strong focus on image-based practice. The images that are captured in her work are stunning -- so powerful. Of course, her background as a Palestinian artist evokes even more meanings in these images. Yet, as I was watching her work I realized that in some ways her actual performance piece didn’t resonate with me. For me personally as a performance artist coming from a dance background, body and its presence is very important. That includes the way the body relates to space, to other bodies and objects around it. I notice that as an audience I seek and affectually connect to strong embodied dynamics rather than strong still images when watching a performance. So when I was seeing Raeda’s work, I felt this friction inside of me – appreciating the work but not connecting to it. I was “reading” the work as snapshots of static images rather than a process.

M: That’s interesting! I personally have this kind of a weird relationship with the body in performance. I feel like what I often focus on are exactly these static images, these visual or auditive landscapes that may or may not involve a human body. Or – I find myself maybe not relating so much to the performer’s body, or being not that interested in it, in the end. Of course, it also depends; when it is really there and really present, then it is the thing you attach yourself to. Then again that may be telling about Raeda’s performance, because her presence was not as interesting to me, at least not as interesting as the performing objects. And the most performing was, of course, the popcorn kettle, being kind of a force of nature, working on its own. Beginning the performance with that was really powerful.

D: Yes, I had a similar feeling there.

M: But of course, at this specific moment in history her body and her performance carries a lot of heavy political meanings. I was thinking about that, these quite generic or overdone gestures in activist or political performance art that she did – like tarnishing a white dress with fake blood, covering her mouth and painting over it – they somehow still didn't feel overdone to me at the moment. It was not perhaps particularly interesting, but somehow, for me, it has surpassed the general association with this specific political art and street performances. Still, definitely the most interesting part and the part that performed the most was the popcorn. And I wonder – sometimes when people work with objects performing, it becomes exactly like you said, this lukewarm presence of the human body, when it could make the performance more powerful if the performer would be content with the role of a facilitator of the objects.

D: And then, of course, once she had the artist talk, which was amazing, and she talked about this installation she did in Jordan called “Dear Viewers” where she covered the house’ ruins in popcorn, the popcorn in that performance made sense. That is a very strong image gesturing at the cruelty of viewing and being entertained by other’s suffering. But also in her performance the popcorn performed something else.

M: To me, the popcorn worked as a sort of force of nature, as this erupting volcano almost, and at the same time it incorporated this form of entertainment for people to witness, like you said. There was also, for me, this friction of objects performing versus knowing that someone has initiated the actions. I think the tension of this kind of duality is part of maybe all object-based performance art, but maybe connected in this case specifically to the witnessing of these horrible things on a daily basis – like somehow getting so used to it that you almost start thinking of them as a force of nature, or something that just happens. While they are of course man-made horrors, or things someone has initiated or put in action, and there’s nothing “natural” in it.

But we arrived at Raeda from this arsenal of things that she had next to her that then ended up not being used in the actual performance. Tonya Fucking Björkbom also had this arsenal of things…

D: Also a knife, like Tomasz earlier.

M: …and they had a potato that Tomasz had left from his performance. And also these very traditional pieces of equipment, different colors, tarp, buckets... Maybe the part that spoke to me the most was the audience interaction in the beginning. People with the buckets, filling them and bringing them back and pouring the water on Tonya who was sitting in a huge bucket.

D: I was sitting so close to the buckets and was going through my own struggle, whether to participate or not. Especially because there was one audience member who was so active in pouring all the buckets. I kept thinking, I probably also should -- I'm sitting next to them. So I had to finally make an active choice that I wouldn't be participating in any other way than watching. When I was watching Tonya’s performance I thought about references to various performance art classics. There were a lot of elements in that work that in a way made a classical performance artist kit, as you mentioned before. I was wondering about those references and the combination of tools, objects and surfaces. Specifically I thought about what kind of relationship the performer had to them and where it would lead me as a viewer. In the end, somehow the work and its elements didn’t really unravel for me.

M: I very much agree.

D: I am curious what would happen if the performer stayed in longer relationships to the actions or objects or allowed them to perform also rather than being somehow solely functional. There was one exciting moment for me when Tonya covered the bucket where they were sitting with the lid. There was a short otherworldly feeling about it -- a distant sound coming from the bucket and the invisible performer and the bucket entered some kind of symbiosis together.

M: Oh yes, there was the sound making. It just kept on going. And it was very demanding. It had an uncanny effect, like all the time I felt like I could recognize this melody from somewhere, it was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t place it in the end.

But otherwise, it didn’t stick to me – maybe this was a kind of performance where the performer’s bodily presence would have made the performance for me, but now it didn’t really carry through. I didn't know what I was supposed to attach to, or like, what to attach this performance to, in which tradition or what continuum.

D: Okay, so let's continue. Should we go to Qiong Zhang? So what did we see in Qiong’s performance? I took a bunch of notes. So the performance lasted for, I think, an hour.

M: Yeah, it was a long performance, and I think that was very much part of it that we didn't, or I at least wasn't sure when it was supposed to end, or was it supposed to end with this vagueness or uncertainty about the borders of the performance.

D: Yes, there was a vague and unsure ending and that is actually what made this performance exciting for me. Towards the end the performer said that she couldn’t stop so we, the audience, could go on if we wanted to leave to see another performance. It felt almost like the performer would continue until the dough dries out. Also, I think when I was watching the dough, I was like, wow, this is a very fragile material that requires very specific tending to and handling and care.

M: Yeah. And the kind of fragility and the aliveness of the material, the dough, really contributed to the extending of the performer's body and making the experience really corporeal… I felt uncomfortable looking at the slicing down with the different tools.

D: So the artist started with sitting on a chair, holding this dough material. There were two Chinese noodles cutting knives on her right side, lying on the floor, and this dough piece was on her right shoulder, a bit like a music instrument or a child, or some kind of body. And then she announced that this piece was about exploitation. She said something like, I will be exploiting myself, cutting my hybrid body. Then she started slicing away small pieces with the dough cutting knife. I was sitting next to Karolina Kucia, who said that it looks like Qiong is playing a violin – so skillful. This comment made me watch the extension of Qiong’s arm and these big arm strokes.

M: Yeah, exactly.

D: During the whole performance, I was struggling to connect the performance to the topic of self-exploitation, since from the start it was conceptually framed this way. To me, it rather felt like some kind of a beautifying ritual, like cutting off the extra parts, being precise and careful, almost like shaving. So it felt a bit more like a beauty parlor situation, rather than exploiting. And, of course, everyone has a very different definition of what exploitation is. So exploitation, for me, is a brutal use of someone else's labor and, like, livelihood. And self-exploitation? When I talked to Qiong after the performance, she said it's about being self-exploited in academia. So it was about a very specific kind of self-exploitation, not of a manual but of intellectual work. Yeah, being self-exploited is like always trying to exceed, always trying to do extra. I don't connect to this specific labor, as I'm not in academia at the moment, but I know that Qiong is a PhD student, so it was very specific to the kind of labor that she and, as she said, some of her friends and colleagues are subjected to. Also I am thinking about the space the performance was in - an industrial space. It could easily refer to working long hours, without decent working conditions – there's a very clear connection to exploitation, especially, workers of the Global South. Still, in this specific performance or the form of self-exploitation it was apparently incorporating, I don't know if that connection held.

M: Yeah, yeah. It's actually interesting that you mention Karolina saying that it looked like Qiong was playing a violin. That's what first connected me to the theme of exploitation – or that was as far as I got -- because I also struggled a bit with understanding what kind of exploitation she was referring to. But on a personal level I connected to this very demanding labour of classical music that also has such a violent history. I was thinking of a cello, since even though she was holding the dough on her shoulder like a violin, the position she was sitting in reminded me of playing a huge instrument, having this very grandiose posture, legs spread wide. And then I started to think about these neurotic rituals as a kind of self-exploitation, like skin picking, and that the dropping of the dough on the floor reminded me of skin dropping on the table in tiny flakes. Kind of like this beautifying ritual you mentioned, but in a more neurotic way. But again, like you said, it's a very specific form of exploitation. And I don't know if that is the word I would use, actually. It's interesting to hear that that was the starting point, right?

D: True, yes. And also that was a very unfamiliar action to me – the action of making noodles. I have never seen it before. And people who are very skilled at making these specific noodles are able to shave the whole noodle with one gesture that Qiong was not able to do. So it was really interesting also that she chose to do some kind of cultural practice that she was not skilled at, as she said to me herself after. The bits of the dough that were flying around everywhere and actually landing at our feet did not resemble a noodle. So when I learned that she was exploring self-exploitation in academia, I was very curious how she layered these two practices that she, in a way, had very different levels of skill in.

D: It's nice. It's nice to be thinking further. Should we move to the next one? Which one would you want to move to?

M: Well, should we continue from the same day? Timo Viialainen’s work was next. I was actually participating quite a lot in this performance. But let’s start from the beginning.

D: Yes, so we started from the black box. There was this comfort and maybe even some righteousness in the way the artist was orchestrating the audience’s movement around him. Both annoying and welcoming. He took a lot of time to tell a story. Then he finished the story and we followed him into that very industrial room where Qiong's dough performance just happened. The lights were off. He had a flashlight. He told another story in the same awkward way about some film by some director. You remember that?

M: Oh yes, Claire Denis’s “Beau Travail”, it's a really good movie, actually. Especially the ending – it's a really powerful scene, where the main character is dancing in a very carefree and almost desperate manner. There's this song, “The Rhythm of the Night”. It connected with the first story because that was about the Sodankylä Film Festival and the river there in Sodankylä that Timo had drank water from and gotten really sick after. And then at the same festival some other year, he had seen this film – the next year, right? And according to the story, Timo had had the impression that the song lyrics were actually saying “this is the river of the night”.

D: Then he played the melody on the piano. We started singing. It felt very low-threshold, and playful. I felt very obedient. Hahaha… Yeah. It was super easy to be like, yeah, of course, I'm singing this song with others. We went down by the river, and he first assigned some roles. Some people went with him. One person was holding the flashlight, and other people were covering their ears, yeah, which to me, all of this felt nonsensical but playful enough, like there are rules to the game that I'm not recognizing and yet it uses so many tropes, everything is familiar enough, so it was easy to go along with that. And then he went into the water. I was thinking about Tomasz's performance and how it was almost coordinated.

M: Yeah, my first thought seeing Tomasz go into the river was “what is Timo thinking now?” My weird double role as also part of the festival team shone through, because I had heard Timo talk about this plan already the week before, and that of course affected my way of looking at both of their performances. But yeah, he went to the river and he got the stick. And then he assigned some new roles to some audience members. I was there with another person holding the stick, balancing it on the fence bordering the river edge, and then Timo got a pump…

D: …yes, this electric pump he plugged into his car with the extension cord, and the pump was making quite a loud roaring sound. And he was walking and was swaying the pump in front of people's faces.

M: Yeah! There was danger in the air, because it was raining, and there were all these electric cords and the pump just exposed out in the open. But still I didn't feel unsafe, just a bit nervous.

D: …but, long story short, he put the pump into the water with the pipe going all the way to the street. The pump was pumping the water out of the river. And he collected some of this water into the glass – the water was kind of grayish, brownish, I remember. And he did this kind of fake drinking, like he just filled his mouth and he spat it right out, and then he washed his mouth with clean water..

M: Yeah. I enjoyed the narrative unfolding, it all starting from the river and arriving back to it at the end, and carrying as this connecting thread throughout the performance. That for me created a meaningful circle. Of course, there were a lot of parts and actions that didn't make any sense in this way, but nevertheless, it was silly and playful and somehow fierce.

D: And, now if we move to Willem Wilhelmus’s work, I had a similar feeling with Willem’s performance as with Timo’s – the ease created between the audience and the performer. There was no sentimentality in the performance that had quite a sentimental prep – asking the audience to write their deepest regrets. I was very skeptical of that in the beginning. You know, when suddenly lots of sincerity is demanded from the audience and trust was not established yet, it feels like being used or like extracting emotional labor.

M: I have to say, I was very critical already from the moment that Willem asked us to join in and share our secrets. It really felt almost like manipulation or exploiting the safe environment that had been slowly established during the festival. I did feel like rebelling against his wishes. But then again, I was doing some running-around work at the beginning of the performance and I arrived on the balcony in the middle of some sacred ritual about to happen. So I just stayed there and watched the whole thing from this angle of not participating, but witnessing the whole event unfolding from this weird god-like above perspective. And so I really had no incorporated feeling of how Willem was holding the space in the circle, and how it felt to be there.

D: I was cautious in the beginning, but then as it unfolded, it felt like nothing was demanded from me, no specific feelings were asked from me to have. And of course, when he read my note, I had this feeling of slight exposure but no more than that. I don't know how it felt for others, but the way he actually physically handled the notes and the material, and the way he ate it felt simple and sincere enough. I mean, it was him putting these very material things in his body and chewing and drinking up. There was no extra theatricality or performing of the text or performing reaction to the text. It was just him reading, and it felt like every note was handled with some kind of care and respect.

M: Yeah. So did it feel exploitative at all?

D: Not really. I think him specifically eating the notes or incorporating them into his body felt like a way of processing without emphasizing the meaning of each note. Somehow the actions toward these statements were equal so the statements were equalized in a way. And I think that was perhaps an interesting realization from this performance – all these human statements in the end really don't matter. Or the regrets don't have a hierarchy and cannot be compared. Every regret matters, and every regret doesn't matter at the same time. And how was it for you? You watched it from a different angle.

M: Yeah, I watched it from a very different angle, so it was very different for me. I also didn't share a secret, so it was all kind of hypothetical for me. I very consciously put myself in that position because I felt like I'm not able to participate in this kind of performance right now, not fully at least. But anyway, from that position it did sometimes seem like the reactions were a bit theatrical, like there was some narrative forming, that the reactions were getting more and more extensive after every piece of paper Willem was devouring.

D: And that's true actually. Now as you say that, I remember that towards the end he had a stronger bodily reaction to every note. He began shaking. And then in the end, he was shaking so much that he asked audience members to come into the circle, hold him and carry him out. I was wondering, how would he finish this performance? So to me, that felt like a good ending or an embodied ending… I don't know how I feel about this performance. Maybe, that it was simple, and the way it was performed, to me, felt genuine even though I was critical from the start. Should we move on? So we have a few more. We have Soyound Christina Chung.

M: So that was the first performance on Sunday. It included three screens in the black box space, two small ones with some visuals, and then the audience was projected on the biggest canvas through a touch design program. It was scanning people's levels of confidence, supposedly.

D: Oh, really? I wasn’t fully sure what it was scanning. I mean, somehow I thought it was scanning the humans, like, trying to identify who was a human.

M: It did that too, but I think at the same time the circles it was drawing around the human forms were demonstrating the confidence levels of people. There were these numbers or percentages going up and down. She was asking us about different social and political situations, about people’s confidence in different situations. The audience was “answering” the questions by just showing up on the screen and the program making some calculations, even though, of course, it was just a visual.

D: Yeah, well, it did create, and I mean the whole performance, it created this sense of dystopia that we are all already encountering through multiple features. Of course, using ”we” is always a horrible generalization. Let's say some of us in Nordic countries. I think altogether, the dystopia as a fiction that is merging into reality is an exciting story. It plays with the margin where current realities and future realities can merge. So the performance did that. It commented on the current political situation in Finland – the collapse of social welfare, the rise of the surveillance state in this Nordic late capitalism era. But then, I am not sure what else the performance did to me. In a way the work felt almost like a gesture toward a performance or explaining the idea of the performance. Do you know what I'm saying?

M: Yeah, I very much know what you're saying. I think this somehow doing too much and not enough at the same time describes it well. It created this unnerving sense of immediacy, in the sense of presenting these questions that are actually all very topical, all our reality. But there was also some theatricality, I think, in the performer's presence, or the way she was putting out the questions and then reacting to people supposedly answering, in this very scripted, acting-like manner.

D: What I noticed in the performance is that there was not much open space or flexibility, it was very scripted, as you said, similar to Sin Seeni’s work, even though these two works and their themes were completely different. Maybe open space or space left to chance was not necessary at all, but also then it left me wondering, why am I not watching this as, for instance, a video work? What does the presence of a performer’s body do in the work that is so digitally mediated and so set. And I don’t have the answers but I am curious to think about it more. I didn’t have a chance to talk with the artist afterwards, but I would like to know more about their working methods and the process behind making this piece.

M: Yeah, the question of whether performance is the right format – or framing – for a work is definitely an interesting one, as well as the question of the body's place in a performance, whether its presence is needed at all or not. I myself am interested in performance practices that place the body in the periphery or somehow remove it completely, and in the shift that happens when objects and materials start to perform – yeah, but that's maybe the question, when does it turn into a performance? How does it turn into a performance? Why doesn't it feel like that in some of the works we saw?

D: Yeah, exactly, what does bodily presence do? So, of course, performance can be anything, and we have performance makers and researchers who know that so well. The absence of the body can be as embodied and performative as a presence of the body. But it's something that you can’t put your finger on – what is performance exactly and why, in certain times, the presence of the body actually distracts from performance itself? Or rather makes it into something else.

M: Yeah, and I definitely shared these feelings also in connection with Soyound’s work. It was simple and it incorporated a clear, smart idea. But it was very static.

D: So Leik’s performance. I know that they work with costumes of monsters, animals, creatures, parasites, insects.

M: Yeah! It's exciting that Leik works with so many materials, I think they work with the sound as well, and I feel like everything in Leik’s performances is very connected to this very specific practice they are working with. Like you said, this monstrous presence, bringing these creatures in different spaces. But about the performance – I guess it was pretty obvious from the start that we were working on different sides, and the other side is the bad side or the wrong side and that you're supposed to help the spider and not want it out or destroyed.

D: Yeah, I was too tired to participate – it was the fourth day of the festival program after all. But it was really lovely to watch the rest of the audience get involved in this chaotic and messy entanglement-like thing – chasing the spider or protecting the spider from the chasers. On one hand the performance was very simple, almost binary: there were two sides, a good one and a bad one, as you said already. But on the other hand, it was very affectual and embodied, and in this way complex. It didn’t just represent the struggle of these two sides, but it created that struggle. Leik had such a full-bodied commitment to their presence in the space as a spider that it was easy and, you know, welcoming for the audience to fully step in. So things that can happen when there is a pest, or an invader, or some other so-called unwanted entity in the room, happened here. The whole room got turned inside out. It made me think how the presence of the other in a room can be such an affectual and polarizing event. For instance, the presence of the immigrants in a xenophobic country. Or, of course, certain kinds of, less desired immigrants. Leik’s work in some ways was in such a strong dialogue with Karolina Kucia’s work from the second festival day. Involving our bodies to bring the questions of entering and exiting, exclusion and inclusion and, of course, desire and all the feelings that are connected to it.

M: Yeah, absolutely. I also liked that it was aesthetically so different from all the other performances, even though, as you said, thematically very connected to for example Karolina’s work. They also shared a similarity with Tomasz, I felt that in this chaos Leik was really skillfully handling and like you said, so committed that their presence carried the work throughout.

D: But let's move to Diana Soria Hernandez’s work now.

M: So Diana was working with smells – or a smell, with a perfume bottle, and blood.

D: Yeah, those were the two things that I have a very strong reaction to. Hahaha. I can't stand the smell of perfume. It's just something that makes me feel claustrophobic and invaded in a way. And also blood taken specifically from the finger tips – I have post-Soviet childhood trauma around that, cannot watch it at all without feeling dizzy or almost sick. So from the start I was really affected by the work in a very physical way. I even left the space at some point to just breathe.

M: Yep. The work started with the performer and her daughter at the table. Diana was taking the wine glasses out of the bag and the child was unwrapping them. Then Diana punctured her fingers with the needle, squeezed every finger dripping the blood into one of the glasses that had water in it. Diana’s child was watching that, and I was really amazed somehow by this level of intimacy and trust that they have. Of course, I was thinking about what it means to be a child of a performance artist? Or even more, what does it mean to perform or be on stage together with a parent? And this is a kind of identity and being I would never understand or relate to.

D: Yes. It looked like the child was comfortable or not caring so much, and very involved in whatever actions were happening. But also, the child did not really need to perform, but rather just be themselves. I was thinking like, what does it do to bring a child into performance? Because watching a child just being in a performance setting does so much, it almost feels like cheating.

M: Yeah! I’ve been thinking about the presence of children or animals in a performance, because so little needs to be done in order for it to be effective. It is hard to put into words why exactly is that – but I guess it has to do with their supposed just-being-there, or sort of flickering and wavering in between the “reality” and the performance.

D: But also I really don't know very much about Diana's performance practice with her child, so I can only make assumptions here, which is not helpful.

M: Yeah, I don't know. Also, I am interested in performances or artworks that work with different senses and smells. But I'm not sure about the whole of the performance, the connections between these different things. I mean, there were these, like you said, very invasive things. This blood and the blade, also the playing of the water glasses, this really sharp sound. Then combining them with the pure white robe and the supposed innocence or un-performing of the child. Or I don't know if that was the goal, but that was how I read it -- that there's the somehow pure presence of a child, still unable to “perform”, who just is there. It definitely did something for me. But I have a difficulty dealing with works that juxtapose images of grotesque or invasive or messy with this essentialist pureness that is supposedly found in children, because I don't think it is. Although I am not sure if it can be said about this specific work – it is also possible to see the performance as something that on the contrary seeks to challenge this stereotypical image, which immediately makes it more interesting for me.

D: There were these, seemingly, religious references. It just felt like it was full of symbols that were not exactly accessible to me. I ended up watching the child while she was watching the mother. That was both comforting and fascinating to me, specifically in this performance setting. It would be nice to know more about this work and decode it a bit more through conversation with Diana. But it was impossible to talk to all the artists even though I would if I had the energy and time… Do you want to tell me about the last two performances since I missed them?

M: Yes, so the last two then. First was Kaisa Luukkonen, a Finnish artist based in Sweden, I think. She was working with a rope and climbing – a very simple action. She was wearing an all-blue outfit and the rope was also blue. There was a traditional audience set up, a kind of semi-circle. The performance started with us moving the chairs out of Oscar’s way, the venue’s technician who came in with his red truck to help Kaisa attach the rope to the ceiling of the black box.

D: Oh, it was also used in Veronica's performance, right? The festival started with the truck that was holding the hanging piñata also….

M: Yes, and then it pretty much finished with the truck too. Getting off the truck, Kaisa asked the technician, “What gives you hope?” It was also very much framed in this way, that this is about hope, and I guess about an aging body trying to hang on to hope. She was trying to, very simply, climb up the rope. She climbed, fell down often, and tried again with different techniques. It was effective, and watching the struggle evoked all kinds of emotions – frustration, joy, anticipation – and, I guess, hope. But then it was also, I don't know, a quickly emptied out action, or a set of actions.

D: It's very interesting to play with a stereotype as, I mean, it's almost like a Hallmark card, climbing the rope up to the sky….

M: Yeah. And then it ended with her saying that, okay, this was as much as I could do at this point, and I'm going to stop now. Does someone else want to try? It was a solid ending, but then it continued with one of the audience members trying to climb the rope, and this way it became maybe a bit vague. Adel Andalibi, who facilitated a workshop at the festival on Saturday, was the one participant who attempted to climb in his own way – making it more conceptual, sort of just twirling around the rope. Neither of us was able to participate in the workshop – to digress a bit from Kaisa’s performance – but in it, “motion becomes a form of listening and attention becomes an active art”. I feel like Adel was incorporating this in his interaction with the rope, as is apparently his practice in general. It felt like he was attuning to the way the rope moved and trying to follow that. I kind of started to miss Kaisa’s more going-against struggle, fighting with the rope.

D: And then there was the last performance by Kurt Johannessen?

M: It was a very simple setup in the black box, with the house lights on, and he was working with this material- and maybe even landscape-based performance practice. He brought stones and hay straws into the space. The whole performance was just him very carefully moving the objects and placing them around the space and on top of each other. I can imagine it could easily be done in a manner that would not do much or raise questions like what does the body actually do there…

D: Are we having another Nordic person making environmental work with natural materials? Hahaha. Well, I am only half joking.

M: It could easily become like that, yeah. There was something in the work, maybe something about this person's presence that made it seem like he really cared for the materials and surroundings he was working with. Like he was actually working with them, performing with them, not just facilitating an installation setup. Also the performing objects were in a dialogue with the air conditioning of the space, the objects were quietly dancing in the wind. It was the first performance that somehow incorporated the space’s material preconditions as performative elements. It was all very aesthetically pleasing, the images were strong and cohesive, the contrast of the fragile natural elements with the supposed neutrality of the black box – still kind of attuning to the order of the traditional audience setup, remaining inside the circle of our chairs, although spreading also on the audience's bodies. But there's also a lot to keep in mind – that it's a very specific practice, and one that maybe allows certain bodies to hide behind this supposed apoliticality. And like we discussed earlier, that is not really a choice for some performances and some performers. Although the practice connects to environmental art, which is of course political, but then it is again a choice to not make it explicitly so, to perform as if the body does not matter, as if it can only work as this neutral facilitator.

D: I agree and often wonder how some bodies simply have no choice but show up politically due to their positioning and identities while other bodies can avoid politicizing their art work. Still, I believe that art doesn’t need to be activist, or rather I don’t have this need from art that I engage with. Maybe, what I crave is art that is aware and is tuned into the world in all its messy and paradoxical complexities. We definitely saw so many artworks that were communicating this messiness and contradictions. That was exciting. Well, anyway, it looks like we went over all of the performances at the festival.