Modification as a Mode of Resistance is an enduring artistic project that seeded during my performance based artistic research while studying Live Art and Performance Studies under professor Tero Nauha at Theater Academy/Uniarts Helsinki (2022).
Departing from the deconstruction and remapping of shadowed subjective recollections as a war survivor, my curiosity traverses towards offering visibility to the collective memory of manual factory workers and technical workers in theaters of different geographies, while my performances become tactile forms of archiving experiential oral histories, grounds for rethinking social norms and privileges, and gateways for connecting with the unknown and the hidden (past).
The complete thesis can be found here.
THESIS ABSTRACT
“Modification As a Mode of Resistance” is focused on reading temporalities, and more specifically re-reading the past as a plurality, through the lens of spaces chosen for live and performance art to take place in. This artistic research has been developed through various experiments tested via performances that I conducted during my studies at LAPS while the thesis is a reflective documentation of the process and its findings.
I approach this written thesis through three unfolding semi-permeable maps which intersect and intertwine to lay out the connections that I build between: 1) re-reading the past; 2) re-constructing past(s); 3) re-framing / re-sensing /re – producing spaces in my performance art works. Taking this into account, I reflect on the tools, theoretical grounds as well as the dramaturgical and aesthetical strategies I have utilized in my artworks and how the techniques that I have developed inform the nature of my future practice as an artist and as an artistic researcher.
My entry point to this study is my own autobiography: my memories and archives related to restrictive and dissonant periods of my life (war and oppression), which I look back to as source materials, expanding further to encounters in the nexus with histories and spaces in Helsinki and Finland, to in this way draw connections and rise beyond the personal.
In this written thesis, I navigate through questions such as: what are the potentialities of (the unfinished) pasts that linger through time and space? How do they connect different histories and geographies to expose power structures, induce sensitivity for the non-familiar in the present and reshape the future? In what form can they manifest through performance and live art? To find answers to these questions, I look at autobiography through auto-theory, considering the plasticity and flexibility of memory, in an intersection with theories of human geography on space production. In the end, I conclude that scrutinizing the relationship between the chosen performance spaces and their histories, social significance, surroundings, and accessibility, reveals a valuable layer in the process of constructing critical performances that connect the performers and audiences in a dialectical way.
Thus far, this artistic research has resulted in these artistic works:
The Missing Torch
Experimental fiction, video on VHS format
Realized at The Anachronistic Media Workshop, Nashville, TN, 2019
In collaboration with Dylan Simon
Supported by Theater Academy of Helsinki
© Draven Brew
The Missing Torch utilizes anachronistic media to tell the story of devoted but misguided Adult Pioneer who is trapped in the analog system and believes that Yugoslavia is still alive. Through system glitches, the Adult Pioneer realizes the identity politics based on which her body isn’t represented within the social system she admires; hence she never had a torch in the Yugoslavian emblem. In this realization, she meets the Travel Agent who promotes war zones utilizing a touristic language to attract investors in the fertile chaos of the torn post-war zone. The Travel Agent equips her with a machine gun which gives her closure, and she disappears.
The Missing Torch is the result of extensive research and personal recollections, an inner dialogue about my feelings and positionality in relation to the country where I was born which no longer exists.
Things Other People Do & Double Dare
Multimedia, mobile, site-specific participatory performance, and video performance
Realized at LAPSODY Paramatter, Kuninkansaari, Helsinki, FI, 2020
In collaboration with Dylan Simon, Jesse Weilburg, Reid Barber, Timo Viialainen
Supported by Theater Academy of Helsinki and The Anachronistic Media Workshop
© Visa Knuuttila
Things Other People Do & Double Dare is a three-part multimedia, site specific participatory performance that looks at the cohabitation of war histories with the natural ecosystem of Kuninkansaari island. The audience is led by a dominatrix that ties them while they are watching a noise concert that invites the audience to shake and sway like trees. At dusk, the dominatrix leads the audience on a walking tour through the island while dragging a speaker that plays doom music, accompanied by the site of the darkening bunkers and landscapes. At the end, the dominatrix changes into an army uniform and with her back towards the audience, sings Double Dare by Bauhaus to the rusty and toxic bunker washed by the sea water.
An Exercise with Modified Circumstances
Multimedia, mobile, site-specific performance
Realized at Vapaan Taiteen Tila, Helsinki, FI, 2021
In collaboration with Timo Viialainen, Joona Mäkelä, Dylan Simon
Supported by Theater Academy of Helsinki and The Anachronistic Media Workshop
© Joona Mäkelä
An Exercise with Modified Circumstances deals with my fragmented memoirs from experiencing war when I was 15. Through a geographically and temporally distance, based on my memoirs and diary entries from the day of the liberation of Kosova, the performance disembarks stories of survival inside a 600m2 bunker that was never used for its primary function. The audience whose real passports and IDs have been taken at the beginning of the performance is exposed to a series of stories and participatory events that aim to rise the questions of displacement, survival, collective cohesion through struggle and the (im)possibility of empathizing.
Building a Passport Exhibition
Site-specific participatory performance, artistic intervention, exhibition
Realized at RAW Festival, Myymälä2, Helsinki, FI, 2021
Supported by Myymälä2
© Veera Kuusisto
Building a Passport Exhibition invites the audience to challenge the whiteness of a gallery by defacing the visas on my passport with geotechnical investigation schemes and proposing descriptions for each page which I type sporadically and paste on the walls. Thus, an exhibition is built by the intervention that aims to question privilege, isolation, ignorance, and empathy. The defaced images were exhibited at Myymälä2 for a period of 2 weeks.
Sacking and Weaving
Site-specific participatory performance
Realized at Kino Lumbardhi, Prizren, KS, 2022
In collaboration with Timo Viialainen, Joona Mäkelä, Dylan Simon
Supported by Cultural Heritage without Borders (CHwB) Heritage Space
© Elmedina Arapi
Sacking and Weaving is the result of a lengthy research focused on the recollection and performative interpretation of the collective memory of former workers of factories in Prizren, especially the experiences of the former workers of the social enterprise for textile industry <<Printeks>>. The performance traces the trajectory of drastic political changes by highlighting their impact on the bodies and futures of the former workers. Spaces and tactile objects displaced from the past become reference anchors to reflect and form the perspective of the present.
What is seen and what’s (left) behind the scene?
Site-specific participatory performance
Realized at Studio Pasila, Helsingin Kaupunginteatteri, Helsinki, FI, 2023
In collaboration with Timo Viialainen, Dylan Simon with the support of creative producer Nelly Hakkarainen and curator Riikka Thitz
Produced by Helsinki City Theatre’s Stage for Contemporary Performance (Helsingin Kaupunginteatterin Nykyesityksen näyttämö)
© Dylan Simon
What is seen and what’s (left) behind the scene? is a participatory sound performance that evolves from the stories, memoirs, experiences and the sensations of Helsinki City Theatre’s technical staff, in relation to their work spaces. The performance is an invitation to explore City Theatre through the voices of those whose labor remains invisible. It’s an effort to bring to the fore the juncture where the illusion of theatre is broken by unveiling the structures that form its institution.