PERFORMANSSI 2011, Turku, Finland

The Live Art Development Agency is a guest curator of PERFORMANSSI 2011.

As part of of their year as European Capital of Culture, Turku will host PERFORMANSSI 2011, an international festival of Live Art. As part of our continued commitment to developing Live Art internationally we were happy to accept an invitation to curate a strand in the festival which we’ve called ‘An Audience With…’, featuring Kim Noble, Stacy Makishi and Me and the Machine. There will also be a presentation of Joshua Sofaer’s Many Headed Monster and a screening of Everything You Still Wanted To Know About Live Art But Were Afraid To Ask.

An Audience With…

Live Art has always been concerned with questions about the experience of art, and, as an area of practice, has pioneered new possibilities for participatory and interactive practices – practices that engage with audiences in innovative and creative ways by placing them at the centre of the work.

The three artists/projects that the Agency has curated for the festival try to reflect these new kinds of relations between artists and audiences through works that deal with notions of intimacy and the one on one performance (When We Meet Again (Introduced As Friends) by Me and The Machine), with “stage based” spectacles that implicates the audience in the making and the performance of the work (Kim Noble Will Die by Kim Noble), and with the idea of the audience being in some way the site and subject of the work (Stacy Makishi’s workshop and performance with local artists).

PERFORMANSSI 2011
International festival of performance art in Turku, 27–29 May 2011
Turku – Helsinki – Hamburg – Riga – Tallinn – Tromsø

INTERNATIONAL AND FINNISH ARTISTS FROM THE TOP OF CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE ART IN TURKU

PERFORMANSSI 2011 is a festival of performance art produced by the Artists’ Association MUU and held in Turku 27–29 May 2011. Part of the official Turku Capital of Culture 2011 programme, the festival presents work by seventeen international and Finnish artists from the very top of contemporary performance art. The festival is curated by Christopher Hewitt, a Berlin-based performance artist, curator and producer, Live Art Development Agency, a London-based live art organisation, and Kimmo Modig, a Turku-based sound and performance artist. The festival programme also includes video performances selected in an international open call, and also performances by local artists. The programme of PERFORMANSSI 2011 is an up-to-date review of what is happening in contemporary international performance art.

PERFORMANSSI 2011 WILL SPREAD AROUND TURKU AND EUROPE

The festival programme features performance nights, site-specific performances, sound art events, video performances, workshops, curator seminars, lectures, panel discussions and the festival closing party.

Live Art Development Agency will present a night of Live Art at the Barker-theatre on Friday featuring Clara García Fraile and Sam Pearson from Me and The Machine; Kim Noble; as well as Stacy Makishi together with participants of her workshop for local artists. Saturday will feature an event of site-specific art curated by Christopher Hewitt, presenting work by Andrés Galeano, Sian Robinson Davies and Ieke Trinks. The venues are the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum, the Turku Biological Museum and the Titanik Gallery.

On Sunday the Titanik Gallery will present an exhibition of sound art curated by Kimmo Modig. It will feature eight artists: Heidi Fast, Mikko Kuorinki, Johanna MacDonald, David Muth, Per Platou, Pilvi Porkola, Gabi Schaffner and Richard Widerberg. The Fluxee club on Saturday night at the Tehdas Theatre will bring together the themes of all the curators in the form of performances. The artists are Pascal Battus, Nieves Correa and Stacy Makishi.

The festival programme will also feature video performances in public spaces such as cafes, business and public premises; the presentation of a workshop run by Andrés Galeano for the Kutomo venue, entitled Poetical Actions; a MUU FOR EARS sound art cafe at the Cosmic Comic Cafe; as well as Stage for Live Art BETA, a public lecture by The Many Headed Monster, an ACSI workshop, panel discussions and the closing party, these latter all presented at the Titanik Gallery.