Video performances in public spaces

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. 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 by local artists. The programme of PERFORMANSSI 2011 is an up-to-date review of what is happening in contemporary international performance art.

Live Art Development Agency will present a night of performance 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.

Video performances in public spaces

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, The Many Headed Monster lecture, an ACSI workshop, panel discussions and the closing party, these latter all presented at the Titanik Gallery.

The festival also includes curator seminars as satellite events, one in Helsinki in the Ateneum Hall on 26 May, and another in Turku in Studio at the Turku City Library on 29 May. The moderator of the seminars is Tuomas Laitinen from Presentaatio, the Finnish Live Art Information Centre.

To festival also marks the occasion of the launching of a Performance Art Bank database which presents topical Finnish performance and live art at its website www.performanssi.com and in the form of a catalog. The database is implemented jointly by MUU and the Regional Arts Council of South-West Finland.

Welcome to experience performance art both intentionally and by accident!