Category Archives: Travelling

Stavanger

The first time I’ve ever taken photos from the windows of a plain was on my way to Stavanger. Maybe it was intriguing because all the other times I’ve landed in Sola it has always been rainy and foggy. So these might be naïve and ridiculous but for me it was actually great to see the mountains and the fjords Stavanger is surrounded by.

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In the midst of all the work I did with Anne-Marte and Geir, Anne-Marte drove me to the Ölbergstranden one afternoon. It was so beautiful and such a great thing to do.

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Greetings from Norway!

Came back from Norway last night and was happy that all flights were on time and luggage wasn’t lost once. It’s the simple things you start to appreciate when you are away from home. My meetings in Helsinki went really well and were meaningful to me. Managed to see the new works of Eeva Muilu and Jyrki Karttunen in Helsinki and got so happy about them. To visit the Performance Festival in Hamar was also inspiring and of course it was great to see new works by many wonderful artists. I think my talk was ok as well. But nothing beats ANTI. It’s just so different to watch works in the same location and pretty much the same space, one after the other, than to actually explore various situations and ways of engaging with the work.

After flying to different city every day and too short nights, I had to dash into the office in the morning to send some documents to Brussels and to work on ANTI’s funding applications. I’m also working on my own applications and trying to find time to go to the studio as well. The work never ends. But so it seems to be with everyone whether you are from Helsinki, Malmö, Stavanger or Kuopio…

Thanks to Ingrid for inviting me to Hamar and thanks to Pilvi, Maija, Essi, Virve, Anne-Marte, Roi, Irma, Elin, Petter, Annika and everyone for a companionship.

Johanna

Busy days

I’m off to Helsinki tomorrow and to Hamar, Norway on Saturday. This week I’ve been working on the solo in the studio, having a luxurious time on my own, escaping the domestic issues. I have a lot of material and I’m still in the process of seeing into which direction it all is going to go… I’ve been also preparing my talk in Hamar, working on some grant applications and arranging meetings.
I’m so much looking forward to spending a day in Helsinki and the weekend seeing a lot of performances at Kunstbanken in Hamar. I’ll meet Anne-Marte from Stavanger in Hamar and Maija Hirvanen and Annika Tudeer, amongst others. Great! And tomorrow in Helsinki I’ll meet with Benoit from Brussels and Geir from Stavanger and I’ll stay with my producer Maija. I’m sure it will be a lot of work but also really good and inspiring. Today I got to know that I got a travel grant to visit Iceland next year and I’m so much looking forward to that as well!

Hopefully I’ll see you all in Hamar.

Johanna

In Stavanger, Norway

Just had the first presentation of our project TW1 in Stavanger, got very excited about it again. Ours is one in a series of four projects and it’s just been very interesting to meet the other curators and hear them thinking about their project.
Been walking up and down the Pedersgata, days filled by meetings and work. Geir our producer is of great support, other curators and Anne-Marte and Kenneth of great inspiration. The open call for our project will open next week.
In general, feelings of pressure with the approaching ANTI-festival, my group work’s rehearsals starting next week and next year’s funding. The usual stuff.
Missing my daughter cuddling up to me. Worried about my son’s finger he broke. Working on the web site, still. Hoping I could help Pekka with the work at the house somehow.
Hope you are well, Johanna

A day in Helsinki

Shoes by Vagabond, Gunilla Pontén skirt, H&M top, underwear by Marks&Spencer.
Me Naiset with my yoga teacher’s ex interviewed. Some sleep in between.
Make up in the toilet of the InterCity train.
Went straight to the press conference.
Checked out some Larsen + Cole & Son wallpaper and Minna Parikka and Vivienne Westwood shoes.
Bought a pair of El Naturalista shoes. Love them.

Spotted Michael Monroe and Lilli Earl.

Extremes

Sorry. I know I haven’t been here for ages.
It has all been more than hectic with work and the personal life, i.e. the house. I don’t know where to begin actually as so many things have been going on and happened.
We had a great period of performances in Helsinki in the end of May with Jaana and Jaap and they all went very well. I had imagined that I would have time to do all kinds of things while I stayed in Helsinki but it turned out that the performances pretty much took all my energy.
Next week we’ll have two more performances in Kuopio in the Gallery Carree as part of the Kuopio Dance Festival. For booking go to www.paikallisliike.net or email aluekeskus@elisanet.fi. The gallery is quite small so I strongly advice you to make a reservation if you intend to see the work.
I held the audition and it was really good to see people working, i.e. moving and talking and doing little presentations. I haven’t decided yet who are the three people I want to work with but I really need to make up my mind soon.
In between everything, I also have visited Stavanger, Norway, again. Had two great days of meetings and spent time with Anne-Marte. Besides the inspiring workdays, I fell in love with the Rhododendrons of Stavanger. Amazing! Wonderful colours, everything blooming – just beautiful and inspiring.
With ANTI-Festival there are pretty busy times going on as well, as we are working on the catalogue. I’m so happy that Maija started working for us in June so that eases the workload for me. Gregg has also been just fantastic, so involved, so active, so supportive. We definitely have a great crew now.
The Blue House would require my work as much as possible at the moment as well. We will be moving in the end of the month so I tell you, there’s more work to do than anyone can imagine. I have kind of known this, but at the moment it’s just extreme… beyond the capacity of imagination. The hours we are working, what needs to be done before we are able to move in, it’s just crazy but the only thing that keeps me going is the thought of being able to move in three weeks.
Now the whole downstairs is cleared and cleaned out for the linoleum flooring to be installed. That starts tomorrow and it was so rewarding to clear out all the mess and tools etc. and to be able to just look at the space. It will be great, once we get to move in. Quality family cleaners Brisbane offer the best professional cleaning cervices, guess, I will decide on them.
Exhausted now.
Johanna

Stavanger

I spent a couple of days in Stavanger, Norway last weekend. My schedule was really tight so I didn’t get to spend so much time getting to know the city but I did make a walk from the city centre to TouScene with Anne-Marte and Teresa. Teresa was at the residency at TouScene so we were both new to the city. Anne-Marte, who lives in Stavanger, gave me a kind of a lecture about the city, its history and current situation. Here are some images of our walk from the main church to TouScene along Pedersgata.

The flowermarket.

Two hundread and something days to look forward to Stavanger 2008, the European Capital of Culture, a project I’m involved in. I’ll let you know more soon.

Poor old houses. In a small city the way to create more (parking) space is to dig further down.

One of the two places to buy wine or spirits in Stavanger. Is there a way you could somehow know this from outside?

A bar.

Some kind of artists organisation and space.

Old and new.

Gallery 21m2 and Teresa.

A ferry to take you to Bergen, for example.

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Anne-Marte in her garden.

Houses made of containers by architects whose name I cannot remember.

Huh. The new pretty agressive bridge built over the old houses on Pedersgata.

The view from TouScene.

And here’s a few images taken on my walk to my B&B.

Old houses in the city centre. The colours were just amazing.

A nice wooden house, don’t you think?

Yeah, you would think so, but actually it’s ‘renovated’ by using the plastic panel on top of the old wood.

yoga, performances, dreams of India

Mulla ei oo mitään päälle pantavaa performances last week went really well, they were all full and the audience seemed to like the piece a lot. It feels really good to continue next week in Joensuu, then later in May in Helsinki and in June again here in Kuopio. The piece is really fun to perform, it’s challenging and the dialogue between me, Jaana, the live sound and the audience shapes the work differently every time.

I didn’t really have a chance to celebrate the premiere as at the same time I was on a yoga course and had to wake up early each morning. Anne’s course was once again really good and I felt such peace and bliss to practice with her. I have now recovered from the sciatic nerve pain that I suffered from all autumn and it’s been such a pleasure to practice the primary series as a whole. I talked with Anne about her last visit to Mysore and got so inspired to travel to India that I’ve been constantly thinking about my possibilities to make the trip. It would be so important for me to go but I have the family to take care and think about. So I haven’t made any reservations yet. But the idea of spending a month in Mysore, to focus on the practice and to develop my work in a different environment is all I dream about at the moment.

I had some meetings today and I talked about Savon Sanomat newspaper’s politics of not writing about dance and about having more freelance dance artists on the board of the regional dance centre. I also couldn’t help but wonder how from all the artistic board members only one person came to see my latest work and none of them were in any way sorry or bothered that they didn’t come to see it. I must say this does bother me although we had plenty of people in the audience, so it’s not about missing an audience but just curiosity about whom the work attracts. It’s interesting. And a bit sad.

Since my sciatic nerve is better now, I’ve had some strange things going on in my neck. So I have an acupuncture treatment tomorrow that I really look forward to.

Johanna

Longing, house, clothes, worries and www

Busy days since coming back from Glasgow. I’ve been a bit blue, missing Rebecca and Andrew, the presence of so many wonderful artists and general passion for live art. Nikki and Colin had once again created a fantastic festival with about 80 artists from around the world. At the moment I feel that the most important works for me to see and experience were by artists Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Rosie Dennis and also Nic Green who is a very young artist based in Glasgow. But I’ve found a touching naivety and sincerity in her works and a kind of romantic enthusiasm. I’ve seen two of her works and also her performing in Grace Surman’s piece in Bristol last year. There is something about Nic that I really like but at the same time something troubling, which is a nice feeling. There were lots of other interesting things and strong works, too many to list here. But one more has to be mentioned! The first time I saw Curious live with their new work (be)longing. It was very good to see and I found it really beautiful in its simplicity but it was kind of long. But I also saw it in the late evening having already watched works for about ten hours…so maybe it wasn’t the best time. But I really enjoyed it. Also some video works I’ve seen by them have been great. And of course Marcia Farquhar! She was just amazing and it was just amazing to see her work with an archive of her clothes.
I had very inspiring meetings and conversations with Daniel and Lois from the Live Art Development Agency. They were also very pleased with our decision to choose Gregg Whelan to be my co-artistic director which, acknowledging their experience on the field, I highly value. We also hope to work with them in the future.
It was also really great to meet with other live art festival producers from the UK, Belgium and France and I sense a great passion to promote live art and artists. Let’s see if we can be part of a live art focused EU-project in the future. It would be fantastic and I really hope we can find a way with ANTI to work it out.
It was fantastic to have Andrew and Rebecca over in Glasgow as well, although they didn’t present work in the programme. Last year they were artists in residence along with Richard Dedominici (who also has shown work at ANTI) and I must say I missed the kind of presence they brought to the NRLA last year. And there were so many other people I so much enjoyed seeing like Jennie Klein, Steven Hodge, Dominic Johnson, Manuel Vason, Deen, Eleine Kordys, Andrew from LADA etc….

When I flew to Glasgow, my luggage was lost for two days. What a nightmare! I had all my new great clothes with me that I didn’t get to wear because for the first two days I just had to wear the same clothes. Actually, I had to by lots of new toiletries (cleansing milk, tonic water, shampoo, toothpaste, deo etc.) and some new undies to survive. It’s a pain with the new hand baggage regulations. Well, luggage arrived finally and I got to wear my new boots, jacket and Ponten skirt which never goes unnoticed. And Andrew and Rebecca got their Nordic Walking sticks…

I’ll have a rehearsal period with Jaana next week and I’ve been booking some studios space for us and also just for me individually. Today I was supposed to send material to our graphic designer but I didn’t manage. I didn’t get our exact performance dates in Helsinki from Jaana yet, Pekka is still working on some photos and I decided to go and do some at the Blue House today. It was so great. At 1 pm the light in the house is so beautiful at the moment that I just had to take a few photos.

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downstairs

Mladen, who has been and is working on my website, emailed me today and it’s all moving on at least a little bit now. There has been all kinds of obstacles on the way and Mladen has now moved to Sweden, but I hope you’ll have patience as we sure do our best to set it up. Backloading removal services were perfect too.

I still don’t know about the artist grant for this year from the regional arts council and it’s really depressing. I know I didn’t get anything from the Finnish Cultural Foundation and that also put me down. Sometimes I feel I’m too old for this kind of uncertainty. By this time, at 33, and having worked as an artist professionally for 10 years, after receiving a State Prize for the Arts among others, I should have a little longer time phrase than 9 months in which to develop work. Don’t you think I deserve it?

Johanna

Glasgow

…was fantastic! Well, I actually didn’t get to spend so much time in the city itself, but I had a great time. It was so good to visit NRLA again, see so many great artists and promoters and friends. This time around it was all very busy, lots of performances and durational pieces, many meetings and talks and discussions. Many projects planned and discussed. It all was so inspiring and exciting that it is almost scary to be back in Kuopio. Because life here is nothing like that. There is very little sense of support, enthusiasm, experimentalism. It was so great to meet people from all over the world who are so excited about ANTI –festival and find it extraordinary and fantastic that we do it each year. So do I get any vibes like that over here? The answer is no. None. But maybe it is also the cultural difference in behaviour and language. But I’m sure it is not only that. On my way back yesterday, I thought that maybe it is my destiny to move to Britain at some point. You know, in 1997 I was supposed to, but didn’t in the end because of love and my son. So maybe when I’m older, we’ll sell the Blue House and move to Britain. I already have suggested house swapping with some friends in London. The only hindrance at the moment is the fact that Blue House is not yet finished!
I went to the Blue House today with my daughter by bus. It was the first time we took a bus there and it wasn’t that bad. I was so exhausted that I didn’t really do any work there, I just watched Pekka and Juho working on the upstairs’ floor and I measured some walls and windows. It all looks very good but there is a lot of pressure time and money wise at the moment…
I need to get some sleep now. More about NRLA etc. is coming up in few days.

Hope you are all well.
Johanna