Category Archives: Travelling

days in Hamburg

I’ve been the last three days in Hamburg spending most of my time in the Live Art Festival in Kampnagel. We’ve had A Space Live for Art project meetings about both the artistic and administrational side and today I held a lecture/workshop about artistic interventions in public space to the network of Young Performance Art Lovers. I’ve also seen some great performances by Ivo Dimchev, Ivana Muller, Liquid Loft, Rotozaza and an installation by the Forsythe Company.

Kampnagel foyer with the Forsythe Company’s installation City of Abstracts on the background:

studio where I gave my workshop today:

A Space for Live Art meeting with Claire, Emmanuelle, Cathy, Anne, Jochen and Fabienne:Â

I look really strange, I know – I guess I’m just happy about my beautiful salad (and a glass of wine…):

Rhododendrons blooming not only in the Kampnagel courtyard but all over Hamburg:

A walk in town:

Lovely pink rubbish bags on the streets:

Tomorrow I’m off to Berlin for the weekend. How exciting!

Johanna

Unusually…

hot days. Moments of happiness in the garden with my daughter, planting carrot, salad, peas, spinach and sunflower seeds. A few days off and a chance to think about something else than the upcoming ANTI Festival. A nice evening with the neighbours including great organic white wine, grilled salmon, cake my son baked, the first mosquito bites and sun burns. Two new rhododendrons in the garden.
A hot run and no pain in the operated knee, wearing new Asics running skirt. Slow but steady.
Excited about the upcoming trip to Hamburg and Berlin this week. A bit terrified of all the work that needs to be completed before the tripâ€¦

Johanna

Morning coffee on the balcony:

The Mother’s Dat morning a week ago…with beautiful gifts, cake, pies, sweets, coffee….

City of Women

It was great to visit the City of Women Festival in Ljubljana. Saw some interesting work, met great artists and friends and got to spend a few days in a new city. Diamanda Galasâ€™s concert was fantastic, as well as Alejanda Herrera Silvaâ€™s performance. It was also amazing to learn about the work of Regina JÃ³se Galindo, Nahomi Ximenez, Via Negativa and NataÅ¡a Å½ivkoviÄ‡. And had great talks with Jennie Klein and the artistic director of the festival Mara VujiÄ‡. On the last day of the festival we also had a really good and efficient meeting with A Space for Live Art partners so Iâ€™m all happy about the trip.

Brought back Slovenian salt and chocolate. Walked a lot. Didnâ€™t run with the painful knee.

Nahomi negotiatingÂ if the policeman will accept a hug:

He didn’t so she hugged Mara instead:

Artistic director Mara, Nahomi and Jennie:

The building where my flat was:

After returning home Iâ€™ve realized I have an enormous amount of work ahead of me. This and the upcoming week Iâ€™m performing BODY/HAIR, the week after itâ€™s soft skin / harsh life and then itâ€™s all about the ACTS OF CLOTHING. Really wanted to visit Performa but I really donâ€™t think itâ€™s possible in any way. Unfortunately.

Today I went for a run and rehearsed air acrobatics for BODY/HAIR. Feel really exhausted now.

I ordered new running shoes. Need to do something about the oddly painful knee Iâ€™ve never had before.

See you in the BODY/HAIR performances.

Johanna

impressions & some iconic images of New York

The site-specific performance symposium in New York was very good and exciting and I thank Gulgun, Bertie & Frank for inviting me. It was very important for me to hear about several projects and festivals done by an exciting mix of curators, artists and venues. And in terms of curating and organizing the ANTI Festival, it was also great to feel that we are part of a whole field working site-specifically and sharing a lot of similar concerns, challenges and issues.
My schedule in New York was quite tight and my visit rather short, but here are some images I took during my walks. Many of them are very iconic and typical images of New York but I guess the same images have to be taken over and over again as New York is just amazing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any images of the symposium or my 10k run in the Central Park. I was supposed to participate in a running event here in Kuopio in May but then this trip came about and I couldn’t take part in it. So I promised to myself and my trainer, that I will run 10k on my own in the Central Park, my goal being that I run it in less than an hour. Well, I did it in 58 minutes and it was truly an amazing feeling to be running there. And I was pretty satisfied with my performance that went easily and smoothly.

Images from where I stayed – in the middle of Manhattan:

My hotel Carlton Arms which I can highly recommend:

My stop:

The ruins of WTC:

A walk in Soho:

A boat trip to Staten Island:

Nighttime visit to the Empire State Building:

symposium in New York

Iâ€™m just on my way to New York where Iâ€™ll be giving a talk in one of the panels of Site-specific Performance Symposium in CUNY. The whole symposium looks really exciting and Iâ€™m looking forward to participate in it -and of course to spend a couple of days in NY. If you are anywhere near, please come and here us discussing issues around site-specific performance!

Johanna

finally a weekend at home

Last weeks have been super busy for me as I was performing in Sweden, then went to Brussels and every chance I got, I was working on the new one-to-one performance BODY/HAIR which I premiered last Wednesday in Kuopio. It was a kind of work-in-progress day of performances but Iâ€™m pretty happy with it all. It was quite exciting as to get the soundscape, the costume, the stage equipment and all that together was a real challenge in terms of time and budget so Iâ€™m kind of proud that I was able to pull it together. The performance is quite tough for me to do â€“not so much one but to keep repeating it one after the otherâ€¦ I was really exhausted, friction burned and bruised afterwards. I was also very tired because it has been more than a month since I had a day off. Anyway, I survived it and have the weekend off now. What a luxury.
My performance shoes are the corset boots by Minna Parikka:

Brussels was real nice and green. Kuopio was still very winter like when I left so it felt like a real luxury to see so much green (I stayed near Botanica) and walk in summer shoes. It was a lot of work though as I did a presentation with Gregg about ANTI Festival, then worked with Gregg on completing this yearâ€™s festival programme, saw as many performances as possible in the Trouble #5 Festival and also we had an audit of our A Space for Live Art EU project. Lotâ€™s of work indeed! But it was great to see Gregg and some other artists there like Rosie Dennis, Essi Kausalainen, Guillermo Gomez Pena, the xxx group, Johanna Lecklin etcâ€¦. The nice thing also was that Kuopio had a kind of a heat wave whilst I was away so when I got back, practically all the snow was gone and the weather had really changed.
Brussels:
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Now I have a couple of days off and Iâ€™m just trying to relax and do stuff that at home. Then Iâ€™m staring to prepare my trip to New York. Lotâ€™s of exciting things happening!

Happy Labour Day weekend to everyone! Hauskaa Vappu-viikonloppua kaikille!

Johanna

in Uppsala

My performance at the TUPP-festival went well, I think. I had a great time and had a chance to walk around the beautiful town on Sunday before heading off to the airport.

Tomorrow I’m rehearsing my new one-to-one performance in a theatre Kuopio. Looking forward to that.

Johanna

on my way to TUPP

Busy busy days! Iâ€™m on my way to perform in Sweden as part of TUPP Internationell scenkonstfestival in Uppsala. Exciting! I heard that the milk cartons I sent to Uppsala have arrived safely so I’m all set and ready to Physical artistic deeds 1; Milk.

Last weeks Iâ€™ve been working on a new one-to-one performance BODY/HAIR of which Iâ€™ll show a first draft in just a couple of weeks. So Iâ€™ve had a lot of meetings related to that work and I think itâ€™s now finding its shape and form.
Must hurry now.

See you in Uppsala!

breakfast

What a sunny and beautiful and bright day. I’m enjoying an easy morning at home and having a luxury of reading the newspaper in peace, updating my blogs, commenting other people’s blogs, listening to radio, enjoying that the kids are outside playing. A good moment.
I went to Helsinki earlier this week to attend a reception hosted by Alexander Stubb, the foreign minister of Finland. He held the reception for remarkable Finnish artists & important people working in the arts and there were a lot of A-list celebrities and artists there -and me of course. Also the president of Finland, Tarja Halonen popped by. It was a really good party and I got to meet and talk to a lot of people including Minna Parikka whose fan I am. I was wearing the same handbag as Minna and her shoes as well. Anyway, artist Riiko Sakkinen was there and he had criticised the art works Alexander had bought recently. So today’s Helsingin Sanomat reported, that Alexander had admitted that he doesn’t know anything about contemporary art and asked Riiko to invite 12 artists for a dinner so that he can learn more about contemporary art. I think this is great but I’m concerned that Riiko’s knowledge of contemporary art is very limited to visual arts and artists. I think I have to send some material to Alexander or do something else. Ideas?

Yesterday I went to see a really awful performance Verigreippi. I really didn’t understand why the makers of the performance wanted me or anyone to witness what they were doing. I didn’t believe in anything they did or said. It was just so pretencious and false and there really wasn’t anything there to see or hear or to think. Oh god. What a waste of time.

I’m off to run now and enjoy the beautiful day. Would be great to hear what you think about Riiko Sakkinen introducing contemporary art to Alexander Stubb or Verigreippi for that matter…

Johanna

ps. in the image Bodium coffee maker, Polar FT60, painting by Mikko Valtonen, wall paper Larsen ‘winter tree’, table BoConcept ‘Amari’, chair Danerka, Iittala plate, KoKo coffee cup, Apple MacBook

an easy week

Last week I went to Helsinki to participate in the reception of Finnish Cultural Foundation which generously gave a grant for ANTI Festival for the self-financing part of A Space For Live Art, EU funded project. This week Iâ€™ve tried to take some time off from the ANTI Festival. Lately it has absorbed far too much of my energy and caused me the kind of stress I need to get rid of. I donâ€™t know if Iâ€™ve succeeded very well this week but at least this has been an effort to get my mind off ANTI for a while.
So this week Iâ€™ve been enjoying being at home, seeing friends, exercising and running. Nothing special but the kind of stuff one should find time to do when working as well.
Actually, Iâ€™m very excited about my upcoming performances and projects during the spring. Iâ€™ll let you know about them soon. Iâ€™ll also participate in two running events this year â€“ something Iâ€™ve never done before. Iâ€™ll run 10K in May and a half marathon in September. This week Iâ€™ve done some exercising on a cross trainer, functional training, running and walking. Iâ€™ll do a long run tomorrow and then get a massage. On Sunday Iâ€™ll do some functional training as well. So this looks like a pretty good week in terms of exercising. And my body feels great!
When I was in Helsinki, I ate some pretty good sushi and got all excited about learning more about it. So Iâ€™ve planned a kind of sushi evening at my place with a French cook who lives in Kuopio. He will teach us about the history of sushi, how to make it and in the end weâ€™ll have a feast! Iâ€™m really looking forward to it. Now the challenge is to find a date that fits everyone whoâ€™s interested. It will be fun.

Johanna