Category Archives: Inspiration

post festival blues

The 10th ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival happened last week in Kuopio and it was just amazing. The atmosphere was great through out the festival, the artists were all wonderful and so professional and I felt so proud of what I and others have created together. So thank you! I want to thank all the artists, our producer Laura for her devotion, the volunteers and our wonderful audience that had gathered to Kuopio from around Finland, the States, UK, Australia, Indonesia, Iceland, Belgium, Sweden, Canada… It’s all worth the hard work, the sleepless nights, the stress, the tears, the sweat…
If you have something (positive) to say or comment about the ANTI Festival, please email to me or leave your comment on our website here.

I’m listening to the new album of Chisu, drinking cheap cava and eating tiramisu. The autumn has been very busy and I need to catch up with sleep. I’m excited about the upcoming performances, my studies in cultural policy, developing my work and planning the next edition of ANTI. I’m also aware that I need to see some new work, somehow, somewhere.

I had a small gum surgery a couple of days ago and I’ve been pretty ill. Unfortunately, I cannot do any proper training until I’m a bit better, so that’s a bit frustrating.

Looking forward to the weekend at home!

Johanna

 

pics & clips

Here are a few pictures from last week. Unfortunately, not from the Visio show – not yet anyway. But here are two short clips of Antti Rissanen, a very talented bmx cyclist who performed in the show last night. My clips are not from the most amazing tricks he performed but you get the idea…

I think I’ve told that my daughter takes her ice-skating quite seriously. After the ice, they have a training session ‘on the ground’ where they practice the jumps and slides etc. without the skates. I followed a little bit of it… and she is pretty good. You’ll figure out who she is…
And once again, getting back to my love for design and architecture (I should have been an architect, remember!). In Kuopio’s Saaristokaupunki, where I also live, a lot of houses are constantly built. Most of them look so horrible, disgusting and boring that I don’t want to spend a minute writing about them. Well now, people who bought these very very expensive pieces of land directly by the lake in the island of Käränkä, have started to build their houses. Some of them look kind of interesting or at least decent, but this one… I mean, who spends hundreads of thousand of euros on the piece of land and then decides to build this????
No offence, but in the first place I would like to ask the city of Kuopio why on earth they give permission to build something like this on a such an amazing and visible spot? I mean… What’s going on? I do not understand the builders either but what can you do if you don’t have any sense of contemporary style or design or architecture? And what is the responsibility of Kannustalo, the company who’s made the house? The whole Saaristokaupunki is damaged by this company and their terribly old fashioned traditional houses which I just hate! In the worst case, you can see 5 exactly same houses from their catalogue on one street. I mean, it’s just disgusting! It’s exactly this kind of building that makes me vomit and I’m not sure how long I want to live in Saaristokaupunki if it’s this kind of environment that I have to look at every bloody day.

Johanna

Kuopio, a lively city?

What an intensive week I had. Spent a day in Jyväskylä and another one in Helsinki. Had a lot of thoughts about cultural policy, arts funding and arts management. In Helsinki I saw a performance by a graduating MA student – a very highly educated dancer entering into this insecure, unstable, problematic and debated field and business. Maybe it’s because I’m evaluating her final work that I’m somehow very conscious of all these rather negative issues in our field. And I’m not sure what I think about it. Part of me of course wants to encourage her and everyone and a part of me is really sad because it will be hard. On the other hand, it might not be hard for her at all and what is hard for each person varies so much anyway…

I gave a talk about ANTI in a seminar on Wednesday and it was kind of inspiring to hear and learn about other festivals and events in the city of Kuopio. The city is finally making or renewing its marketing strategy and festivals and events are of course a big part of the brand and image of the city. And if Kuopio wants to be a lively city, I think ANTI is doing the best job in the cultural sector.

So I was in Helsinki on Friday and realized that I wasn’t at all interested in going to the Habitare fair. This is a bit strange as I’m usually very interested in design. I’m not even sure when it was that I last visited Habitare (maybe last year?) but it was a bit of a disappointment so this year I didn’t really even consider it. But my desires were fulfilled last night in the 20th anniversary birthday party of Visio which was an inspiring event combining style, fashion, design and gourmet. I was so happy to participate and very, very proud of Kari and Sari. The venue was great, the old VR-makasiini factory building, which could be this amazing venue for all kinds of events, parties and performances in Kuopio but is hardly ever used. I know they had a lot of problems to get all the necessary permissions to organize this event there but I’m so proud they did and I really hope more people would start doing the same. Kuopio needs something like that! And Kuopio wouldn’t be the same without Visio = Kari & Sari. Think about this: these two very inspirational people who didn’t have to do anything wanted to organize this event which included a fantastic hair/fashion show, very well designed and organized venue with music, lights, BMX performer, lots of sparkling wine and gourmet deserts. And they invited about 500 people to enjoy all this for free! All I can say is thank you. And I love you!
With Kari & Sari

And I got to wear my golden Finsk shoes! Lovely.

We took a lot of pictures from the show…hopefully I’ll get to post a few later.

Johanna

Kuopio, Jyväskylä, Joensuu, Kuopio…

Today I gave a talk about A Space for Live Art and UP TO NATURE EU funded projects in Joensuu. My talk was part of the Taiteen, kulttuurin ja luovien alojen rahoituspäivä, translating roughly ‘funding of arts, culture and creative industries’. Sounds terrible but it was quite inspiring actually. Riikka Leskinen from Cimo talked about the EU Culture Programme 2007-2013 and then I gave practical information about our projects, how we got involved in them and what is the everyday like managing the projects. It was also great to see Mari Karikoski from the Arts council of Finland and Hanna Susitaival from the regional arts council of Pohjois-Karjala.

Now I’m on my way back to Kuopio, proofreading (for the hundredth time) the upcoming ANTIVERSARY book. But it should go to print today! Hurray. Ahhh, the ANTI Festival is coming up veeerrryyyyyy soon and I’m beginning to feel the excitement…

This week I’ve been already in Jyväskylä so it’s been a rather challenging week in terms of exercising. I’ve had rehearsals of Acts of Clothing as I’m performing it soon in Jyväskylä, had a Pilates class and yesterday Zumba. Tomorrow I’m back to studio with Acts of… and will have functional training sessions both on Friday and Saturday. And on most days I’ve cycled to work. So should be a pretty good week, enough aerobic and strength training.

Last week I got a -20% reduction coupon for Sokos’s beauty week and I’m now wondering if this would be the time to get the new Lancome eyeshadow… I really like the Doll Eyes Baby Pop….hmmm.


What do you think?

Johanna

 

Busy weeks getting back to business!

Last week was so great as Gregg was visiting Kuopio, we worked long, intense days, had meetings and then spent a couple of days in Helsinki doing the same with our ANTI team – myself, Gregg and Laura. Hard work but inspiring! I like it. We also saw some performances in Kuopio and Helsinki. With Gregg we have a pattern of seeing the most horrible performances together in Finland…and this time it was sort of like that again. We saw one very terrible work and another one which wasn’t bad but just so not what we are interested in in Art. Anyway, it was good to see them as they brought up a lot of thoughts about art in society, the kind of audiences that we are trying to reach thru our work etc etc. But I was very lucky to see a really great performance Talk to me with Laura on Saturday night in Pannuhalli. I was so happy, so inspired intellectually and artistically, it really returned by faith in contemporary performance. And that is great.

We also ate some great sushi in Zen Sushi and amazing thai food in MaiThai. Yammy.

On Saturday afternoon I had a meeting with Satu in Minna Parikka’s boutique in Bulevardi and we tried practically every pair of shoes in the shop! Great fun. Unfortunately, the A/W collection wasn’t out yet so I had to settle into a pair of Acacias which were on sale, -50%. So that was a bargain. We also checked out Nanso and Marimekko…and sinned. Terrible!

On Sunday I finally got to meet my friend Maija and her newborn daughter. She was so beautiful, they both were! Hope I get to meet them soon again.

This week flew by so quickly as we have been working on the final corrections of the ANTIVERSARY book, written several grant applications etc. On Friday I finally got my hands on with ANTI Festival’s financial report of A Space for Live Art 2010… It will be so much work…and it always takes forever! Well, I do get some strange pleasure from Excel…

I’ve had a pretty nice training rhythm doing Kinesis, Pilates and Functional training and warming up Acts of Clothing. It was funny – yesterday I met a woman in Functional studios who asked after our functional training class that why do I look so familiar… Well, it turned out that she had seen my Acts of Clothing a year ago in Helsinki in the Ateneum theatre – and had liked it a lot. Small world.

Tonight is the time for some fun as we are going to see Jukka Poika, Raappana and Sound Explosion Band in Puikkari. See you there!

Johanna

 

 

Can’t believe it’s already the end of August!

I haven’t had a proper summer holiday for a few years so this summer it was such a luxury not having to work very much. Of course as an artist I’m always somehow working on upcoming projects and preparing new works, but I didn’t work in terms of waking up early in the morning, sitting in the office, rehearsing or warming up shows nor performing. It was pretty nice. I didn’t do anything special really – slept, cooked, exercised, wrote, thought…but what was pretty special for me, was that I had time & peace to read. Meaning anything; novels, newspapers, short stories. I really really love reading and drowning myself in the thoughts of a writer, but unfortunately this is something I find hard to find time & space to do in my normal everyday. I think I should change that – so much I enjoy reading. This summer I read some books I should have read years ago (like Mereta Mazzarella and Kari Hotakainen) and some new discoveries like Siri Hustvedt (how amazing? And how amazing that I haven’t read her books before?). Unfortunately, I didn’t have money to travel anywhere or to do anything special, but maybe that was good. Not to do too much. Less is more.

So when last weekend when we went to our friends’ house warming party 150km away, I felt like I was abroad! The sun was shining, there were good friends around, we ate amazing foods, drank a lot of wine and got to spend a night in a house designed by Alvar Aalto! I really need to make sure I have time to see my friends and spend proper time with them. I love them. The house warming party was pretty special as the couple whose house warming party it was, announced that they had gotten married last December. So there were a lot of tears of joy and happiness! We ended up talking a lot about marriage as another friend couple has also decided to get married. And I was trying to explain why I don’t understand this institute. I just don’t. I’m not against it but I don’t get it. So everyone kept saying that it’s only us who’s left to organize a love parade…but somehow I don’t see it happening.

Of course I’ve gone back to work and the autumn looks pretty…busy. I’m not sure how I will manage everything when the daylight is getting less and less, it’s getting darker and colder and one has to get up insanely early every f*king morning. But of course, there are amazingly exciting things coming up as well! It’s time for the 10th ANTI Festival, I’m performing in Tanssin Aika Festival in Jyväskylä and in the city theatre of Kuopio, I have talks and lectures in Joensuu, Helsinki, Kuopio, we are preparing UP TO NATURE EU funded project for 2012, I have a work period in London etc etc. It’s all very very exciting but at the same time feels like it’s a lot. And besides that I have my basic training to do. I’ve also registered our lovely Yorkshire terrier Pimu to a puppy training…  By the way, Pimu was voted for the pet of the week in July, see link here!

Autumn is the time to pull out warmer clothes from the wardrobe, get inspired by new colours, trends, prints, textures… I’ve sold two pairs of Minna Parikka shoes and had a stall in a second hand shop in Kuopio for a week where I sold clothes, shoes and all kinds of little items like plates, puzzles, games and bags. Maybe it’s time for something…new? I think this pair of Minna Parikka’s A/W 2011 shoes with the snake from ‘Women are dangerous animals collection’ is pretty awesome. Don’t you?

Highlight of the summer was a long weekend we spent on our friends boat Gerda boating. The weather was great, the kids were great, Pimu was behaving well and we had enough food & drinks! On board were the hosts Vilja & Jari (THANX SO MUCH!!!), Zulani, Justiina & Pimu and Pekka & me. A selection of photos here:


The gorgeous Gerda:

















Looking forward to more active blogging period!

Johanna

in Hailuoto

Justiina, Iitu, Zulani and Pimu in Pöllä beach – Pimu swimming for the first time! Photos Pekka Mäkinen.
Justiina’s swimwear by Australian Seafolly, mine Stella McCartney for Adidas:






An 8 kg salmon fresh from the sea. It was so yammy!


My dad and Justiina on the Hailuoto ferry:


Back home. Ohh, it’s hot but the blueberries are ripe! Photos by Pekka Mäkinen.



Happy summer holiday to everyone!

Johanna

meeting in Vienna

Before the midsummer I was in a meeting in Vienna for a couple of days. We sat two intensive long days in this room discussing artists and works for the upcoming UP TO NATURE project. I was very inspired by the meeting but I think this has been the first time ever that I literally didn’t have a chance to do anything apart from going straight into the meeting from airport, going to the hotel at night, taking the tube into the meeting the next day, taxi back to the hotel and bus to the airport early  next morning! So no time to have a walk anywhere, to see anything or to shop. I guess that might be a good thing…

A view from my hotel window:


Our meeting room with a balcony:




A view from the balcony, apparently a big tourist attraction in Vienna (related to classical music) – hundreads of tourists visiting it all day long…

Anyway, thanks Thomas, Olivia, Gregg, Helen, Hannah, Jon (and who did I forget…?) for a great meeting! See you soon,

Johanna