An artist strips, an artist takes blows, an artist digs a hole for the joy of digging. Performance art can be enjoyed at the festival, which is being held in Pori for the third time.
JANNE TOIVONEN
PORI
Michal Schreiber wraps wool yarn around his naked body. The performance lasts two hours.
Danny Devos digs a hole for an unknown salary in Antwerp, Belgium. The digging can be followed via webcam.
Carlos Montalvo physically threatens his wife Toni Geriland.
That's from previous work. What the aforementioned artists are doing in Pori today, the second day of the Perf07 festival, is still a mystery.
Many people consider performance art to be a strange and difficult art form. Michal Schreiber encourages the viewer to believe in themselves.
- If you feel that art is rubbish, it is. If you feel that it is good, it is. You should boldly trust your own feelings and take art as it is presented, advises Israeli Schreiber.
- I once did research on a mass murderer in Germany. I was looking for the place where the murderer had struck, and when I got there, I felt like I had to do something too. I took off my clothes, lay down and took pictures of myself with a camera phone. I took a big risk of undressing myself, because the place was a public park, says Belgian Devos.
- When doing a performance, you have to be completely open, who you really are. Artist Show the Inspector in Raara, Devos' compatriot Chris Straetling reminds us.
The young man from northern Finland, who goes by the artist name Kformance, agrees. He has experienced the danger firsthand.
- I once went to the lobby of a Lappish vocational school in a bear costume to make a click-click sound with nail scissors for three hours. After I had done this for an hour, the attacks started. The vocational school students came to scold and push me. But when they noticed that I wouldn't stop, they left me alone, Kformance describes.
Do you feel like you wanted to be among the attackers? Do you feel like you would like to tell performance artists to cut their hair and get real jobs?
That's right. It is permissible to ask whether there is any sense in performances after all. The artist does something strange, the public watches in a daze, and the state pays for the violins through grants.
- It is important that people also do things that are not necessary. Then you are not just a tool for others, but you live your own life, reminds Jussi Matilainen from the Messianic Visual Ethics Research Center. Performance artists are driven by the fire of making. Many of them are against a performance-oriented society. Performance is about moments, and it is not even necessary to always achieve anything permanent. - Performance liberates from matter, Kformance summarizes.