Visited New Performance Turku, assisted Tomasz Szrama to walk on the ceiling, received rough critique of a performance/publication made seven years ago, attended a very boring “How To Do Things With Performance -seminar”, witnessed a shouting performance by Hiroko Tsuchimoto and finally a salad ingredients voting performance by Denis Romanovski.
And that’s were it happened.
Romanovski placed various ingredients on the table. He talked about soviet traumas after which each audience member was given a vote. We were granted the right to vote on the ingredients of the salad. Majority of the ingredients were vegan friendly with the exception of eggs and mayonnaise. I gave my vote for the potatoes. As it was time to select whether or not to include eggs in the salad a shouting contests erupted.
Jesse and a person sitting next to him were the only ones to vote for eggs. Vegans were protesting and people started laughing. Someone rushed on stage and stole the bowl of eggs. While there was a lot of commotion and laughing I thought it might be fun to portray myself as an egg-rights advocate.
“Hi, I’m Eero. From the Egg-party. Have you considered voting our candidate Mr. Egg?” I asked a girl sitting next to me. She casted a weird smile. I thought she didn’t hear me so I continued louder: “Many consider voting mr. Egg to be in bad taste but I can guarantee that our representative mr. Egg is fresh!”. She smiled awkwardly. Everyone else was enjoying the commotion. Eventually the eggs were returned to the table and added to the salad despite the protest.
Then it hit me.
Egg translates as “muna” in Finnish which has a double meaning – It also means “balls”. Which meant that my joke on the election processing was most likely understood as a glorification of my genitalia. By the time I realized my error she had disappeared and I was stuck drinking beer with Jesse and eating democratically crafted Russian Salad.
I saw the girl later during the festival and felt like apologising. She bought a salad at a museum canteen and was walking to her table. I thought it would be best to clarify that I didn’t mean to bother her with my jokes the other night. “Hi!” I started joyfully. She was looking happy and I suddenly thought that maybe I was being paranoid with my interpretation. To steer away from a weird conversation or to save face I continued “Let me know if you want egg with you salad!”