The text was originally written on an online etherpad. People could see it being drafted one letter at a time. The writing was backed up with a live-video stream, which showed what was taking place in Telakka, Tampere. This method of documenting performance art events has been developed during the five years the Perfo and Perf- events have been video streamed online.
Relax,
Tehdasry.fi
Original text: http://ldezem.muistio.tieke.fi/PERFO
Lora’s speech: http://ldezem.muistio.tieke.fi/lora-PERFO
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17:59 Janne, Simo and Jussi are taping a tarpaulin to cover the wooden floor of Telakka. They are negotiating on how the audience is to be organised. The performances will be executed downstairs which is uncommon for Perfo Club. There is a private event upstairs.
18:00 I begin to set-up the live video stream. We taped a cellphone (which sends the video stream) directly to the camera Manu uses.
18:08 Janne and Jussi are nailing a red canvas to the horizontal wooden beams which divide the space. Simo is walking around advising them. He said he’s fed up with organising performance events. Jussi is nodding his head behind his shoulder.
18:14 Johnny Amore want’s to load the Bambuser.com video streaming application onto his cellphone. He is performing tomorrow in Helsinki at an event organised by Sari. He’s upset that so many online services require a google account to access. Janne climbs to the ceiling and fixes the lights. Jussi is playing with a spotlight: “Can I operate this by hand?”. Janne is going to put a colour shade on the lamp. “This is like theatre.. It’s not performance”, Johnny shouts. “It’s broken. Quit turning it” the technician of Telakka shouts to Jussi.
18:22 I ask for electricity from the technician but he’s left the scene. I tell Manu to get some tape so that we can tape our cameras together. I act as if I’m hurt as Johnny didn’t ask me to stream his performances in Helsinki.
18:39 Johnny fiddles with his cellphone. Manu didn’t find tape.
– “I’m tired”. He says and sits.
– “You want a beer?” Johnny asks. He’s leaning over his phone, nearly touches the screen with his nose and scratches his chin. Jussi comes back in and taps on the table. “Shit” he says in German.
– “It is really really difficult to write with those. I tried it once” He says to Johnny.
– “Shit. The internet is down. Maybe I take a beer”. Johnny taps Jussi on the shoulder. “You understand me..”.
The cook is copping meet in the the kitchen. Jussi ogles around.
18:48 “If you have a flash, then you have flashlight”. Johnny says. He’s concerned if his cellphone has a build in torch. He things the sentence is poetic. He says he’s a poet and talks of something he did 1996.. Some street poetry things he was involved with. Manu is adjusting the tripod and tapings. Jussi rolls a cigaret. Johnny starts barfing.
– “Post-modern John Cage”. Jussi says. “Very conseptual”.
18:54 – “There’s a lot of random audience here. People don’t know what they are taking part in”. Manu says. Women decorated with eyeglasses walk down the stairs. They are drinking white wine. Some eat salads. They are attending some sort of business-event upstairs. They talk about teaching. “Mays salaries come on the last day of the month. Employees with a permanent place get it in the middle of the month”.
18:56 I’m preparing to start our live-video stream. The first “anonymous” is following how this text is being written. The wlan of Telakka is under stress. The connection is merged with the establishments visa-electron traffic. Buying a beer causes issues with connection. Ironic. Asko identifies himself as the “anonymous” follower.
19:04 I sit alone in a long table. Everyone is gone. Perfo events usually start late.. It’s a bad habit. Audiences have grown accustomed to it and arrive late accordingly. “They wont anyway start in time” people thing. I can hear someone speaking in English behind me and people are climbing back upstairs. There is a backstage up there where the performers store their gear. The stairs are made of wood. I can imagine how stressed Janne is. When he is nervous he pushes his glasses up his nose with his index-finger and coughs. Imitating this behaviour is easy and we often do so behind his back with Päivi. Päivi gets bored with that faster the I do.
19:07 Thick 30cm pine beams split the sealing. Simple lamps hang from them. Just the wire and sockets. Manu came back and asks if anyone is watching the writing process online.
– “Asko and Jukka”, I reply. He starts with the camera and zooms around for the heck of it. Women with eyeglasses are at the door. They are of no importance now. They are attending some sort of teachers summit. They where talking about salary related things. People have stacked papers on the tables. By the first gaze they look like note sheets. There is a stage and a backdrop build by Janne, Simo and Jussi. It’s lit with a red light. The floor is red. There are oil portraits on the brick walls.
– “Ten more minutes. He’s not ready yet.” Janne says. He can’t help concealing his disappointment over the fact that the performer is not meeting schedules.
– “Could I check my Facebook?” Johnny asks. I pass the computer to him for an indefinite time.
19:14 This computer is like an utopia. Can you see Amore? I can see it every
day!
19:16 Ar e we all public? Is performance just a way to see it?!
19:17 Asko the uprising star …I am big fan!
19:18 Soon the performances will start. The first performer Ivan said 10
minutes more to wait
19:19 You don’t have to be here physically , because we all have you here with
us. Not only you…everybody who is online. Welcome!
19:20 The media team is fixing the last things. Excitement is rising…
19:21 Eero said I should write in german. You agree?
19:21/1/2 Dann sprechen wir eben in Deutsch. Könntest Du mehr erklären
ueber die optischen Abweichungen der hier entstehenden Metaphysics?
19:23 I take the turn from Johnny. Manu sits and starts reframing the camera. He undresses his sweater. We talk about re-taping the other camera to the tripod. A performer walked past and placed a bowl filled with urine colour liquied in the middle of the stage. Then he took it back upstairs. Janne heads behind the backdrop. He walks past and forth, stroking his hair with his fingers. He’s wearing a jacked as if he’d be leaving soon. The performer cames back.. Just to take something with him behind the stage. He’s got long curly, black hair and a t-skirt. I’m posting an ad on Facebook: “Follow the PERFO performance event live report being written live” it reads. Manu checks the time on his mobile. Janne has a beer.
19:27 Janne is goofing for the webacam. He takes a sip. He’s agitated because Ivan is not where he ought to. Lora freaks about the webcam. She does not want to be seen. “No, it’s ok” I say, but she still asks be to pass her tee from the other corner of the table so that she’ll not be seen on the stream. When people walk cross the stage the tarpaulin crackles loudly.
– “Do you want to announce him?”. Simo asks Janne. We begin to prepare ourselfs for the first show. I can’t hear what Janne replies but Simo appears pissed. Jussi sits and gazes at me and Manu. He smiles and blinks. The front seats are full now. “We’ll keep short pauses in between”, Janne says.
19:31 When someone buys stuff using a visa-electron it causes lag the internet connection. The artist sneaks behind the stage. He has white canvases with him. The audience is getting anxious. People are focusing their gazes. There is a lot of noise around.. People talk about all sorts of things. Some one next to me notices a text in the roof beams. It’s a limerick in Finnish: “The alphabets will suffer if we allow the “Finnish alphabet” to die”. The text is written in the same column which holds up the backdrop. Janne peaks behind it and checks if the performer is ready and asks people to to come closer. The performer talks to Janne. Päivi comes and sits in the long table with me. Manus gets a call: “Hi. I’m at Telakka. Things are about to start. DVD?”. He plays with a pack of empty DV-tapes and talks about stuff concerning Hirvitalo.
19:36 The performer is attaching white t-skirts to the horizontal columns. Colums are build from pine. He uses pins to attach them to the wood and has to use force. He sneaks behind the backdrop to get more t-skirts. He asks the audience to step back. He’s now occupying a 4×5 meter space, all which is protected with the tarpaulin. He is wearing shoes. He’s got a goatee. He gazes to the audience every now and then. People are chatting, noise originates from the bar stand. Someone sitting next to me is asking how the online video stream is working.. I’m too bored to answer. “This is gonna be a great performance.. The floor needs to be protected”, He says.
19:42 The artist is attaching some sorts of hoods to the columns. Janne looks at him calmly. The artist uses a lot of force to attach the pins. Simo is walking back and forth anxiously. He grabs Lora by the arm and says something to her. Now the performer arrived with the bowl.
– “I thinks he’s gonna take a piss and then he’ll start” Janne says.
– “If he gets the chemical into his eyes this water needs to be used for cleaning” Simo says. Manu got a beer.
– “Wonder if there is a doctor in the house?” Janne asks. Simo is chatting with Suva. Suva is wearing his brown hat.
19:45 An audience member next to me is asking about copyright issues: “Can you film people in a bar?”. Janne looks him straight in the eye and says: “Yes. These are public spaces”. He continues to walk around the bar and is looking for all sorts of containers with water which could be used to wash the artists eyes with incase he spills chemicals used in the performance. Simo has a beer too. “Have you seen these? Do you know what’s gonna happen?” he asks. The artist comes back and tells Janne to move the audience to that his actions behind the backdrop will not be seen. He walks past the stage and goes hiding the behind the backdrop.
19:48 Four t-skirts and hoods are attached with pins to the vertical columns. The floor is protected with a tarpaulin. On the back of the stage there is a bowl with water in it. It lays on a synthetic rug which looks as it is from a car. The stage is lit from above. Janne walk behind the backdrop to negotiate with the artist. “Okey! Ladies and gentlemen.. and others. This is Perfo-Club. We have Ivan, Lan, Sport, Lora and Dimond from Australia. And this program has been curated by Jussi ja Simo”. Johnny shouts “Bravo!” from the back row. People laugh and clap their hands.
19:52 Ivan walks to the middle of the stage in a tskirts. He pours water on the tarpaulin. Then pushes the bowl with water in to the corner of the stage and wipes his hands on his tskirt. He’s wearing brown underpants. His fingers are bleeding. He’s blood is oozing trough the pours of his skirt. “HYPER REALITY”, he writes on the tarpaulin with blood. There is a lot of blood. He starts to jump against the columns. He’s tagging the hoods and the skirts he’s attached with his blood. There is blood everywhere. He’s slamming him self to the columns and is sort of painting the space with his blood. His own skirt is covered with blood. He’s out of breath. Manu says he’s feeling nauseous. Now he has a sponge and he’s cleaning the tarpaulin. He’s got four sponges but the blood does not clean well. The audience is silent. He patiently wipes the tarpaulin clean and then starts to remove the textiles he’s attached to the columns. Four hoods, four t-skirts. All white and covered with blood. He places the hoods on the floor, into the sponges so that the bloody sides are visible for the audience. I doubt it’s real blood. “Memory, contagiousness”, he squeezes the sponges inside the hoods. Then he spread some liquid from the bowl on the tarpaulin. Suddenly he disappears behind the backdrop. He return without his skirt and pours fake blood or something like that around. Calmly, he begins to write something.. A symbol looks like a circle and a square. He dresses to into tskirt. He arranges the bloody skirts on the floor symmetrically and pull the car rug to the front of the stage. After placing the sponges on the rug, he stands on it and begins to wipe his feet on the tskirts on the floor. Blood like liquid begins to appear everywhere. “One minut rest” he says and hides behind the backdrop. The backdrop is a 5meter canvas attached to the columns. It’s a red textile. No one can see behind it. Paivi stares with blank eyes. Her mouth is open. She fixes her posture and leans on her hands.
20:03 Ivan comes back wearing only ladies underpants. He begins to dig his crotch. He was smiling. Now he’s in a crouching position and is squeezing on his crotch. “I want to be sexy or sex machines, I want to be star – Why not
porn star”, he speaks. Brown soup. “I want eggs. There is a new model of jeep.”. Browm shit sludge is oozing from his pants. “I want to be modern. I want to be rich. Ok. Let’s go to reality”. He pulls his hand from his crouch and show that his hand is coloured in gold glitter. “Glitter is the parody of modernisation” I think to my self. He ask the audience to pull out cotton ball from his pants. Someone pulls a cotton ball from his pants. It has a note attached to it which read: “Take a photo with me”. Ivan told he an audience member to read it out loud. Now they are standing in the middle of the stage, while a photo is taken. “I send it to you with email” Ivan says. Someone pulls a new cottonball form his underpants. There is one euro inside it which is handed for the audience. “There is an image of … I forgot the name… Very popular rich man… Charles Saatchi… ” Ivan says. He puts his high heels on and jups on the car rug and begins to jump around to space like a bunny.
20:09 “Now there is Lan and he is outside” Janne says. Tehdas Association crew begins to clean the space up. First they throw the textiles Ivan used, into the center of the stage. Then they roll the tarpaulin into a roll, which is carried out. We head outside.
20:11 Lan is siting on the table in a crouching position. He’s looking at the sky. Then he’s reaches for the attention of the audience and asks them to come closer. The beer garden of Telakka is sunny and birds are singing. People begin to sit around Lan. He sits in the middle of a table. He takes some blank papers from his pocket and tells a joke to Johnny who laughs out loud. He asks Johnny to write something on the paper.. Others are not allowed to see what it is. Tuva joins the circle. He too writes something on a paper. “…something I have”, Lans says. I cant hear him. He hand out sheets of paper for everyone in the circle. “Think of a body part… a big or a small one, something I have” he advices a black haired participant. There are five participants in the circle. Around them there are three cameramen. “Focus… to a number from zero to nine. Don’t tell it to anybody.”. Lan pulls out a sheet of glittered stickers from his pocket. “Please put these numbers on the card” He says. “And… everybody can do this. Please think of a number from zero to nine and put it on the card”. The stickers are in a cellophane bag. Tuva places sticker on Lans forhead and nose. Lan pulls his tuque and it turns out to be a commando mask which uses to cover his face. Some girl begins to pull down his pants. She wants to remove the pants. “All pants.. I am sorry”, the girl says. She places stickers on Lans salami, after which Lan pull his pants up. “Okey, the next one”. Someone from the audience steps up “Can we participate?”. An other girl is taping stickers to his nipples. “What’s this thing?” a spectator asks. “..Four numbers or something” a cameraman replies. The black haired spectator is placing the stickers to lans knee. Johnny puts the stickers to his toe. The girl who put the stickers on his salami is waring a leather jacket with a “Dada-Bear” (Tehdas Association) logo. “Don’t look at the numbers” Lan says. “I would like each of you to find a victim to sit in here”. Johnny heads out to find a victim. Lan changes his coat and closes his zipper.
20:24 “The new one, sit on the chair and you stand aside” Lan advices the audience. Päivi is now sitting in the table and winks to her friends. “If you don’t find anybody,
just sit yourself. Ok, everybody? Ok?” Lan says. Johnny got a pretty black lady to sit in the circle. He stands behind her back. Also Jussi is recruited. Lan pulls a padlock and a chain from his pocket. It’s number combination lock. He attaches the chain behind the table leg and pull out an other lock. People look at each other curiously. The previous group selected numbers. These numbers are now being used as lock key combinations. Lan attaches people together from their feet. [The cameraman is standing in front of me so I cant see whats happening now]. Lan continues to attach to chain people by their ankles. The table is build from sturdy planks. Lan starts to remove his shoes. He ask a black haired man to do something. Johnny points to people and smiles. “Now nobody is going to see the numbers, but you can find the numbers yourself. Your number is here”, Lan says to Jussi. “You have to feel where the number is”. “There are stickers on his body and you have to feel them.” Johnny advices Jussi. Päivi begins to hack the lock on her own and succeeds in opening it fast. She figuret out the numbers after taking the sticker sheet from the cellophane bag and read which numbers where missing. The girl who put the stickers on Lans salami is crackling in the back row. “Everybody has four numbers” Johnny explains. Lan is astonished that Päivi cracked the lock. “Can I touch again?” an elderly man asks humbly. His paper read “ear” and he’s searching for stickers on Lans body. A cameraman is explaining how the performance functions for someone in the backrow. Lan sits calmly on the table. “Oh it opened! Finally” the elderly man cheers, “Now, where is my wine darling?” he asks as he leaves. The girl who put the stickers on the salami is luring a friend “to look down there”.
20:37 “The number is in his Penis” Johnny spells out. The girl in the leather jacked is smiling. “Yeah.. Now you should.. MM.. If it’s ok he’ll show it.. It’s on his dick.. Ok?”. Lan pull his pants down. A woman wearing eye glasses starts to crack the combination. She pull it off fast. Everyone is clapping. “Next is Sport from Estonia”, Janne announces.
20:40 Three performance artist from Estonia have set the table downstairs. The table is lit from above. The audience is still outside. There is a meat dish and red wine on the table. It’s a table setting form two. Ville is wearing sunglasses indoors. Manu changes the tape in the videocamera. The still cameraman goes to sit in the back on the floor to drink lemonade. People are dining indoors. Someone is wearing a suit… They are speaking about hockey, about scoring goals.
– “I was quite peppy scoring.. I was bigger then the rest.. With a clear margin. Jeah. I was suited for the sides”. The friend is also wearing a suit.
– “You gotta mentally tune to score”, he says. They are eating nuts. They are waiting for food, their waiting number is 15.
– “I was looking for confrontation a bit too eagerly. I met a chap a couple of years back.. He had played in the same circles those days. He called to Pelkoniemi.. And he’d never heard of anyone playing strong like that. Then I told him how I looked back then: Too skinny.”
– “Jeah, jeah! You recognised yourself”, the friend replies.
Ville comes back and fixes the table setting. He changes the chairs. He replaced them with chairs from the second floor, with the rope nettings.
20:46 The audience has half-full beers in their hands and I can hear glasses being washed in the kitchen. Someone is grinding ice for siders. Sunset beams penetrate trough the back window.
20:47 A woman in a nun suit appears and sits at the table. A half nude one carries a kids toybox with handle on it. Ville lifts the food from the table to the floor and leaves to fix something. The nude girl open the toy box. It’s filled with cars. The girl in the nun costume lifts her dress, showing her legs. She’s wearing black tights. Ville comes back with a dog. He commands the dog to sit and points at the food. “SIT” Ville says and turns the music on. The dog fights back. Ville commands it to obey and undresses his skirt. He’s shouting at the dog, telling it not to eat. The nude girl begins to place the cars in rows. Ville and the dog begin to eat simultaneously from the same plate. The nun drinks wine. She’s wearing high-heels. Ville stuffs his hole face on the plate. The loud music is some remix. The nun is repositioning the dining ware. Ville barks at the dog and the dog barks back, they begin to fight over the food. The dog is putting up a good fight, Villa takes the plate away. The dog eats leftovers on the floor. The nun pours water on the nude girl. Ville is eating but only touches the meat. He leaves the salad on the side. He’s turned to the audience and hands the plate to the dog, who eats the salads. The nun is looking at the wall and looks bored. Ville spits food on the dogs face and is vomiting on the dogs forehead, while the dog eats chunks of meat from Villes mouth. Then he starts to eat from the floor. The nude girl has no expression. The nun is looking out the window. Ville takes food into his mouth and spits it on the dogs face. Johnny is smiling. The nun has a glass on wine and is looking at the audience. Her eyes wander. People stand up to have a better look as Ville is crawling on the floor. The nude girl is stroking a golden toy car. I’m scared that the nun will trough the wine at us but she’s only drinking it. Ville hand the dog meat from his own had.
20:56 The dog eats humbly. Ville takes the plate and places it on the table. He wipes his hands and have. The nun is drinking wine. The dog walks around the floor, looking for food. Ville puts his coat on and commands the dog next to him. He hits his tigh and to dog comes and is seated. After which Ville takes it out. They close the toy box and the nude girl leaves. The nun finishes her glass and takes the plates back to the kitchen. People begin to clap. “And now some five.. ten minutes”, Janne says. “A little break as we fix the space. Next up is Lora”. The technician comes and asks what’s needed for the next performance. They speak of a mp3-player. Janne coordinates cleaning chores. They carry the PA-on the stage and people dining in Telakka continue with eating and chatting. They greet each other. They call each others “Sir’s and Madam’s”. Many of them have eyeglasses. They are between 40-50 years of age and seated in the corners of the space.
21:01 Simo and Janne reposition the chairs. “Speachless”, Ivan the bloody artist comments from the backstage. He liked the show. Jussi brings a mop but takes it back. “It’s not needed”, He says. Manu goes to the toilet “Where does this spotlight go?” Simo asks. Janne stands on a chair and redirects the light. “Something like this? Bright lights all around?” He says.
– “We can see how the stagehands work.. Other like in some big rock’n roll concerts”. The audience mumbles.
– “I was exited to learn: Will the animal or the man finish the dish first?”.
– “The dog was not barking right”. Janne2 says.
– “Those dalmatians.. They are not a friendly as people assume. “101 Dalmatians” everybody wanted one as a pet after that but it was a mistake. They take control, if you don’t show them their place. I mean.. They are pretty strong-minded dogs. Anyway. A pretty body-meat orientated night this is right?”
– “This is a good opposition to those ‘art-dogs’.. Those pets people take to exhibition openings. Which people carry in their handbags. This was a different sort of art dog”.
21:07 “What sort of artist do they accept there. People like himself. Formalist like Teemu himself? He’s possibly too busy to teach anyway.” Somene ask about Fine art MA studies at TAIK. “Koitela.. He was excepted to both of the programs.. Will he go to the academy of fine art or TAIK?”
21:08 Lora climbs on the stage. There is a chair. Janne walks past the stage. He’s looking for something from his pocket. People take photos of the audience. “There wasn’t that much of spills in the last performance.. They didn’t need a tarpaulin”.
21:10 Lora is in a nightgown. She sits on a chair and looks at the audience. She has a cardboard box with her. She’s sitting and playing with her chin. Se says something for Janne. “Next performance is by Lora. Let’s enjoy that…”. People laugh out loud in the back row. Lora gives a swift clap and asks the audience to silence themselves. She begins and talks non-stop for over 40 min. [The text was written live and is readable here: http://ldezem.muistio.tieke.fi/lora-PERFO ]. After she has finished with speaking she starts to sing Christmas carols and to dance around. He’s dressed up allsorts of clothes pulled out the cardboard box. She opens a sparking wine bottle, and it sparkles all over the floor. She thanks the audience and start to jump around, shouting how much she loves everyone. She’s stomping on the stage and clapping her hands, audience applauds too. She’s jumping an a table.
– “YOU MAKE THE WORST PERFORMANCE EVER SEE!” A woman shouts
– “Thank You!” Lora replies.
22:04 Janne thanks the audience. Next is a band. This writing ends. People depart from the audience, telling Lora how performances ‘should be made’. Lora is holding the sparkling wine bottle firmly.
– “This is idiotic. You spoiled our time and evening”. Someone from the audience tells a waiter. Three women are sitting in a corner table.
– “I know artist. I know art. This was something else. Why was I forced to witness this? I’m not paying for this. I hope no-one is getting payed from our tax money!”. They speak while leaving Telakka.
Eero Yli-Vakkuri
19.5.2012
(Translated 16.10.2012)
