Got to know Esa Nickle from the Performa biannual crew thanks to a hook up by Frame Finland. She was cool and we talked about famous actors and musicians who’ve started to fiddle with performance art (she had been involved with the Jay-Z & Abramović performance etc.) and how this celebrity trend has repositioned performance artists from performers to content creators. Discussions also touched the gentrification processes in NY city, Estonian contemporary art and conceptual art in non-western cultures (Boris Groys was cited!). I tried to convince her that sharing performance documentations on youtube is a good idea because we need to educate future artist generations, so they’ll know that there is a difference in what Jay-Z is doing as performance and what we we are up to. We had a couple of beers and I’m walking home. Feels like summer.
Eero Yli-Vakkuri