Conversation between Sanna Kekäläinen and Kerstin Schroth about Conversations with Ants evening

Could you tell us about the background and starting point of your performance?

A few years ago, I was invited as an artistic director to an international project involving several theatres in Portugal and Spain and us in Helsinki. I proposed ants as a general theme for the project. I had discussed about this subject with writer Kari Hukkila, who has been working since long on ants making formal appropriations of their activities for his own writing work. I think that the theme was in many ways apt and resonates with this type of co-operation which doesn’t aim to one closed and fixed performance rather than is based on always new local decisions and focuses.

The concept of a visitor or visitor-ship is essential in the work. It traverses the whole project including the aspect that here we, humans, are visitors at the edge of the insect world.

Working with voice, speech and sound, shaking and stuttering traverses the work. These elements refer to the effort of a human observing and trying to identify with the vast encyclopaedia of movements and sounds of ants as well as to a situation of an impossible discussion: we will never hear them, they will never hear us, but their existence is necessary for our existence.

How do you situate your artistic work within the Finnish performing arts landscape?

I have to reflect this through the history of my artistic work as I have gone through many different landscapes within the Finnish performing arts scene and I have always been a bit aside from it in my own landscape. I have also introduced to the Finnish arts scene things and aspects which later, over the years, have now become normal staple in the performing arts here. Gazing through history is also an instrument to handle decades of artistic work.

I started my education abroad very young and without really understanding it then, I happened to be in the middle of a very dynamic arts scene in Europe. In my first works, I problematized the concept of gaze before it became an accurate subject in the academic field in Finland. I continued with questioning representation in performative situations, which since then has been one of the elementary aspects of my work.

I never intended to place myself as a pioneer in the arts landscape. To define and situate oneself in an arts scene is better done by someone else. However, when looking back I see myself having brought political aspects into the arts scene of Finland: feminist approach, multicultural and gender issues and working with the naked body – to mention a few.

At the moment, the focus in my landscape has expanded towards the natural science and history as a view from afar. The folding and unfolding of history has reinforced the observation of the present social environment. Both of these, the natural science and layers of history are charged with a strong political aspect in my current workshop.

I am in a very active phase at the moment and after about 80 works behind, I am extremely excited to discover new landscapes in my explorations.

In the arts in Finland the situation is getting harsh. The state support for the arts is being dismantled. This leads to a situation in which the artists are placed violently in a competitive position. You can say that artists compete with each other anyway, but there is fertile competition and destructive competition, and what’s happening now is the destructive one.