Soup Talks is a series of informal conversations with the artists presenting their work during the festival. The talks form a discursive line that goes through the festival and brings people together. We want to welcome the audience and the artists around a big table with a bowl of warm soup. Everybody is invited to join in, to listen, to pose questions and to take part in the discussions. Each of the talks will be hosted by an artist based in the Helsinki area.

4.11.2022
Guests: Calixto Neto & working group
Host: Antonia Atarah

5.11.2022
Guest: Meg Stuart
Host: Karolina Ginman

6.11.2022
Guests: Angela Schubot & Jared Gradinger & working group
Host: Anna Talasniemi

7.11.2022 NB! @Publics
Guests: Mette Edvardsen & working group
Host: Paul O’Neill

9.11.2022
Guest: Eisa Jocson
Host: Vincent Roumagnac

10.11.2022
Guests: Sheena McGrandles & working group
Host: Maija Mustonen

11.11.2022
Guest: Tuomas Laitinen
Host: Anna Kozonina

12.11.2022
Guest: Cherish Menzo
Host: River Lin

13.11.2022 
Guests: Veli Lehtovaara & working group
Host: Otso Lähdeoja

Antonia Atarah

Antonia Atarah is a Ghanian-Finnish actor and performer who is currently finishing her Master’s degree at the Uniarts Theatre Academy acting program, along with music theatre studies. In her work she has curiously varied between different performing art forms, practices and groups in Finland, Germany and Ghana. Atarah believes in collective work and aims to broaden the perception and task of “the actor” by finding diversity within that role.

Karolina Ginman

Karolina Ginman is a Helsinki-based dancer and choreographer. Through her artistic practice she tempts the multi-temperamented poetic body to speak beyond reason and everyday logics, opening gateways for alternative universes to bloom from the subjective and collective preconscious. Her latest works include Fluvial (Zodiak – Centre for New Dance, 2022) and a Human Ensemble (Cirko – Centre for New Cirkus, 2020). Ginman currently works as a performer with choreographers Mikko Niemistö, Elina Pirinen, Margrét Sara Guđjónsdottir among others, and is engaged in a long-term collaboration centered around breathing with actor Rasmus Slätis since 2019. She is a visiting teacher and supervisor at Uniart’s Theatre Academy in Helsinki. Parallel to her artistic work, Ginman has studied psychology at the University of Helsinki and completed her Master’s Thesis as part of the multidisciplinary ArtsEqual research initiative in 2019. During 2023-25 she works with the 3-year state grant for artists.

Anna Talasniemi

MA Anna Talasniemi has worked in the field of arts and culture for nearly 20 years. Until recently, she served as the Executive Director at Kone Foundation, one of the major private arts and research funders in Finland. Currently, she is completing a Master’s program in cultural environment research with a specialization in arts education at the University of Jyväskylä. She has also written two cookbooks and is a saunaphile.

Paul O’Neill

Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer and educator. He is the artistic director of a Helsinki-based curatorial agency and event space PUBLICS, since 2017. Paul is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, and a leading scholar of curatorial practice, public art and exhibition histories. Paul has held numerous curatorial and research positions over the last twenty years and he has taught in many curatorial and visual arts programs in Europe, The USA, Asia, and the UK. Paul’s writing has been published in many books, catalogs, journals and magazines. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) which has been translated into many languages. Paul has recently completed artist books with Maryam Jafri and is working on books with artists Kathrin Bohm, and Dave McKenzie, as well as two new books of curatorial texts called CURED and CURIOUS.

Vincent Roumagnac

Vincent Roumagnac (DA) is a Helsinki-based Basque-French discipline-fluid artist and researcher. Initially trained as an actor and a director, Roumagnac drifted away from “straight theatre”’s infrastructures and regimes of production to look at how the notion and practice of the “stage” transform through contemporary climate-morphing, techno-ecological conditioning, and media-hybridizing. He has proposed and had been implementing with, the tentative eco-dramaturgical notions of “redirecting/deepening/reacclimating” the stage, and “reecologizing” theatre. He is also involved in investigative and transdisciplinary processes that implement the connections between art and research. In 2020, Roumagnac completes a Doctorate in Arts at the Performing Arts Research Centre of the University of the Arts of Helsinki based on the artistic research project ‘Reacclimating the Stage’. Thereafter, he initiated a four-year post-doctoral artistic research project titled DATA OCEAN THEATRE (D.O.T.). His work is currently supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Maija Mustonen

Maija Mustonen (she/her, born 1979) is a multidisciplinary artist from Helsinki. She is interested in long-term practices of support and sharing. The themes of Mustonen’s works are especially encounter, touch, contact and questions of sensuality. She has a master’s degree in fine arts and a bachelor’s degree in dance & choreography. Mustonen is currently working with the support of the Kone Foundation.

Anna Kozonina

Anna Kozonina is a dance critic, researcher and curator based in Helsinki. As well as obtaining an MA in Political Science and Linguistics, she has studied dance history, performance theory, visual cultures, curating and contemporary art. Since 2017 she has been reviewing pieces by emerging and established European choreographers as well as doing research on the new post-soviet dance scene (a book on the topic was published in 2021) and diving into somatic discourse in contemporary dance which she observes from critical and political perspectives. She currently gives lectures on dance and performance theory, curates educational programs and conducts research projects. She is also a regular contributor at Springback Magazine where she analyses contemporary dance in the Nordics.

River Lin

River Lin is a performance artist working across the contexts of visual art, dance and queer culture through making, researching, and curating. He stages live works in gallery settings as choreography, installations, encounters or situations to speculate notions of heteronormative construction, social engagement and performativity of mediums. Born in 1984 in Taiwan, River lives and works between Paris and Taipei. He is a shortlisted artist of Live Art Prize 2022.

Otso Lähdeoja

Otso Lähdeoja is a professor of artistic research at the University of the Arts Helsinki, composer, electronic musician and researcher in digital arts. He holds a doctorate in music from Paris 8 University and has led a myriad of crossover artistic projects over the past years. He has lived and worked in Finland, Canada, Belgium and France. His works include musical ensembles, solo and group albums, multimedia projects, music-poetry, installation art and music for dance performances.