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.

5.11.2021
Guests: Dominique Brun and François Chaignaud
Host: Mammu Rankanen

6.11.2021
Guest: Michiel Vandevelde
Host: Sanna Myllylahti

7.11.2021
Guests: Maria Saivosalmi, Vytautas Puidokas and Vytautas Katkus
Hosts: Karolina Kucia and Freja Bäckman

8.11.2021
Guest: Isabel Lewis
Host: Essi Rossi

9.11.2021
Guest: Ofelia Jarl Ortega
Host: Sonja Jokiniemi

10.11.2021
Guests:
Veera Milja and Elsa Tölli
Moderoija: Anne Naukkarinen

11.11.2021
Guests: Mikko Niemistö and Sanna Blennow
Host: Tom Rejström

12.11.2021
Guests: Ingri Fiksdal (via Zoom), Nicole Schuchardt, Louis Schou-Hansen, Rannei Grenne and Fredrik Floen
Host: Tuomas Laitinen

13.11.2021
Guests: Boglarka Börsök and Andreas Bolm
Host: Annika Tudeer

14.11.2021 (13:00)
Guest: Stefan Kaegi, Judith Zagury and Nathalie Küttel*
Host: Matilda Aaltonen

*Discussion with the artists is part of the piece Temple du Présent – Solo for Octopus, and will happen after the movie is presented. To participate, you can purchase a ticket for the movie, from our ticket shop, link on the right.

 

Mammu Rankanen

Mammu (Maarit) Rankanen is a Finnish dance artist, pedagogue and third year doctoral candidate in artistic research (Tutke). Rankanen’s artistic research is about the space, both experienced inside dancer’s body, and outside of the body. She is framing it with japanese concept Ma. Her long practice as a dancer, choreographer and dance pedagogue, and also as a practioner of shiatsu, yoga, meditation and somatic practices (Somatic Movement Therapy, BMC, Feldenkrais) informs her research.

Sanna Myllylahti

Sanna Myllylahti is an internationally recognized Finnish dancer, choreographer and teacher. She studied in Danshögskolan in Stockholm (Stockholm University of the Arts) and in Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor Kunsten where she graduated in 1996 with BA in Dance. She has been creating her own work as a choreographer since 1994 and she has also worked as a freelance artist abroad for 15 years, before returning back to Finland in 2011. Parallel to her career as an artist, Myllylahti has been working as a pedagogue around the world. Currently Myllylahti holds a position as a Senior Lecturer in charge of the BA in dance program at the Theater Academy in Helsinki. Her field of expertise consists of contemporary dance techniques, movement research, choreography and composition.

Karolina Kucia and Freja Bäckman

Karolina Kucia (she/them) is a visual artist with a background in sculpture and intermedia as well as in performance studies. At the moment she is also a doctoral candidate in artistic research in Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. She combines theoretical and practical work with moving image, objects, group processes and performances. Her main interests are lapse, error and stutter as well as parasitism and monstrosity in the context of precarization of labour in post-neoliberal capitalism and the current form of art institutions. Freja Bäckman works as an artist, educator and researcher. Their practice is concerned with collective formations, informed by queer and intersectional feminism. Through analysis of power, language and knowledge sharing they work with performance, sound, text, installation and workshops. Their work has been shared at Lydgalleriet and Hordaland Kunstsenter in Bergen, nGbK and District Berlin, Third Space in Helsinki, Repose in Krakow, EMMA-Espoo Museum of Modern Art. They are currently doing a doctorate at the Department of Art at Aalto University and holds a MA in Art in Context from Berlin University of the Arts.

This Soup Talk is held in exchange with Vantaa Art Museum Artsi and LAPS MA programme.

Essi Rossi

Essi Rossi is a Helsinki based director and dramaturg, working diversly in the fields of theatre and performing arts. Rossi’s works are universes of their own, imagining all that can be and how to live with and make space for it. In ten years, their work has been performed in Finnish National Theatre, Helsinki Festival, Klockriketeatern, Von Krahl (EST) as well as other festivals and stages. The latest work of Rossi and the working group, a 12-hour long Night school, was a guided journey to darkness and to slow change (Baltic Circle 2021). A new piece will be presented in the end of 2021, called Ejaculation Falls(Baltic Circle, Espoo City Theatre and SICK! -festival 2021). The piece processes diversity of sexuality and is performed by six experts of experience, invited through open call.

Sonja Jokiniemi

Sonja Jokiniemi works as a choreographer, performer and artist, based in Helsinki, Finland and Lausanne, Switzerland. In her work, she engages the practice of drawing, human and non-human actors, textile making, questions of language and communication and exploration of bodies and sensations to think around networks of things and being, their ordinary and uncanny relationships. She is interested in alternative modes of storytelling, of objects and processes traditionally located as women´s craft. She engages in a quest for manual labor, haptic relationship to the surrounding world and aesthetics of intimate resistances. Sonja’s work has been supported by many performing arts venues such as STUK-A House for Dance, music and Image and BUDA Kunstzentrum (BE), Zodiak Centre for Dance, Moving in November festival and Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum (FI) and MDT (SWE). She has recently exhibited at Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen and Dr.Guislaan Museum in Ghent.

Anne Naukkarinen

Anne Naukkarinen is a dancer, choreographer and visual artist based in Helsinki. In her artistic work, the body is approached as an unfinished, experienced, and complex material that affects and is affected by other materials, situations, and environments. Naukkarinen’s scope of work ranges from choreographed performances to art-related publications and installations. Independently and collaboratively she has performed her works in places such as Forlaget Gestus (DE), Glyptoteket Museum (DE), Helsinki Taidehalli (FI), Mad House Helsinki (FI), Contemporary Art Space Kutomo (FI), SIC-Gallery (FI), Publics (FI). Naukkarinen holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts – Helsinki (2020) and a BA in Dance from the Theater Academy – Helsinki (2015).

Tom Rejström

Tom Rejström is a Helsinki-based actor, curator and performance maker. He works on a broad spectrum in the field of performing arts, now latest as director and dramaturge for the performance Ocean Ecstatic at Yrjönkatu swimming hall. Rejström works as a lecturer in acting at the University of the arts and he’s a part of the artistic leadership-team at the Hangö Teaterträff Festival. At the moment, Rejström is interested in how the performers psychophysical and embodied knowledge can serve criticism in the light of performativity.

Tuomas Laitinen

Tuomas Laitinen works as a director, performance artist, writer and curator. His artistic practice has revolved around experimenting with the audience position and questioning the nature of spectatorship. His works have taken for example the forms of retreats, family gatherings, rituals of encounter, 7-day mystery plays, pole dances in living rooms or practices of immortality. Currently he is working on an artistic doctorate at Performing Arts Research Center Tutke of the Theater Academy in Uniarts Helsinki. His doctoral research is concerning the question what is (an) audience.

Annika Tudeer

Annika Tudeer is a performing artist, artistic director and a founding member of Oblivia. She has worked as a performer and choreographer in places such as Zodiak and as a dance critique, writing about trends in the field of performing arts and dance in Finland. Tudeer has a MA in literature and gender studies. In her work, she intuitively and organically combines arts and science. At the moment, Tudeer is interested in the possibilities of musical theatre, how to communicate and in what way can we create a more pleasurable world. Tudeer has been founding Center for performing arts (ESKUS) and Mad House Helsinki. Oblivia, founded in 2000, is a performing arts group, combining organically contemporary dance, theatre and performance art in their works. A politically and ethically uncompromising group believes in the power of art and the viewer’s imagination.

Matilda Aaltonen

Matilda Aaltonen is a Finnish dance and performance artist based in Helsinki. Currently her artwork focuses on the study of the relationships between humans and other animals. She has created art projects for the stage in performative arts, in the bustling Kauppatori and the woods of Helsinki. Exploring bodily knowledge and a perception encompassing all species, she is fascinated by the potential in dance to re-discover and re-define the human body. She is working as a part of multidisciplinary project Can we disclose other animals? The challenges of conceptualising animals in sciences and arts (2020–2022) led by philosopher Elisa Aaltola. Her most recent works are Lokkijuttu (2021, Reality Research Centre), Kettu katsoo takaisin – Eläinrepresentaatioista (2021, Yle – Radiogalleria) and Voyeur (2020, Reality Research Centre).