𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗞𝗨 𝗙𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗔𝗟: 𝗠𝗢𝗕𝗜𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗘𝗦
𝟯.-𝟲.𝟵.𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬

New Performance Turku Festival 2020 looked into questions around mobilities and movement in a historically exceptional period of time. The festival’s invited performance works around the theme MOBILITIES approached, re-thought and unlearned questions on international mobility. The festival also moved its audiences throughout different routes in various, site-specific spaces and places. Festival works were presented in multiple venues and sites around the city of Turku, local areas and the Turku archipelago.

The New Performance Turku Festival 2020 theme MOBILITIES was also strongly affected with questions and circumstances on sustainability. The principle for the 2020 festival was to invite all artists traveling by land only. The intention with this decision is to look into sustainable ways of traveling in the context of international festival and to seek alternatives for flying.

As an international and local organization, we need to find safe and responsible ways to continue our activities during and after the corona pandemic and the state of emergency in the world. In addition to our audiences and local communities, we are also responsible for our invited artists and their communities. We want to fully commit to our goal this year, being an international festival with minimal carbon footprint, but also react responsibly to the pandemic. This year the festival artists will only travel from abroad via participatory performance concepts, scores, ideas and discussions. The international aspects of the festival still actualized in various ways, as it’ss characteristic to New Performance Turku Festival. We invited artists active in the international scene, residing and working in Finland, and utilized virtual and digital systems in the performances and encounters when needed.

Mobility and movements as festival themes opened up with festival works dealing with war and migration caused by it, home and habitat, movement between environment and body via minerals and elements, bat navigation by echolocation and a mobile, moving carnival in the world that has been affected by the lockdown and curfews everywhere. At the same time the works also approached the grief and trauma caused by the current state of emergency.

In addition to questions around international mobility, the festival also focused in localities. The festival audience moved in and around local areas. Mobility and movement were addressed in the content of the performance works but also physically – inviting the audience to move within the works by walking, biking and by different ways of transportation – a bus, bikes, boats and a ship.

Artists and works:

Leena Kela (FI): I, a Bat
Sanna Leinonen &co (FI): Make it in Time
Thomas Lilley (FI): Bat walk
Contemporary Art Archipelago: Spectres in Change (FI) (Saara Hannula – Saara Ekström – Lotta Petronella – Ilppo Vuorinen – Taru Elfving)
Eero Yli-Vakkuri (FI): Our Great Culinary Survival Excursion
Olga Spyropoulou (GR) & Katriina Kettunen (FI): To Organise Our Disappointments
Nastja Säde Rönkkö (FI): at midnight we will burn
Marinka Limat (CH): The Art of Encounter
Kink Gong (FR) & Aloyce Fungafunga (FI): NYAMA KWA NYAMA
Rabota (RU): The Tunnel
Annaliina Niitamo (FI): On a Critical Walk
Ali Akbar Mehta with varialambo (IN/FI/GE): Narrating WAR
Antonín Brinda (CZ): Wounds That Will Take Time to Heal
Jon Irigoyen (FI/SP): Mobile Carnival
Toisissa tiloissa (FI): Collection of Imaginary Beings
Videokaffe (FI/GE/USA): (SPACE BETWEEN US)
ARCTIC ACTION: (Stein Henningsen (NO), Nigel Rolfe (IE), Ali Al-Fatlawi – Wathiq Al-Ameri (CH/IQ), Raeda Saadeh (PS), Anne Rochat (CH), Kurt Johannessen (NO)
Jan-Erik Andersson (FI): Building, Dwelling, Thinking

+ Performance (Art) Days seminar
+ Carlotta Moore (FI): MASKED