PERFORMANCES & PIZZA
Friday, October 25, 2024, at 7 PM
Vanha Viinatehdas, Manilla
Itäinen Rantakatu 64, Turku
Free entry
Come meet the New Performance Turku Biennale residency artists through their work and work-in-progress performances! The evening will feature performances, talks, pizza, and red wine.
Artists & Schedule:
19:00, Gaetan Rusquet (BE)
19:30, Parsa Kamehkhosh (IR/FI)
20:15, Sara Wollasch (CZ)
20:45, Emil Santtu Uuttu (FI) & Samira Saramo (FI)
21:15, Pizza & Party
In addition, the event celebrates the freshly published Reliving Time publication in the context of Time for Live Art project (co-funded by the European Union).
Emil Santtu Uuttu
Emil Santtu Uuttu‘s writing and stage works deal either with deep time, incessant change and pleasures or the role of memory institutions and historical research.
In August 2024, Uuttu worked at the New Performance Turku Biennale residency, continuing their previous artistic work on Finnish rainbow history and archival research. The work ‘The Lovely Daughter Erika – Notes on a Name (Ihana tytär Erika – Huomioita nimestä)’, premiered in 2023 in the Research Room of the Finnish Literature Society archive (SKS), is built around a local story from the SKS archive’s collection of folk poetry and research publications dealing with or related to it. The play explores issues of ethics and memory in the context of transhistorical research.
During their residency in Turku, Uuttu explored the archives and collections of Abo Akademi, the University of Turku, the National Archives of Turku and the Migration Institute making the groundwork for their upcoming work for New Performance Turku Biennale.
At the end of the residency, Uuttu agreed to adapt the work for the Archive of the Migration Institute for the New Performance Turku Biennial.
On Friday 25 October at the New Performance Turku Biennale’s Performance Club, Emil Santtu Uuttu and Samira Saramo, the Migration Institute’s researcher in charge, will hold a discussion on the upcoming arrangement.
Gaëtan Rusquet
Gaëtan Rusquet (he/him, 1984) lives and works in Brussels as a performer, dancer, choreographer and scenographer, from performing arts to visual arts. After studying applied arts at ENSAAMA, known as Olivier de Serre in Paris, obtained a master’s degree in scenography and performance at ENSAV La Cambre.
In his artistic proposals, Gaëtan Rusquet looks at how one fits into a place – and what makes a medium – whether it is space, light, sound, video, movement, objects or materials, less defined. He seeks in a ritualized form to bring their relationships into play, within devices revealing their connectivity and power to act. He sees performance time as a moment of study and experience, whether for the performers or the spectators. Each occurrence is then an opportunity to request, to update the stakes of the project. Like a sculptural object that would constantly seek its contours. Thus the creation of scores allows a space for negotiation between the performer(s) and with the public/witnesses.
At the same time, the learning of holistic care techniques feeds his practice and his approach to the body and its limits. This leads him to develop choreographic tools related to the perception of these bodies and energy fields, whether related to the body itself, or to the places and grounds in which the body is inscribed.
Parsa Kamehkhosh
Parsa Kamehkhosh (b. 1985) is a performance artist and designer currently residing in Vantaa, Finland. His practice explores the matter of “being in the world” in the context of the interaction between daily life and the notion of life on the existential level. He often employs objects and materials as manifestations of contemporary human everyday aesthetics and in relation to various narratives that define the position of humans in the universe and beyond. His works maneuver on the borders of the inner and external worlds, natural and supernatural, seen and unseen.
“Being in the world is my ultimate pursuit—standing before all constructed identities and allowing life to captivate me. The natural process of internalizing my perceptions and observations helps me understand myself and my place in the world, which then manifests as my art practice. Rather than a creator, I see myself more as a door through which ideas emerge into the realm of existence.” Parsa explained his artistic approach.
His art spans various media, with a primary focus on performance art, and has been showcased predominantly in Europe, the Middle East, and the US. His fascination with materials, objects, and everyday aesthetics led him to pursue studies in industrial design at Tehran University of Fine Arts, followed by further exploration in Aesthetics and Meaning-making at Konstfack College of Arts, Crafts, and Design in Stockholm, and Visual Culture, Curating, and Contemporary Arts at Aalto University.Parsa Kamehkhosh is also the co-founder and co-curator of The Other Side Performance Art Platform, established in 2024.
Sara Wollasch
Sara Wollasch (b. 1997) is an artist whose work explores themes of physicality, care, and new forms of coexistence and cooperation. Her performances often involve nudity and the stylization of the body, which she uses to confront social and political oppression and express female empowerment. Her projects, such as Breasts (2021) and Venus, a tribute to Kateřina Olivová (2022), often combine performance with sculptural practices, casting body parts in plaster and incorporating them into installations. She also works in video, responding to contemporary socio-political events as seen in UNITED COLOURS OF (2022).
Wollasch co-founded the artistic duo NEWkus with Bára Smékalová in 2016, using body-oriented performance to explore kitsch, trash aesthetics, and the impact of current events, such as the performance Syria Ambulance (2017) and the COVID March (2021). They draw inspiration from the Fluxus movement, creating playful and absurd challenges that blur the lines between life and art. Wollasch studied under Lenka Klodová, Jan Ambrůz, and Pavel Korbička at the FaVU BUT in Brno, and has presented her work widely, including at Prague’s Studio ALTA, and in international festivals. She is currently a curator at UMAKART Gallery in Brno.
In the residency collaboration with Titanik Gallery, Sara Wollasch is focusing on new work to be seen at the 2025 New Performance Turku Biennale. The residency is curated in collaboration with Studio Alta / Meet Factory (Prague, Czech Republic).