On the Threshold
The international New Performance Turku Biennale takes place in Turku from 2–7 September 2025, presenting works by 25 artists. The biennale’s theme, On the Threshold, reflects on transformation, embodiment and survival in a world shaped by ecological grief, social crises, and shifting identities.
The programme is an exercise in understanding the time we live in – a moment of unprecedented transition that is at once disorienting, uncertain, and full of possibility. Stepping into this transitional space, the biennale artists share their ways of navigating a changing reality through contemporary rituals. They present actions that examine the tensions of our time and open unexpected connections to help us make sense of where we are.
The performances unfold as rituals, protests and intimate acts of presence. They invite us to face the multiple crises we are not just witnessing but inherently part of – and to pause, participate, and open space for reflection. How are we involved? Who are we in this transition? Are we heading toward a new utopia – or a point of no return? How do we care for ourselves and each other as power structures shift? Can history offer direction? And how can society respond to profound and inevitable change?
The biennale’s programme is structured around six thematic clusters: Ecological Threshold, Social Justice and Power, Shifting Identities and Transformed Bodies, Technology and Speculative Futures, and Contemporary Rituals.
Ecological Threshold
These works address ecological crises through grief, adaptation and hope. They reflect on how climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss shape emotional and embodied experience. Participation, nourishment and resilience act as counterforces to eco-anxiety, while a grounded spirituality opens paths toward alternative futures.
Jelili Atiku (Nigeria) presents Ọfẹrẹ’gẹ̀gẹ̀, Let Peace Awake, a procession on the city streets bringing Ifá rituals from the Yoruba tradition to invoke peace and healing. The performance gathers energy for sustaining life and finding inner balance amidst climate change, global conflict and human rights crises. WAUHAUS Collective’s What’s fermenting?, created by Samuli Laine and Aliisa Talja (Finland), opens a participatory space to reflect our personal experience of living through times of ecological collapse. They gather in Koroinen, to tune into thoughts and sensations, and to reconnect participants with themselves, others and the Earth. Held the weekend before the biennale in Ruissalo and Kutomo, a two-part workshop by Gabriela Ariana Aldana (Chile/Finland) and Lotta Petronella (Finland) serves as a gentle prelude to the biennale’s themes. Through performance practice rooted in rest and receptivity, participants explore connection with nature, cellular memory and embodied knowledge.
Social Justice and Power
In the face of a turning point of rising authoritarian forces, several works engage with forms of power, inequality and political resistance through anti-colonial perspectives. The works put in focus our political relationship with past and futures, intergenerational bonds, and interrogate narratives of nationalism and colonial traces in popular culture. Archives are activated, silent protest finds its space, and political imagination generates new cultural stories and disruptions.
As a prelude to the Biennale, SOHVA – Conversations on Utopias by Pilvi Porkola and the Reality Research Center (Finland) will take place on 22.-23.8. bringing societal discussions into the urban space and everyday public life. Porkola sits on a sofa with a researcher and activist, inviting passers-by to join in. At the Turku City Theatre, Miradonna Sirkka’s (Finland) Nonstop Paradise is a hedonistic, chaotic circus performance that deconstructs the Western paradise ideal, exposing the sacrifice, desire and white supremacy it conceals. At Tehdas Theatre, Dariusz Fodczuk (Poland) invites his 89-year-old mother to join him on stage to reflect on their changed relationship after the death of his father in their performance a Dialogue with a Son. At the Art House Turku, Anabela Veloso (Portugal/Denmark) presents Crafting a Nation, an autobiographical lecture performance tracing how the Barcelos rooster became a nationalist propaganda tool under authoritarian rule in Portugal. Also at Taiteen talo, Anna Maskava’s (Latvia) Milk and Vodka blends humour and social commentary in a story of growing up in rural Latvia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Emil Santtu Uuttu’s (Finland) Ihana tytär Erika (My Dear Daughter Erika), shown at the Migration Institute of Finland, draws on archival material to address trans history. The work discusses naming, ableism and ethical practices in recent historical research.
Shifting Identities – Transformed Bodies
In the threshold where relationships between body, identity and environment are negotiated, we present works that address gender diversity, self-worth, queer feminism and activism. These performances reflect on how memory and lived experience shape who we are and how we inhabit different spaces –cities, landscapes and communities.
At the biennale opening at the Turku City Theatre, Edvinas Grinkevičius (Lithuania) performs I Need My Nails Done as his drag persona Querelle. In this stand-up performance, fake nails are applied and stories of anger and resistance related to the LGBTQ+ community are shared. At Titanik Gallery, ProdiGirl Species: We are the Earth by Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (Ghana) clay becomes a medium for physical transformation and a ritual connection in life, death, and renewal beyond gender-normative binaries. George Rallis (Cyprus/Finland) performs Savánoman at Tehdas Theatre, a bodily ritual exploring death, identity, anti-colonial resistance and healing ancestral trauma through movement and transformation. At Jokistudio in Manilla, Jade Blackstock (United Kingdom) presents Limbs, a slow performance working with branches and molasses to explore grief, race, displacement, belonging and bodily memory through material and time. Sara Cowdell’s (New Zealand) durational performance it’s a CATASTROPHE, shown at Viinatehdas in Manilla, asks how does a person fall apart – and what happens when they begin to reassemble themselves. Commenting on cycles of healing at the intersection of the personal and the societal, Cowdell critically examines the narratives of the wellness industry. In the Aura River, Sara Wollasch (Czech Republic) performs Lament, a mythic and bodily encounter with the water spirit Näkki. Drawing on Finnish and Czech folklore, the work reflects on ecological grief, nature’s resistance and the fragility of life.
Technology and Speculative Futures
Perhaps one of the most controversial thresholds we inhabit today is the accelerated and unpredictable change brought about by technological transformation. The performances in this case grapple with the future, moving between utopia and dystopia, anxiety and resilience, collapse and hope, questioning what we can imagine ahead –and under whose terms. Emerging technologies, AI and gaming worlds intersect with performance’s embodied traditions.
Leena Kela’s (Finland) End of Days, presented at Turku City Theatre, explores post-catastrophe destruction and survival, as a series of interspecies advisors lead toward the most resilient survivor: the tardigrade. In the same venue, Harold Hejazi (Canada/Finland) presents a performance suitable also for younger audiences, where they are invited to consult an AI oracle about the future, and gaming aesthetics playfully blend Finnish spirituality, nature and a grayling fish. At Art House Turku Hanna Ijäs (Finland) performs The Body Harvest, which is a practice in attention and bodily presence that navigates the boundary between reality and imagination. Through sound, and poetic narration, she explores fragmented attention, the neglected body, and sensory connection. At Contemporary Art Space Kutomo, Aapo Nikkanen’s (Finland/France) participatory performance Netrunner: Joy Machines builds on hypnosis and multisensory experience. The audience encounters a machine that promises happiness at the push of a button – the work asks how technology shapes our consciousness, well-being, and perceptions of happiness.
Contemporary Rituals
The everyday, the unspectacular, fleeting ongoing present, is the space where we make sense of the world and foster a sense of connection. Many of the works of the Biennale give a refreshing look into this threshold. Blending mysticism, storytelling and everyday objects to explore emotions and presence, these performances also touch on solitude, encounters and human-scale playful gestures.
At Sibelius Museum, Parsa Kamekhosh (Iran/Finland) presents Calling Piece, a personal yet universal exploration of voice, presence and emotional memory, where the sound of the voices of mothers calling their children carry meanings deeper than words. Marco Guagnelli (Mexico/USA) at Turku Main Library, employs wearable, body-extended architectural forms to explore the relationship between the body, clothing and built environment in his work Living Architectures. The site-specific work leads us to notice how our bodies engage with everyday structures around us.
At Viinatehdas in Manilla, Gaëtan Rusquet (Belgium) and collaborators bringThe Rivers Chasing Us, a meditative group performance exploring resonance and connection between body and environment. Sound and movement reveal the quiet presence of space and the complexities of touch. Three other works are presented in the same space. In her Untitled work, Marita Bullmann (Germany) investigates form, texture and sensory experience by engaging bodily with everyday objects and materials sourced from different environments and revealing the traces and tensions embedded in these materials. stvn girard (Canada) performs Swallow the Sun, a piece exploring the relationship between light, disappearance and the body, playing with presence and absence, in a tribute to past performance artists. Jamie Lewis-Hadley (United Kingdom) presents We Will Outlive the Blood You Bleed, which explores blood as a symbol of connection, fragility, and universal humanity. Through the act of bleeding the piece becomes a powerful protest against inequality and a call for compassion and hope in a divided world.
NPT Biennale Cinema Programme
While being an art of presence, of radical ephemeral nature, performance is a genre in constant and productive tension with its own documentation and history. Much is to be understood and experienced in looking at this temporal paradox, and the ways salient figures of performance art have developed a powerful practice through a life of work. With the Biennale’s cinema programme at Kino Kilta we present a curated selection of documentaries that explore this space of memory and political resistance, offering new ways to engage with the ephemeral, the archival and the imagined. The series features the films This Is Not a Dream (United Kingdom), Threads of Time: Esther Ferrer (Spain), The Mystery of Live – An Art Apart: Gustaf Broms (Sweden), Spectacle: A Portrait of Stuart Sherman (USA) and Simple Gestures: Janusz Bałdyga (Poland).
Audience Ambassadors
The space in-between performance art and society is rarely put in focus, and it is a space we need to explore further: a space of surprise, discussion and enjoyment. Starting as a team in the spring 2025, Audience Ambassadors are a diverse group of Turku citizens and art enthusiasts who dare to investigate what experimental and unusual art proposals can give to everyone in society, regardless of background or profession. They are invested in helping art reach diverse audiences and also in learning what varied local communities have to say about it. How do they want to take part in art conversations and encounters? The Audience Ambassadors’ aim in the Biennale is bringing new audience groups to join us, and creating tools to facilitate resonance and participation. They have a vital role particularly in these challenging moments where the art sector needs society to be fully aware of its value and protect its existence.
Collaborations
The New Performance Turku Biennale would not be possible without a wide-ranging and knowledgeable network of partners. The biennale extends across art venues and public spaces throughout Turku, and its programme is built in close collaboration with numerous local, national and international partners. We warmly thank all our collaborators — your contribution has been essential to making the biennale a reality.
The FRESH START Nordic / Baltic programme, produced in cooperation with the Live Art for Kids festival (Copenhagen) and the Starptelpa festival (Riga), presents emerging performance artists from the Nordic and Baltic regions. Residency collaboration Studio ALTA & Meet Factory x NPT has made it possible to facilitate an artist exchange between Finland and the Czech Republic.
Local partners and venues include Manilla Cultural Factory, Tehdas Theatre, Contemporary Art Space Kutomo, Turku City Theatre, Titanik Gallery, Art House Turku, Sibelius Museum, Turku Main Library, and the Elävän Kulttuurin Koroinen Association. In addition to the partners mentioned above, the Audience Ambassadors’ training also involves collaboration with Turku Art Museum, WAM, Aura of Puppets, and Aurinkobaletti. The biennale is funded by the City of Turku, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Nordic Culture Point, Pro Manilla Foundation, Regional Dance Centre of Western Finland, Turku Theatre Foundation, Svenska Kulturfonden, Martha and Albin Löfgren Cultural Foundation, and the Finnish-Danish Cultural Foundation. NPT Biennale also collaborates with education institutions, including the LAPS programme at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki and Turku Arts Academy.
On the Threshold, together
The New Performance Turku Biennale invites you to pause on the threshold of change and experience, to sense and reflect with others. Through performances, conversations, parties and other shared experiences, the Biennale creates a space where we can collectively face change, where time bends and new connections begin to form.
While we may not have all the answers to the urgent questions facing us, we offer a space for asking, wondering and being together on the threshold of what is to come.
You are warmly welcome!
Leena Kela & Maria Villa