Mar Fjell & Elis Hannikainen: This is Not a Love Song – workshops & participatory performance
26 NOVEMBER - 27 NOVEMBER 2024
We need to grieve to heal. We need to heal to live in the dying. We need to come together and touch Earth, hold the soil in our hands and the sorrow in our hearts, to be able to let go. Suicide is not an option. Surviving is not an option. We want to live a liveable life in the dying.
Workshops & Participatory Performance
Tue 26.11.
13:00 Workshop – Requires registration
18:00 Workshop – Requires registration
Wed 27.11.
14:00 Participatory Performance – Open to all
Starts at 14:00 from Lou and continues as a walk through Kallio.
The workshops and participatory performance are facilitated by Mar Fjell & Elis Hannikainen. The events are part of Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival.
This is Not a Love Song workshops delve deeply into collective grief exercises and forms of expression through breathing, sounding and walking together. The events are for people that identify as queer and/or trans persons and allies.
You can participate in the workshop in different ways; by signing up for the workshop itself and the participatory performance at the end of the workshop, by participating only in the workshop or by coming to the participatory performance either as a participant or a spectator. The performance starts at Lou, and continues as a walk in Kallio.
For details and registration, visit Baltic Circle’s website.
The workshops and participatory performance is planned in dialogue with Mar Fjell’s solo exhibition at Lou Gallery between 9 November – 29 November 2024.
This is Not a Love Song is a production of Lou, curated by Remi Vesala. The collaboration expands on the dialogue that began in 2023 between curator Vesala and Baltic Circle’s artistic director Hanna Parry.
When Dr. Malin Arnell (b. 1970, SE) and Mar Fjell (b. 1981, SE) come together, they become an interdisciplinary art worker, performer, collaborator, researcher, educator, and musician. Since 2017, they have shared breaths through many forests, waterbodies, islands and cities – now inhaling Helsinki. They engage in affectivity within a queer eco-erotic ethics, exploring participatory practices and vibrating togetherness. Their work embraces all things queer and opens up for an unending dynamism of entanglements.
Elis Hannikainen is an artist based in Helsinki. Their practice is text-driven and consists of media artworks and installations. In their own and collaborative works with artist and writer Vappu Jalonen, they explore bodily experiences, means of support, and questions related to power. Hannikainen’s and the artist duo’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries, at festivals, and in an outdoor recreational area. During 2024–2027, Hannikainen and Jalonen will work on the project The Realm of the Sick(Sairaiden valtakunta), funded by the Kone Foundation.
This format of workshops and participatory performances had been developed between Dr. Malin Arnell (b. 1970, SE) and Mar Fjell (b. 1981, SE) since 2017. During Baltic Circle 2024 the work will be organized and hosted by artists Mar Fjell and Elis Hannikainen. The workshops and performance are organized with the support of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Nordic Culture Point.