Spring 2021

I have started an extremely interesting new job  at the Theatre Academy as Professor i Skådespelarkonst. Below you find some links and published articles about and around it. Unfortunately some of them are behind a paywall. I'll share some ideas and updates about the development of the Study Program in the near future. 

https://www.uniarts.fi/sv/artiklar/nyheter/aune-kallinen-valdes-till-professor-i-skadespelarkonst-pa-svenska-skadespelarkonsten-ska-representera-mangfald-jamlikhet-och-hansynsfullhet/?fbclid=IwAR3htUCMf9BMU5jxWQjqJRQXIDPeky4O3xwyKlDuih7yGGIMyJFLF39-kAQ

https://www.vastranyland.fi/artikel/aune-kallinen-vill-utbilda-skadespelare-som-vardesatter-olikheter-och-samarbete/

https://www.hbl.fi/artikel/professorn-vet-inte-vad-skadespeleri-ar-men-ser-fram-emot-att-ta-reda-pa-det-tillsammans-med-stude/

https://arenan.yle.fi/audio/1-50720335

Spring 2020

State of emergency, distant studying and all the rest

(The following text is based on a infoletter I wrote together with Anni Klein 4.4.2020 for a distant study project under title "State of Emergency")

Trying to understand what is happening in the world right now can be seen and interpreted as artistic thinking. One who is diving deep into a phenomena could be seen as artist at work. We’ve been interested in offering the students a frame, where they can get study credits for that work. But the situation affects us differently and one might feel overwhelmed by all what is happening, by the news, writings, comments, interpretations, warnings, suggestions and so forth. So I have also adviced the students to drop the project of diving into the depths of pandemia,  if they feel like it could challenge their well-being and concentrate on something else.

State of emergency is a fact in many countries right now, but it is not a novelty. It could have been interpreted to be a common and permanent state of today's societies, even before the Covid-19 virus emerged, in the era that could be described as a conjunction of crises: ecological, economical, social, political, etc. (see e.g. Hall&Massey: Interpreting the crisis). State of emergency - as a political gesture - offers a way to narrow down the possibilities of the masses to act and to express their opinion. Now it is used to protect us from the virus. We could discuss lengthy who all are included in this “us” we are talking about. The reactions and measures taken because of the Covid-19 virus, are not as democratic as the virus itself has been claimed to be. The state of emergency and the restrictions impact unequally various groups of peoples and individuals and it makes many ongoing repressive processes of the society blatantly visible. 

What kind of modes of behavior and what kind of politics (or policy making?) does the current state of emergency produce?  What kind of practices are being produced and who gains from them? Is there something familiar or recognizable in our reactions to the virus? Something which is resurfacing? Who and what gets protection through these measures, who and what does not? How does the state of exception alter our relationship to space and to other people? Could this state of exception create new forms of solidarity, new practices between people? What could they be? What happens with the restrictions created during the state of emergency after the crisis?

The hypothesis could be, that the actual state of emergency, if taken seriously, can help us to really dive into the world of today and to create some perspectives for the world of tomorrow.

The state of emergency can also be used as  an approach and a tool to create a contemporary stage. What would a Stage of Emergency look like? What happens there if anything at all? What do we show, share and see? What is hiding, hidden and invisible? What we see when we try to see the invisible, in this case the invisible possible being the virus, or something else…

The way we look at something is already limited by the ways we have learned to look at the things. We use the artistic, analytic and affectional tools we have at hand when starting to dig into a theme/phenomena/etc. There is dramaturgy to be found and created everywhere. What are the components of the situation, how they are inter-/intraconnected, inter-/intra-acting, effecting and affecting each other? What are the proportions chosen, how do we narrow down, what all we include and embrace and consider? Any virus and the reactions we might have to it, have their own dramaturgy, as well as any performance has its’ own particular dramaturgy.

What kind of dramaturgies are we drawn into from our research, questions and possible conclusions? What kind of dramaturgies does the world need right now? What kind of dramaturgies do you need? Could you work on that? 

SPRING 2019

After few years of rest and giving birth and staying home with my kids, I am currently busy with my work at the Theatre Academy, planning teachings for the academic year to come.

I took part few weeks ago in a Norteas-seminar in Malmö, Sweden, and started to share my work and thinking around Permeability in and around performance. I will have an intensive about it at the Academy in May, the course-description says:

Permeability is about something permeating through something else; it is about holes and gaps, but also about their forms and relation to each other. Porousness is permeability, but not only that. That which does not allow anything to permeate is solid. A material or structure is always both solid and porous, in varying degrees. During this course we focus on pondering and experimenting with performance structures, dramaturgies and work methods that either strive towards fair permeability or take the ethical challenges and opportunities of permeability seriously. Permeability is about the air between particles. In actual fact, there can be more than just air in those in-between places.  Course work takes place both at the Academy’s facilities and elsewhere, in the intersection of performance art, society and e.g. geology.

For the next year I am planning to continue my work with Julius Elo around Nudity, Sexuality and gender. It has been delightful and inspiring work, crossing many borders, and a continuous practice of taking care, daring, sharing and (intra-)personal/collective learning. And so many complex, unresolved and difficult questions arising from it, but still making it possible to share the work in practice and in public. How we create and play the borders between intimate/private/personal/political? 

I am also totally thrilled to facilitate a workshop called "Witchcamp" summer 2020. I'll possible share more about it later, now it feels too early to talk about it!

Other then scenic art, I am writing a book. It is in all the possible ways too personal project for me, and maybe that is the reason why I am working on it. It is about my parents, whom I buried few years ago and about their life (ideals, communism, art, sexual liberation, sexual frustration, deception, depression, aggression, heads and limbs, among other things). At the moment I am writing something I call "bildbeschreibung", describing photos of them - and of me and others - from an outsiders point of view. Knowing and feeling that there is no outside for us. I love the impossibility of this project. 

SPRING 2015

I have started to work on a new project with Jenni Koistinen, Laura Murtomaa, Gesa Piper, Ragni Grönblom-Jolly, Arttu Palmio and Jani-Matti Salo among others. I am delighted to have also a male choir D25 joining us in the project. The project is called "On halos- the politics of perfection". We spent few weeks in August 2014 at Saaren kartano in an artistic residency getting tuned in to the landscape of halos. Some of the thinking and doing around the project was then already shared at Zodiak (Z-free) as an open rehearsal in October. The premiere will take place in Kiasma theatre 25.9.2015.

I am also busy with two books: coordinating the finnish translation of Richard Schechners Performance studies: an introduction, 3rd ed - this will be published in later year 2015, translated by Sarianna Silvonen. I am also editing material for a book based on interviews with artists like Leea Klemola, Janne Saarakkala, Nya Rampen, Nina Hosiasluoma, Milja Sarkola and Jani-Petteri Olkkonen among others. Beautiful and devoted group of students oh the University of Art talked with 12 artists about the processes and methods of working when doing performances. This book will be published beginning of Autumn 2015.

At the Theatre Academy I've been busy this year with an extremely inspiring and interesting project, a new Master's Programme "Ecology and Contemporary Performance". It will start Autumn 2016 as a 2-year pilot, more info  http://www.uniarts.fi/teak/ma-ecology-and-contemporary-performance-maecp

LATEST PROJECTS

OF HALOES - THE POLITICS OF PERFECTION
premiere at Kiasma-theatre, September 2015

“What do haloes tell about our physical and political being in the world?”

Of Haloes is  a performative happening, which creates connections to the different spheres that are our bodies and surround, penetrate and create our bodies. Spheres that are permiable, everchanging and porous. Social, political, mystical, resonating, in-between spheres .We investigate the possibilities of diverse, polyphonic stage: not looking for harmony but rather a shared, simultaneous, connected being-in-the-world. 

Of Haloes – The Politics of Perfection is a performance that allows you to listen to a concert, have tea backstage, be present/absent, dream, and learn to see haloes.

Working group:

Concept: Aune Kallinen

Concert: Laura Murtomaa, with guests Heikki Laitinen, Tuomas Norvio and Jonathan Hilli

Lighting and set design: Jani-Matti Salo

On stage: Arttu Palmio, Laura Murtomaa, Jenni Koistinen, Ragni Grönblom- Jolly, Hanna Ahti, Gesa Piper, Aune Kallinen, Laura Murtomaa and the man choir D25: Daniel Nyman, Jonathan Hilli, Nicolas Rehn, Eeti Nieminen and Ville Kabrell

Singing with the trees, Tampere: Katri Puranen

The northern sphere: Katariina Angeria

http://gamla.hbl.fi/kultur/recension/2015-09-28/772234/gloria-halleluja
http://www.hs.fi/arviot/teatteri/a1443498296133
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTd2ogfm3ag
http://www.mustekala.info/node/37684


SOCIAL MOVEMENT
premiere at Kiasma-theatre, May 2012

A group of women moves in the wastelands between the private and the social, the personal and the political, paying particular attention to the soft spots where the boundaries of the self become porous and let things through.

Social Movement first began as a three-performance series, a social trilogy comprising Social Movements – A solo that looks like truth (2006), Life like (2009) and National project (2010). The trilogy is now given a new lease of life in the form of a creature contained only by time (performance duration 2.5hrs). A group of women navigate the wastelands of the private and the public, between the personal and the political. Of particular interest are the soft spots where the boundaries of the self fray and become permeable. In this performative creature all that is broken and all that remains strong is allowed simultaneously to co-exist – giving form to the being that we all jointly embody.

Social Movement moves from the intimate and the outwardly invisible towards the public, the shared, the unignorable. It brings together three performances arising from the same set of questions. Where do I end and where do you begin? Who or what are we? What should we be living together and, above all: how do we relate to the strange, the foreign and the incomprehensible within us and around us. Social Movement is a performative attempt to understand how a multitonal, contradictory, tender, carnivalistic and self-starting community, a society, might be possible.

Working group:
Concept and direction: Aune Kallinen, Jenni Koistinen (Toden näköisesti soolo), Laura Murtomaa (Kansallinen hanke)
Music: Laura Murtomaa
On stage: Seidi Haarla, Pirjo Häkkinen, Aune Kallinen, Maija Kauhanen, Jenni Koistinen, Pirjo Koljonen, Laura Murtomaa, Anne Nimell
Photography and Nykyaika – litteraatti –video installation: Jaana Kokko
Lighting design: Jani-Matti Salo

http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/a1336785604680

KANSALLINEN HANKE - NATIONAL PROJECT
Social trilogy, part 3.
premier at Kiasma-theatre, October 2010

National Project is a performance about Finnish national soul and "Finland", its discrepancies, fickleness, and gender. It reminisces about current and well-worn Finnish myths, remembers them wrong and makes up the rest. It finds and creates national paradoxes. It puts a log onto a woman's hand, removes her national dress, takes her money, language, gender, and continent and then gravely asks which part of the Western imperial heritage belongs to Finland. And then we find ourselves in Africa, the birthplace of man, in the beginning of time and the core of the Finnish national soul. Pop music plays and the American flag flies.
The performance centres on the ideas of being separate and connected, being involved and uninvolved. It also seeks a postmodern approach to issues related to (national) identity, community, and coming together: How has the identity of those in power and those looking for power been built? Who gets heard today, in this country, in this world? Who is left without a voice? Who can vote and on what? Who and what do the defence forces defend? In what way is Finland my home country?

National Project is collaboration between Aune Kallinen and Laura Murtomaa. It is the third part of a social trilogy. The performance also includes work by visual artist Jaana Kokko.

http://www.skenet.fi/artikkeli/11/05/kansallinen-hanke



JUHLAT - A PARTY
Artistic Theatre of Helsinki proudly presents, September 2009 Tiivistämö, Helsinki
concept Aune Kallinen

A Party that includes:
Opening of an Exhibition of invited artists Jaana Kokko and Teemu Mäki
Concert by Hukka, soloproject of Laura Murtomaa
Premiere of Marinas' Thirtieth Love, danceperformance based on a novel of Vladimir Sorokin
Set design Paula Koivunen
Lights Niko Kurola
Dir. Aune Kallinen
Cor. The working group
Experiental Anatomy Satu Palokangas
On stage Karoliina Franck, Heikki Herva, Martti Jantunen, Tero Kaipanen, Paula Koivunen, Paula Laurila, Alma Lehmuskallio, Elina Manninen, Anni Tani ja Ulla Varis
+ guests reading forbidden poetry from the Soviet Union era. 

http://www.skenet.fi/artikkeli/09/09/juhlat



TODEN NÄKÖINEN - LIFE LIKE
Premier at Kiasma-Theatre, March 2009

Toden näköinen (Life like) is the second part of a societal trilogy. The first part, Social Movements - A Solo That Looks Like Truth, was performed in art museums in Kerava and Oulu. In the second part the societal themes of the trilogy are deepened and carnivalized. On stage there are five women whose social status, political views, movement language and their way of being present/absent are observed by the public. Performance also includes political music, spoken poetry and a bunny girl.

Toden näköinen (Life like) is based on shared, although at times incomprehensible, reality. It introduces the possible and impossible political dimensions of the personal, questions the notion of an individual and wonders where I end and You begin. It focuses on a shared, political view and searches for a meaningful way of being in the world. The aim is not to possess and solve things, but rather to marvel at ourselves as humans.

How do I encounter The Other without possession? How do I respect something I don't know? How, and when, will we learn to treat Each Other and The Other in us with kindness? Should we?


Direction Aune Kallinen
Music and sound design Laura Murtomaaperformance Pirjo Häkkinen, Pirjo Koljonen, Satu Palokangas, Laura Murtomaa and Aune Kallinen
Light design Kaisa Salmi.

Jaana Kokko's video work Modern times - transliterate is on display in the work.