Suvi Tuominen: Performance Proposals on Cultural Heritage
Image: Marko Marila
Performance Proposals on Cultural Heritage is the artistic part of dancer archaeologist Suvi Tuominen’s Master's thesis in Live Art and Performance Studies. The performance is co-produced by the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki and the Finnish National Museum.
Tuominen approaches the building of the National Museum as a material-discursive cluster that is currently facing an epistemological rupture. In the performance, dance movements, discussions, museum walls, digital screens, archaeological artefacts and art objects twist together current questions of performance and cultural heritage studies. Performance Proposals on Cultural Heritage stays in the messy interstices of the images that the popularisation and idealisation of science might produce.
Tuominen has convened a group of artists and performers who all have created their own relationship with the National Museum building and worked as interlocutors throughout the performance process. The dramaturgical starting point for the performance is to layer these relations into the same thick present from which an archaeological truth emerges.
In the performance, the audience is guided through the premises of the museum all the way from the entrance to the main hall and further to the Prehistory exhibition. All the spaces are accessible.
The co-performers are queer-activist-dancer Dasha Che, Professor Emeritus of Archeology Milton Nuñez, curator of contemporary performance and art Riikka Thitz, video artist Sini Henttu and sound performers Oula Rytkönen and Jouni Ilari Tapio. Designer Hrafnkell Birgisson has assisted in creating the programme handout.
In addition, 11.9.2021 between 12-16 a seminar event will be held in the Ateljee of the National Museum, where the starting points for the work will be presented and discussed. The event includes presentations by Suvi Tuominen, Riikka Thitz, Johanna Enqvist, Vincent Roumagnac and philosopher of archaeology PhD Marko Marila. The language of the seminar is English.
Suvi Tuominen: Performance Proposals on Cultural Heritage
Premiere: 4.9.2021 in the Finnish National Museum.
Images: Marko Marila and Matti Sten