An Art Discussion (And 5 Forbidden Words)

As a part of Breathing: More Is More Festival New Performance Turku Festival organized a discussion about art titled <3 ART WORKS – puhutaan taiteesta! (Let’s talk about art!) <3. The event was a combination of discussion and an open chance for performances drawing from participants interests in different fields of art. The starting point for the whole discussion was an attempt to avoid worn out themes and it succeeded.

The method was to choose five words related to themes that the participants didn’t experience as fruitful to discussion. Out of ten suggestions, including for example the coming election of Finnish Parliament and state-supported theatre, the following were voted to be forbidden in the discussion: money, artist organizations, arts education, media and and how to mentally and physically cope working in the art field. The topics that in English include more than one word can in Finnish be expressed with one word.

The event lasted for about three hours during which several different themes were discussed. Most of the audience participated by speaking, some using materials that were provided by the New Performance Turku Festival. Themes discussed more widely included for example experiencing art which was addressed both from artist’s and audience’s perspective. Lengthy conversations were also followed by the question of political nature of contemporary Finnish art: what kind of political art is there but also what does it mean to call for political art.

Plenty of considered statements were also followed by topics such as success and failure of an art work, what is contemporary art anyway and in what way, if any does the creative process relate to the future audience of the art work. Definitions of contemporary theatre and contemporary performance art were also brought into discussion: what makes an art work contemporary art in 2015 and what will be the central definitions for art in this era in the future. Obvious but essential questions were raised about the issue of the definition itself: whose purposes does it serve and how does the notion of contemporary art effect on artist’s practise.

After a while it was clear that the Finnish Arts Policy Event – Make Arts Policy organized as a part of the Baltic Circle Festival in 2014 has had a big impact on Finnish art discussions. The meritorious event will be mentioned in every present art discussion.

The consept of leaving certain words outside the discussion worked well. Some of the participants caught themselves using the forbidden words and a few times there were doubts whether a theme addressed at the moment was too close to the forbidden words and themes they represented. In the end both participants and organizers equally agreed that the aim behind the method was achieved. The discussion addressed many themes that have the potential of being swallowed up by other more prevailing (though equally important) issues.

New suggestions for forbidden words soon started to emerge in conversations following the event so maybe there will be another discussion like this in the near future…