Performancelab

At the beginning of May, performance artist Roi Vaara organised the Performancelab 0.5 event at the Forum Box Gallery in Helsinki. The event was broadcast live through the Kiasma web pages.

As an event, Performancelab 0.5 aimed at creating an open space for artists and the public in which the concept of performance art could be explored through both productions and free discussion. During the weekend-long event the actual performances as well as the gallery spaces formed a kind of performative concentration in which the productions together with the hanging around merged into one work of art.

The webcast on the Kiasma web page acted as a sort of third eye or window into the space. Since the events did not follow a fixed timetable, the webcast constituted its own non-stop video performance which, despite its low-level technology, presented a new angle and an opportunity to discuss the state and character of performance art from a wider perspective.

Using video as part of a performance event is by no means a new idea. Performance and video art have gone hand in hand throughout the history of video technology, finding common ground as far back as in television's early 1960s talk show tradition. Additionally, a computer-based digital video broadcast offers net casting technology, cheap global narrowcast (as opposed to broadcasts aimed at the mass market), a clearly defined target audience and an opportunity for interaction providing the performance as a concept and artists with a new (virtual) space and connection with the audience.

Roi Vaara is planning a continuation of Performancelab next year, and aims at creating a larger, laboratory-like space in which live performances as well as performances already existing on video can be broadcast, and more long-term web pages around the performance. Vaara himself has collaborated with the cinematographer Tahvo Hirvonen to produce television performances which have been shown by, for instance, the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation. The tradition of producing a performance only for the camera is still a rarity in this country, but it offers performance art a new dimension and channel to open up the somewhat undefined and introspective atmosphere of performance art.

Perttu Rastas