I'm pleased to meet you in the mountain

Day#6: I'm pleased to meet you in the mountain

Preface for further project implementations:

While the previous texts were always written on the same day - right after the performance, I have now decided to write the following texts after the end of the project. Last night I noticed that during the recent performances, I could not climb out of the theoretical ideas, so that the power of the performative act itself could not develop. Therefore, the next articles will be written in the past.

At the 6th day of the project I invented a fictitious trade as a communication bridge. Plates, made from real honey combs were filled with enamel paint and comb to comb, with an almost similar color as the original material painted. While I was sitting on a bench in the city center and carried my fictitious trades, I came into contact with many people. Curious and open they wanted to know what I am doing there. Even when they realized that I do not speak Finnish, they simply asked in English and asked another passer if he could ask me in English. The fictitious trades helped me so, to communicate directly without fear on the part of passers-by.

Photos: Pia Euro & Ilka Theurich

Day#7: I'm pleased to meet you in the mountain

An action for real life and virtual life – one public space in two different sites:

Photo: Porin Kauppatori (live webcam)

Between 7am and 7pm I have been standing and wainting, with a bunch of small objects in the arm, on a monument in the center of the market square. The performance was also to be seen on the public city webcamera.

Photo: Anna Bergman

Early in the morning I noticed, that in this place you will be perceived always as a seller of goods, as long as you are standing. To avoid this, I decided to sit at the granite bank of the monument. Throughout the day I saw people pass by me very often. After they passed by once or twice, they began to observe me more closely. Not until the evening they dared to address me directly. A young woman, for example, which informed me (in whispers), that they added the Pori webcam to her facebook page and invited all her friends to take a look on this woman. She did not know what I was doing exactly, but she thought that this might be a performance.

Photo: Ilka Theurich

Day#8: I'm pleased to meet you in the mountain

Based on the observation that most people have forgotten how to pursue a natural course, I installed my still-live at 7am in an old All, near the city center, even before the neighborhood had their blinds and curtains drawn.

Apart from the fact that the first neighbor immediately called the police after he pulled up the shutters, the people came, in the course of the day,curious to me down and discussed among themselves the image. Cyclists and pedestrians stopped and started talking, even with the old neighborhood from that street.

The situation changed abruptly after a radio journalist, had made a photo and informed his liseners. He promoted the picture and said: come and see. And they came and stopped, watched, discussed and at the end they said almost sectretly that they came because of the radio news. But the enrgy also with the neighbours changed. In the evening people started talking German to me, because another journalist wrote in the newspaper that there is a femail German artist in the town. It felt not very positive. Performance should not become a kind of a procession to the recipient. I stopped the performance at 5pm after 10 hours.