Tag: Liina Kuittinen

Image @ Liina Kuittinen, Earth’s Face, 2017. Photo Jan Ahlstedt.

b. 1983, Finland
https://liinakuittinen.tumblr.com/

Liina Kuittinen is a visual artist with background in fine arts, working mainly in the field of performance art. Her work has been shown in the context of festivals and events but also in galleries and on instagram. Kuittinen received her MA in fine arts at the Fine Arts Academy in Helsinki, Finland in 2017.

© Marita Bullmann, 2019. Photo Henry Chan.

Marita Bullmann, Liina Kuittinen and Ignacio Pérez Pérez’s appearances in Toronto are in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action, one of FADO’s enduring partners. FADO and VIVA! have partnered several times (2013: Tomasz Szrama / Poland, Macarena Perich Rosas / Chile; 2015: Victoria Gray / UK, Dorothea Rust / Switzerland) over the years to share the presentation of international artists to both platforms in order to bring exceptional artists and their work to audiences in both cities; in addition to giving visiting artists the unique opportunity of engaging with performance communities in both Toronto and Montreal.

Marita Bullmann’s (Germany) works are engagements with everyday objects: familiar materials, actions, spaces and places. In her performances, she seeks a direct encounter between body and space. Her working method can be understood as a temporally ephemeral, site- and situation-specific process. With her actions she creates her own realities and scenarios, which strengthen the awareness for object, material, body and space. Visual, temporal, haptic or acoustic elements determine the effect and perception of her performance. The way she creates abstract interpretations allows us to perceive and observe the things around us in a new way. The interpretation takes place through experience. The objects and materials she uses are by no means neutral, but connect with our sensual and emotional world of experience. Bullmann’s intention is to influence the usual mechanisms of seeing and perceiving far away from cultural imprints and to create a new ‘space’ that lets us become aware of the act of seeing. She combines the constructed experiences with a search for images and actions that make the phenomena of curiosity and peculiarity visible.

Liina Kuittinen (Finland): I am on my four. I am next to the ground. I see the surface from very close distance, the small particles and the space between them. I have to move my whole body closer to the object if I want to see it more clearly. I can not take the object in my hand and bring it closer to my eye. As an artist I am on my four and my hands are not swinging freely. I am eating ice-cream while writing this text. I am eating ice-cream for real, not just writing about it. I am eating it and it gives me great pleasure. Ice-cream goes through my digestion and my body knows how to turn the sugar into energy and to use the proteins and to get rid of the leftovers. Digestion is process that involves the body with other processes, one point in the circle of matter. Performance operates on the same plain with digestion. Performance and process of digesting are equally real. They are meeting points for material flows, actual events transforming material into other.

Ignacio Pérez Pérez (Venezuela / Finland) is a visual nomad. His work explores phenomenal reality as a journey, like the poet Mosche Benarrosch wrote: “the longest journey / is arriving / at the place / where you are.” He creates experiences of ritualistic playfulness and worldly contemplation to observe and encounter otherness and its permanent state of transformation in the realm of everyday life. His practice crosses diverse fields as performance art, walking, street photography and networking. “We are together in this. Now or never. Now or never. Now or never.”

Initiated by Patrick Lacasse and Alexis Bellavance, VIVA! Art Action was founded in 2006 by six artist-run centres from Greater Montreal to support the production of events dedicated to the presentation and advancement of action art practices and knowledge. The organization’s energies are primarily focused on VIVA! Art Action, an international biennial whose sixth edition took place in October 2017. Currently the fruit of a partnership with nine artist-centred organizations, the festival provides the public with an accessible and convivial context in which to encounter performance art in its most striking and avant-garde forms.

© Liina Kuittinen, Organ of Repetition. Photo Antti Ahonen.

Blowing because mouth knows how to blow and makes a sound for ears to hear
WORKSHOP with Liina Kuittinen

This workshop is, in itself, an experiment in process sharing, modest but direct. During the 2-hours of the workshop, Liina will expose the process of creation behind her most recent performance work, referencing her work presented in Toronto (see below) as the starting point for a series of practical experiments that Liina and the workshop participants will elaborate on together.

“I consider my artistic practice as minor scale resistance to the dominance of language. For example, it is difficult to say anything new about blowing, without blowing; whereas every blow is different from the previous. My performance practice evolves from the physicality of being and action. The body and its habits are my main material.”

DETAILS of the workshop:
This workshop is offered free of charge.
The space that the workshop is offered in accessible.
The maximum number of participants is 15.
The workshop will be offered in English.
You will be asked to participate in various exercises which may involve movement and voice.

It is not necessary to have previous experience in performance-making to take part; however it is highly recommended that participants attend Liina’s performance in the International Visiting Artists series event (on September 20) as a precursor to the workshop.