NOTHING TO LOSE
Performance LAB Festival 2020
November 21, .2020
18:00 - 21:00
The Festival will be screened LIVE via Instagram
Schedule:
18:00 Part 1
Film screening by Aman Askarizad
Performance by Hanan Mahbouba (admits one person at a time)
Video work by varialambo
These works are ongoing and may be seen throughout the duration of the festival
19:30 Part 2
Performances by
Jessica Escobar (15 min.)
Irina Mutt (45 min.)
break
Mercedes Balarezo (45 min.)
The performance Festival Nothing to Lose marks the end of a 8-month Performance LAB Mentoring Program at Museum of Impossible Forms.
Since April of 2020, the artists, supported by artist-duo varialambo as invited curators for Performance LAB, have been developing ideas under special circumstances like lock downs and social distancing regulations, working remotely and in kitchens, in parks and empty spaces, while cooking and drinking together. Together we have tried to build a community which can grow even further.
The moment of presentation is always a jump into cold water. But it’s just water and like always there is nothing to lose!
5 different artists and 5 different performances will be presented on the 21.11.2020 in this one day festival.
Come and celebrate with us!
PLEASE NOTE:
We have now reached the capacity of people we can include in the space. We apologise if you have been unable to register for this event. As you know, having to create cutoffs on entry is completely antithetical to values and ethos of the space. It is with a heavy heart that we need to do this as per the COVID 19 Regulations by the THL and Ministry of Health. We hope to repeat the performances at a time when it is possible to have a larger gathering and hope you will join us at that time
Please register your attendance by emailing us.
Kindly include as subject: ’Registration for 'Nothing to Lose' Performance Festival 2020 at Museum of Impossible Forms’
provide your name and please specify if you would like to join us for the entirety of the festival of for specific performances.
Please note that due to Covid-19 pandemic, our gathering will follow the social distancing standards and we will follow the official regulations and recommendations for gatherings to include 20 people.
Unfortunately, a limitation on the number of people attending may mean that even for those sessions open to the public, participants who sign-up will be prioritised.
Artist Bios:
Aman Askarizad
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I lived. I lived them. And I lived with them.
I played. I worked. I cooked. They hooked. I looked. She didn’t like it.
P lived one day. They died.
Performance Duration 40 min.
Aman Askarizad is an Iranian Visual Artist, photographer and musician, and curator of music based in Helsinki. In his works, he intends to create a dialogue between lived experience in socio-political contexts and the politics of representation. He works with and on images as objects and archives, and he is tingled by the reality and the real. A skeptical observer or an unmatching patch is what he describes himself in playing his role in the system.
Hanan Mahbouba
Regret Prevention Therapy (RPT)
“Regret Prevention Therapy (RPT)” is an installation where a person can say something they don’t want to tell anyone else. Like a confessional without the priest or the shame, it can be told anything whether it’s embarrassing, stupid, serious or uncertain. The RPT accepts one and all, offering sweet release from the deluge of our daily emotions.
Performance duration: The performance is installed for the duration of the festival but admits only one at a time. Duration of confession may vary)
Hanan Mahbouba is a filmmaker, writer and visual artist currently based in Helsinki. For the last six years, she worked as a writer and producer in NYC. In 2020, she wrote and directed the short film Fatima Falling and is currently at work on the script for her first feature film.
Jessica Escobar
FiLa-MeNt
Everything is ok when everything is in harmony.
Here are some stitches on ThE connecting thread. Dance to the voice of no-music
To the beats of the astrologers of the market.
This might be rather schizo.
Or just a chorizo
Don’t expect anything from/but me.
Micro dancing
Performance duration: 10 min.
Jessica Escobar (Habana, 1991) is a Mexican, Finnish, Cuban creator in the search of elements that make up traditions and identities. Based in Helsinki, her work aims to understand human movements and the cognitive processes motivating and developing within them. In recent times she has taken techniques from user experience, marketing, and propaganda and applied them to contemporary art practice. Currently interested in creating works that engage the public in the processes of art-making.
In 2017 she completed a BA in Industrial Design, awarded by Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
Mercedes Balarezo
My nemesis couldn’t be completely executed because that would mean I have to kill myself… the joke laughs at itself. 2310 is the amount of dollars I invested on a half successful self-murder. In the process of washing off the guilt, this is an attempt to tell a story that is shameful to share. A way to find what it is there beneath the shame. In short, a memorial could be the first step to befriend the enemy. By an eclectic collage of invented rituals that revisits the deceased’s last years and our relationship, I am making a point on something that I'm not quite sure yet about.
Performance duration: 40 min.
Mercedes Balarezo is an Ecuadorian dance artist and pedagogue based in Helsinki. For her, dance and education are tools that can bring us closer to a fair and equalitarian society. A broad background in teaching dance to children and young people has taught Mercedes that art pedagogy can aim towards a world where all bodies and voices are seen and heard and where creative expression is democratized.
She has been balancing her demanding work as a dance teacher in her studio in Quito, the life as a dancer, and the direction of choreographic projects. The topics she has explored in her creative work are eclectic. A common thread is her interest in bringing people together, the exploration the Ecuadorian identity and the zones where pedagogy meets the art.
Currently, Mercedes is interested in exploring the relationship between voice and movement. In her work “The Voice as a Limb: Sounding Dance Laboratory” she is dealing with the questions: what does it mean to put the voice at the centre of the dance improvisation? This inquiry emerged in her MA studies in Dance Pedagogy at The University of the Arts Helsinki.
Mercedes strongly believes in the power of togetherness and justice and that is the direction where she aims her artistic practice to.
Irina Mutt
Paranoid lecture or reparative lecture (or you're so paranoid you probably think this lecture is about you)
Based on the work by Eve Sedgwick, this lecture will be a speculative and situated drift on loneliness, rage, interdependence and friendship.
When remembering fails, it will invent and imagine ways to enable shared resistances. Whenever things turn too sad, it will use humour and poetry as creative and reparative tools.
Performance duration: 45 min.
Irina Mutt is an interdependent writer and curator from Barcelona currently based in Helsinki. Writing and curating from short distances, closer to the body. Intersectional feminism and horizontality are the base structures of her projects, mixing politics with pleasure are her main strategies. She has been part of the public program commission at Hangar.org in Barcelona and is a regular writer for the art critic platform A*Desk.
Museum of Impossible Forms is a cultural space, located in Kontula, Helsinki. It is a contested Space and it represents a contact zone, a space of unlearning, formulating identity constructs, norm-critical consciousness and critical thinking. Impossible Forms are those that erase and facilitate the process of transgressing the boundaries/borders between art, politics, practice, theory, the artist and the spectator. For 2019-2020, Museum of Impossible Forms operates under the curatorial theme of ‘The Atlas of Lost Beliefs (For Insurgents, Citizens and Untitled Bodies)’.
Museum of Impossible Forms is a Safer Space. We follow a Safer Space policy to create a welcoming, inclusive, awesome environment.
Events at the Museum of Impossible Forms are completely free and accessible without prior booking.
Museum of Impossible Forms is accessible by lift with thresholds up to 4cm on the way. The toilet has no thresholds but is not spacious enough to meet accessibility standards. The nearest accessible toilet is located at Kontula metro station.
For directions, please refer to this Map.