Residency
Structure, structure, structure... I’m a controlling person and like to manage everything and keep things clear. To be honest, this sometimes restricts my creative process. During this residency, though, I decided to follow the flow of our curator and trust her guidance. I was constantly researching and collecting, and as I mentioned in the previous post, I gathered so many materials that I think I could create a full performance from those alone.
After some draft demonstrations and sharing of materials, we had long conversations and debates with the curator. We decided that I should cut my part and make it shorter, which was a challenge because it felt like my baby—something I wanted to keep and nurture. For an artist, it’s always a huge challenge to cut down a piece while retaining its essence—the essential parts, lines, movements, and costumes.
Speaking of costumes, as we prepared for the final presentation, we visited the costume department at the Turku Academy of Art. To be honest, it’s always so satisfying and exciting to enter that magical world of past performances and start integrating costumes and props into your own piece. We had a lot of fun trying different costumes and masks, even incorporating unconventional or non-biodegradable props into our performance. But, as usual, visiting the costume department brings not only the joy of exploration but also new layers to the process, sparking fresh ideas.
Back to structure... Given the diversity of our group, with five multidisciplinary artists from different backgrounds and views on art, how could we combine our research into one cohesive performance? As I highlighted before, I promised myself to trust the process, and step by step, everything came together. We refined the structure and put things in order, continuously shifting and proposing connections between scenes. Montage became a major part of our process as we worked to include the pieces that mattered most to each of us. It was truly a co-creation; each of us had equal input. In the end, we decided to unite our five unique ideas under the theme of The Garden of Earthly Delights, creating a magical forest where the viewer would encounter different creatures and “sins,” challenging their minds with our concepts.
The most important lesson I took from this week was to trust the process, the environment, and the space—to avoid pushing things too hard. This is new for me, and I’m teaching myself to do this because, first, it reduces stress, and second, it makes the process more creative.
But I can’t ignore how hard it was to cut my piece. I wrestled with myself for several nights, reflecting, analyzing, and negotiating internally. I’ve had projects in the past that were rehearsed for months only to be closed without ever reaching an audience. One of my previous colleagues described this experience as “losing a child you were carrying for a long time.” I couldn’t agree more. When you put so much energy, soul, and time into a performance, not reaching the final stage of meeting an audience can feel like a disaster, especially for those on the creative side.
So, to cut my piece and even develop something new in its place was quite an emotional and intellectual challenge. But I’m genuinely happy that I could overcome it. Maybe it’s not just about cutting, but about rephrasing the process as revising, restructuring, or polishing. This experience has taught me that sometimes, the process is a chance to refine and reveal the true essence of the work—a lesson I’ll carry forward.