I'm still dazed from all of the awesomeness last week, beginning out of the La-Bas 'Concept of Performance' biennale in Helsinki, which ran from 25-29 April. I already posted about the DIS/Orientations workshop I co-led on Sunday, which was really the beginning of an unforgettable week - amazing people, brilliant performances, and a real feeling like we were trying some new ideas here.

After the workshop was a lovely post-festival comedown, all set on Harakka, where lots of the bizarre and wonderful people I had spent the week with enjoyed a sauna and campfire on the back of the island. Returning to Tallinn seemed impossible mentally as well as physically, but there was a pretty intense gauntlet of activities waiting here.

A few months ago, when I realised that a plethora of creative forces were aligning in Tallinn during the first week of May, I thought to organise a mini-festival around it all. I drafted up a  plan for Unknown Feathers: A Festival of participation in the experimental arts before realising that I was starting to overdo it. I have such a tendency to expand things and overload what would be already a busy week; call it 'festival bloat' perhaps, but it's a real problem, and I didn't need to pack the week even more. As it was too late to seek any sort of financial assistance, I wisely shelved the idea of Unknown Feathers for a later date and just focused on making the already-scheduled events happen.

Yesterday, John Grzinich, Sari TM Kivinen and myself led a workshop called DIS/Orientations on Harakka Island, Helsinki. This was part of the La-Bas 'Concept of Performance' Biennale, a 5-day investigation of performance and sound art. This was our first shot at trying something extremely experimental and improvisational on the theme of orientation and disorientation. For a few hours, the ten of us explored various exercises that were performative in nature, at least enough to justify it's inclusion in the festival. In terms of orientation we looked at re-mapping - exploring our surroundings by superimposing the map of an entirely different place - and intuition towards compass points. Disorientation was achieved via sense blocking (using blindfolds, earplugs, and bungee cords), textual games (by modifying each others biographies as an introduction) and simple performative scores: "Find a problem, and instead of solving it, enlarge it." The purpose, if there must be one, was to massage the unintentional serendipities that may come out of failures, misinterpretations and mistakes. 

Last month, Ptarmigan went to Supermarket, the artist-run art fair in Stockholm. Thanks to the KulturKontakt Nord Mobility Programme for enabling this to happen - Sari Kivinen, Andra Aaloe, Lewis McGuffie and myself all attended, which was 4/5 of the Ptarmigan staffers and in a way, our first collective project as collaborating artists (outside of the regular administration of Ptarmigan).

As Ptarmigan is emphatically not a gallery, nor did Tiib have anything for us to exhibit, we treated our exhibition booth as a mini-version of Ptarmigan itself. We constructed a theoretical replica of ourselves, dividing the booth into Finland and Estonia, with a small Baltic Sea in the centre. Across the centre we painted a blackboard (a reference of course to the blackboards in Ptarmigan Tallinn), providing an ongoing slate for us to write things, announce activities, and experiment. Throughout the 3 days (and the opening night on Thursday), we held an ongoing series of performances, actions, and activities, encouraging the 6000 attendees of the fair to participate as much as possible.

This was a bit mad, but indicative of what we do; projects rooted in the ephemeral, with a focus on inclusivity and participation, and a reinvention of what constitutes cultural production. Of course, lots of what we did at Supermarket was ludicrous and bizarre, as much of the programme consisted of improvised, impromptu actions:  'Lewis eats a Sandwich' and 'John stands in a bucket' being particularly dull points.

Some might ask why we even bothered going to an art fair when we are not a gallery and had nothing to sell or even really present. I believe that Supermarket is a great opportunity to meet others working in similar fields; sharing ideas and resources is important; and the reach of audience here is invaluable in attracting new people to Ptarmigan. We're always looking for new, worthwhile projects to attempt.

We met a lot of great people and had a lot of fun engaging others in our activities, which were sometimes extremely universal (such as the numerous games of mini-table tennis and paper American football) and some significantly more esoteric. 

We had a few proper performances throughout the weekend too, such as Sari's Textual Opera/Rations, where she actively filled sheets of A4 paper with texts constructed, overheard, misheard and reinvented. Sari's performed this before in several environments but at Supermarket she encouraged others to contribute; as the weekend progressed, pages slowly filled the walls.

Our former resident Ola Ståhl stopped by on Friday to do a reading of a textual piece called 'Black Box', and Helsinki friend Marja Viitahuhta re-performed her 'Spotlight' performance in our booth, attracting an entirely different audience than who attended when it was part of the official Supermarket programme.

Beyond this, we had our own improvisations, often marked on the chalkboard with arbitrary times to signify their beginning and ends. We played games, invented some new ones, talked with lots of people, and did a lot of completely ridiculous stuff. "Toss notes over the wall to the booth on the other side".  "Build a city out of paper". For an hour on Saturday, we swapped places with the ZET Foundation of Amsterdam, where we manned each other's booths in a game of impersonation. On Sunday we performed "Cling-wrap a visiting artist" with Edwina Goldstone (representing GalleriaKONE, Hämeenlinna). And in probably our most popular activity, we had an 'open haircut lab' where we invited strangers to cut our hair and offered to cut anyone else's hair. I now have a lovely but strange haircut that was the composite efforts of 6 different people, finished by an 11-year old.

Overall, the weekend was amazingly fun, and exhausting. There's more photos below, or you can check out the small Flickr set which has an overview of it all.

It's really, really cold here right now. Here being Tallinn, Estonia, where as I write it's currently -22 C (-7.6 F) and it "feels like" -33 C (-27.4 F) with the wind chill. I'm sitting here in Slothrop's trying to stay alive, for the feeble electric heating can't keep up with the brutality of an Estonian winter. Thank you, medieval architecture!

But that's okay, because February is going to be a crazy busy month with activities going on all around the Baltic sea - in Tallinn, Helsinki, and Stockholm.

Supermarket 2012

17-19 Feb - Stockholm! Both sides of Ptarmigan are attending Supermarket Art Fair 2012 in Stockholm. We are supported in part by the Kulturkontakt Nord mobility programme. At Supermarket, we will be running various "mini-events" throughout the weekend, all from our booth on the 5th floor of the Swedish Kulturhuset. These events haven't been completely mapped out yet, but they will include performances by friends of ours in Sweden (former Ptarmigan resident Ola Ståhl, and Julia Bondesson who also performed at our Invisible Prom event last April) and our own projects.  I'm going to try out a small demonstrative "workshop" on how to make your own hot sauce, and Sari will perform as well. I'm also hoping to have some public discussions about the issues that affect artist-run spaces, like a small roundtable chat. [Ptarmigan profile on Supermarket site]

Workshops and other participatory events

• Sunday 5 Feb - Svamp Tallinn.  Even though it's Super Bowl Sunday, come by Ptarmigan Tallinn at 14:30 and bring something to make sound with. We'll hopefully get a Helsinki Svamp happening this month too. [link]
• Friday 24 Feb - Fake it Til You Make It, February edition.  FITYMI is Justin Tyler Tate's monthly workgroup where participants show up without knowing what they will make. Last month everyone created cutout-style animations, and the month before we made inflatable sculptures. [link]
• Saturday 25 Feb - 'Fast and Raw' intermediate sushi workshop.  Justin also leads a regular workshop at Ptarmigan on sushi-making, which also includes knife-sharpening. Sign up at the Ptarmigan site.  [link]
• Monday 27 Feb - Fermented foods club, February meeting. I just made some natto which I will share with everyone (I made a lot) - if anyone can stomach it. I also got some tempeh spores so if I have time (unlikely), then I might try making that.  [link]
• Tuesday 28 Feb - Symposium, the Eesti Humanities association's regular symposium series, resumes activity. Programme TBA.

Performances, concerts  and exhibitions

• How ta tawk & dans rite - Ptarmigans Helsinki and Tallinn both are producing an interactive media/dance performance piece by Joey Chua Poh Yi, Rhys Turner, Anna Rouhu, and Guadalupe López.  The events have already begun in Helsinki and next week we give it a go at Ptarmigan Tallinn. There's only space for 15 audience members per performance; though it's free, we ask that you register through our website for which performance you would like to attend. All of the individual performances are set as separate events, so go to www.ptarmigan.ee and pick the one you want.
• Saturday 18 Feb - Ö-E-R orchestra, As Artistas Plasticos, Re:partisan. At Kodu Baar, in Tallinn, we're having a mixed show of music/sound meeting dance and performance. Featuring artists from Helsinki, performing in Tallinn. You know, that's the way it's supposed to work... [link]
• Thurdsay 1 March - Lewis McGuffie, Ptarmigan's Director of Creative Hemispheres, will open an exhibition at our gallery space in Tallinn, Tiib. [link]

Talks, presentations, screenings

• Monday 6 Feb - Clip Kino comes back to Tallinn with Viktor Lillemäe presenting a selection of his favourite American propaganda films from the 1950's.  This is the sequel to the Clip Kino he curated last May. Wow, it's been ages since we did a Clip Kino. [link]
• Wednesday 8 Feb - Luciana Ohira & Sergio Bonilha present "transimmanence" + Jane Hughes presents ¨Imagining Other Worlds¨.  This is a Labyrinths and Rings performance/presentation by two Brasilian artists and former Ptarmigan artist Jane Hughes, in Helsinki.  At XL Art Space. [link]
• Tuesday 21 Feb - As William "Bilwa" Costa and Martín Lanz Landázuri will do a 'Labyrinths and Rings' in Tallinn, presenting their Resonance project and screening a performance from The Kitchen NYC last December. [link]
• Wednesday 29 Feb - Leap day! I'm going to run a Liminal Images night, though I haven't worked out the programme yet, and it might be guest-curated.

Other events

• Monday 13 Feb - Slothrop's Books is going to have a belated opening party from 19:00 - 21:00. We'll have free wine, some musical entertainment probably, and a festive atmosphere. [link]
• Thursday 23 Feb - I'm going to do the DJ night at Kodu Baar that I meant to do monthly, but haven't actually managed to. I'll play vinyl in various forms: krautrock, prog, art-rock, jazz, psych, and other strange pulses. Kodu Baar is at Vaimu 1 in Old Town and I'll probably play from 21:00 til about 1 or 2 AM depending on the crowd. Lewis will make a really ridiculous and cryptic poster. We're thinking about trying to make one in the shape of a snowflake.

If you're in Tallinn, please stop by Slothrop's on Müürivahe 19.  You'll find a large selection of secondhand books in English - literature, history, art, politics, essays, criticism -- the works.  Slothrop's is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 18, Eastern European Time.  Soon we'll hopefully have a (carefully-curated) selection of independent publications and analogue musics for your shopping enjoyment.

•  I've been based in or around Tallinn for one year now.  Ptarmigan I can say has been going well; it's been an amazing thing and it's more momentum than inertia here.  We've had too much going on to fully talk about here, as we've had something like 80 events since April, but there's lots in the works for 2012, the Year of Our Culture Hangover.
• Helsinki Ptarmigan as well is bubbling with activity, thanks to the efforts of Sari TM Kivinen, Ptarmigan's Director/Janitor.  We managed a lot, I think, despite having no physical space throughout the year, and there are some great new projects bubbling up.
• I'm thinking about getting back into recording, working on the followup to the Boat Trip LP which I have about half-recorded, but has been dormant for a few months.  

But a project space is at its core, just that, a 'space' - a term probably overused in arts and culture, to the point where it becomes devoid of meaning.  But that's ultimately all I could use to describe it, because whenever anyone called it anything else -- venue for experimental music, art gallery (ha!), art space (taidetila), or even just culture space --  those terms felt too restrictive.  At its core, Ptarmigan was just a space (tila) - 150 square metres in a exciting, developing (yet still off-the-beaten path) neighborhood of Helsinki - but a space that filled some sort of void, at least to many people.  So when that space is abandoned, it's hard to avoid shedding a tear.   

 Tonight's not been fun, and I'm not even close to being finished (but I'm taking this opportunity to write here and procrastinate somewhat). All of this evening's mundane acts -- sweeping the floor of my personal studio for one last time; taking down the projector ceiling-mount and getting fiberglass drop-ceiling shards in my hands; filling yet another box with keepables and writing the always-redunant "MISC. STUFF" on it in Sharpie -- feel like some eulogy of action.  

Action was the point of Ptarmigan, I guess.   Our logo, at least on our website, privileged the fleecy feet of this wonderful Northern bird (a name we chose basically at random, though the hilariousness of Finns pronouncing it PUH-tarmigan, as Finnish has no silent letters, is never-ending).  Andrew Paterson asked me once why we used the feet, and I said 'Because we do things, not just talk about them.'  Although, that was arrogant nonsense I made up on the spot - there was no executive decision to decide such a philosophy (and wings would have been a better metaphor anyway).

When you have an arena, there's no limit to the amount of shenanigans you can cram into it. Two years ago, I couldn't have even imagined all of the wonderful things we managed to do here.  Rather than blabber on about it here, you can look at our event archive.  Our annual report, which I wrote to ape the corporate style, actually makes me proud; the people who have supported this space and put their energy and efforts into it have been the most amazing thing of all.  

And now, it's a time to celebrate.  We?re not really closing; we're technically expanding, with a  satellite location opening in Tallinn, Estonia in the next few months.  Ptarmigan in Helsinki, due to financial issues, is going to exist as a mobile arts centre at least temporarily; it will cease to be a permanent address and become a floating idea, and a residency-centre-without-a-centre.  But hopefully not for long.

I'm going to be writing much more detailed thoughts about the Ptarmigan experience elsewhere, soon, so I'll save this for  my cleaning-related emotions.  I've spend an enormous number of hours between these walls, and felt for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, like I was contributing to something.  It's a bit different than moving out of a flat or graduating from a school, but since the projects will (hopefully) persevere, tonight is really just an exercise of pure drudgery. 

Thanks to everyone who has been part of Ptarmigan - volunteers, performers, artists, and audience.  I could name names but it's really Tara Pattenden, Ptarmigan's co-founder and Creative Director who deserves the most credit.  I know we won't be the only Helsinkians that will miss this physical space, but to quote the Photon Band, "the future's only just a second away."