Event day at the De Se Attitude exhibition
Performances, screenings and discussion. Take part by registering to the event before 5.6. The event is included in the prize of the museum ticket. A bus from Helsinki to Pori is organised for the event.
To participate in the program using your own transportation, please register via the following link:
Register for the event day with bus transportation from Helsinki via the following link:
Departure from Helsinki at 9:00 a.m., return at 9:30 p.m. Transportation costs 10 euros.
Performances: Mia Wennerstrand and Melanie Jame Wolf: ’WOMAN/DEATH: an augury’, and ‘Skin Kin’, by Anni Puolakka.
Video screenings: Nicole Widart: ‘Chantal Akerman, écrivain cinema’ (1993) and Carolee Schneemann: ’Mysteries of the Pussies’ (1998-2010), together with a talk by Helen Kaplinsky.
The programme is in English.
MIA WENNERSTRAND & MELANIE JAME WOLF
WOMAN/DEATH: an augury is the title of a new play by Mia Wennerstrand and Melanie Jame Wolf. The artists will present a table read of the draft script twice throughout the program. The uneasy pairing of the play’s two protagonists, Woman and Death, explores how womanhood and dying might be written and rewritten. Taking its cue from the work of French feminist and author Hélène Cixous, and in particular the question of what an écriture féminine (a term Cixous coined first in 1975 depicting writing of women) might be in 2026, WOMAN/DEATH: an augury is an experiment in feminist collaborative writing practices.
ANNI PUOLAKKA: Skin Kin
ANNI PUOLAKKA has prepared tragicomic works for this exhibition, in which the professions practiced by Puolakka’s grandparents – cow’s milk and leather production – are in dialogue with the materials, processes and meanings of their own work. Reliefs made of human milk and chocolate, “leather” sculptures made of rubber milk and the performance associated with them draw from Puolakka’s trips to the remains of local leather industry: the Friitala factory in Ulvila and the site of Puolakka’s grandfather’s tannery in Nakkila that went bankrupt in the 1960s.
In the summer of 1998 North American Feminist artist Carolee Schneemann invited the then Pori Art Museum Librarian Teija Lammi to act as a translator during her performance – Vulva’s Morphia – Eternal Pussy.’ Beyond a straightforward linguistic adaptation from English to Finnish, Lammi and Schneeman’s performances amount to an improvisational duet between a museum worker, an artist, and cultural cosmologies of ‘pussies.’ Helen Kaplinsky revisits this work through archives and conversations with those involved in its production and commissioning as part of the exhibition ‘ANIMAL.ANIMA.ANIMUS’ which took place at Pori Art Museum and toured internationally between 1998-2000. The groundbreaking group exhibition “address(ed) animals in society, animal communities, cultural images of animals and their meanings, as well as questions regarding animal rights, awareness, and their role in human life.” Schneeman’s work will be considered in this 1998 context, as well as relations sparked in the De Se – attitude group exhibition decades later.
NICOLE WIDART: CHANTAL AKERMAN, ÉCRIVAIN CINEMA
Duration: 28 minutes
Translation in Finnish: Elina Juopperi
Chantal Akerman talks about her relationship with the writing of her scripts. As far as she is concerned, there is a paradox between the necessity of writing to communicate her projects and her need for silence and improvisation. She talks in particular of the shooting of “Jeanne Dielman”, with Delphine Seyrig, where the actress felt frustrated because of the obsessive precision of the script, from which Chantal Akerman did not want to depart. Movie quotes of Chantal Akerman: “Les rendez-vous d’Anna”, “L’homme à la valise”, “Je, tu, il, elle”
Source of the text: Centre Audiovisuel de Simone De Beauvoir
***
BUS TRANSPORTATION FROM HELSINKI / 10 €
Departure: 09:00 Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 1
Arrival: 12:30~
Lunch [for all the participants in the Pori Art Museum, vegan and gluten free]
Coffee offered Included in afternoon programming
Return: 18:30
Arrival to Helsinki: 21:30~
Photo: WOMAN/DEATH: an augury poster (Kaisa Lassinaro), Chantal Akerman, écrivain de cinéma / Nicole Widart, 1993 / Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, spread from the ANIMAL.ANIMA.ANIMUS publication; detail of a work: Anni Puolakka.
There will be another event day on 30.8.2026.