Baltic Circle is celebrating its 20th anniversary under peculiar circumstances with the global pandemic forcing limits on travel and public gatherings. In spite of this, the festival will happen and has started to happen already: over a hundred artists and festival workers are getting ready to share their observed special.
The festival delineates time and space for concentration, immersion, motion and emotion in an alternative landscape with other questions and other realities. It allows you to engage with others’ initiatives and with the shared energy it provides the potential to become a little different.
In its literal sense, ‘curating’ originally meant caring. This year it involves exceptional responsibility, anticipating changes and mapping out courses of action. The responsibility for ensuring continuity for artistic work, achieving set goals, for maintaining safe production structures, for keeping up motivation in the face of uncertainty and for navigating through weak signals adapting to change.
Baltic Circle’s opening performance in Espoo’s Louhisali addresses growing and presents six possible directions for life. In the Cultural Centre Caisa a portal to the unexplored ruins of the subconscious opens, while elsewhere a journey into the fantastical November night will start, leading participants for 12 hours through the different levels of night and darkness.
For two months Baltic Circle’s base at Q-Teatteri will host an international residency and counter-academy that fosters exchange and intersection between aesthetic-political forms and practitioners across six geographies: Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, France, Germany, and Finland. The residency brings together artists, activists, and researchers to probe the potentials of digitalisation, dissect social norms and structures, and to research how estrangement and ecological distance affects the body.
In Lapinlahti one spectator at a time will be able to participate in the world’s longest funeral in the final repository for nuclear waste while upstairs is an assembly of voices critically engaging and actively contributing to shake stage practices. An exhibition, a publication and a podcast are stratifying and celebrating the passing of time, and a sonic installation following lifelines read from ten palms. In Lapinlahti park a performance in a tree celebrates the anarchy of the body and integration. On the last night of the festival a bonfire will be lit on Lapinlahti bay, which this year sparkles as the festival club.
Welcome to Baltic Circle’s anniversary and the beginning of a new era.
Hanna Parry, Artistic Director of Baltic Circle Festival
with Hanna Nyman, Mario Lopes, Azurra D’Agostino, Tommi Vasko, Olga Oraakkeli, David Muñoz Alcántara, Essi Rossi, Candelaria Fernández, Ailu Valle, Ivan Insunza, Niko Hallikainen, Timo Torvinen, Thais Ushiroba, Aida Piirainen, Teemu Lehmusruusu, Kiia Beilinson, Salla Kurronen, Francesca Grilli, Laura Gustafsson, Aqqalu Berthelsen, Anastasia Dimas, Ana Konjetsky, Milka Luhtaniemi, Fjolla Hoxha, Ana Paula Mathias, Eliara Queiroz, Andrea Arobba, Paula Baeza Pailamilla, Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Giulia Traversi, Anna-Mari Karvonen, Anta Helena Recke, Hyde Hytti, Barbara van Lindt, Maija Hirvanen, Roberto Rettura, Outi Lehto, Ella Aresvuo, Johanna Hammarberg, Otso Oraakkeli, Simo Vassinen, Amira Khalifa, Siiri Oraakkeli, Akuliina Niemi, Tatu Nenonen, Pauliina Nykänen, Marcos Ramírez, Leho de Sosa, Essi Brunberg, Arsène Marquis, Pascale Obolo, Lisa Kalkowski, Noora Pasanen, Grace Passô, Maryan Abdulkarim, Markus Lindén, Juha Valkeapää, Matti Tuomela, Tero Mustonen, Ruut Oraakkeli, Tatu Heinämäki, Daniel Blanga-Gubbay, Tuija Kokkonen, Terike Haapoja, Masi Tiitta, Santiago Turenne, Sari Tupamäki, Anna Tjé, Marcela Olate, Kaino Wennerstrand, Juho Vainio, Maija Nurmio, Emmi Venna, Kaisu Mustonen, Karin Johnson, Alva Noto, Erik Söderblom, Milla Martikainen, Tani Simberg, Fabrício Floro, Chiara Massari, Katri Astala, Satu Herrala, Nelly Hakkarainen, Tuire Tuomisto, Asiya Wadud, Jenni Pystynen, Ville Kabrell, Milla Kurronen, Pauliina Feodoroff, Felicia Honkasalo, Christopher L. Thomas, Eva Neklyaeva, Mäelys Meyer, Ossi Koskelainen, Emilia Kokko, Johanna Salmela, Sonya Lindfors, Chiara Fava, Salla Hakanpää, Aino Toiviainen-Koskinen, Pauli Riikonen, Daniela Alvarez, …