Mirja Hiltunen © University of Lapland Faculty of Art and Design Department of Art Education mirja.hiltunen@ulapland.fi
Abstract
This article examines the process of constructing an art event and its possibilities to offer an open space for conversation and collaboration. It also deals with performative art in the Northern environment and the ways in which it can activate senses and lead a person towards embodied experiences.
The bo�om line of the article concerns the possibilities of ef-fectuating a change.
I will concentrate on the Shaman’s Drum (Noitarumpu) event in Fell Pyhä (Pyhätunturi), located in Northeastern Lapland. The material of this paper consists of conversation-al interview with young art educators who organised and steered the latest event in September 2006. The topics of the discussion handled the experiences gained from the project. I combine the conversation and examine the theme in relation to the current discourse on art education and the interdisci-plinary discussion on the theme. In Lapland, art education
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has started to develop multifaceted interaction with cultural tourism on both the practical and the theoretical level. This article aims to continue the dialogue and inquires about the role of art education in the process of producing an experi-ence product.
Introduction
“For the eighth time I am si�ing in the auditorium built into the rocky ravine of Ai�akuru. The duckboards leading to this place served as a light workout. There were sound worlds and light in-stallations accompanied with performances along the path, inter-twining with the almost solemn procession of the audience, their movements, footsteps, and the whooshing of pants and jackets. An occasional cough – not a word u�ered. I am sharing the experience with dozens of people, with backs ahead of me and faces approach-ing from behind. I am followapproach-ing a trail lighted by hundreds of lan-terns, my senses tune into another frequency.
A flight of challenging stairs rev up the pulse, I am in the last group climbing up; the others are already seated on the rows.
Down on the stage yet another story begins to take shape through music and motion. A thought enters and leaves my art educator’s consciousness: ‘How cute!’ I zip up my jacket, isolating my skin from the chill of the autumn night. Suddenly, the motion stops, the dancing figures stand still. A profound silence takes over the massive gorge, my breath feels like a distraction. Gradually, from an almost complete darkness rises a subtle sound, hardly discern-able: water. Is there movement in front of the stage below? A dim and dream-like figure reaches the gleam of light and approaches the petrified group on the stage.”
Over the last two decades, the province of Lapland has been the venue for a range of outdoor productions in which the Northern environment and socio-cultural context have
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played a leading role. In this article I emphasise the signifi-cance of a multidisciplinary and multi-artistic process in Northern art events. There are no clear boundaries between environmental, performance, conceptual, and other media of art. Art students, artists, and other co-operators are increas-ingly working in projects together with experts of different fields, groups of citizens, and other communities. In addi-tion, different events, exhibitions, and festivals are an impor-tant part of the working process. The concept has many simi-larities with the social active art and the working methods of a community artist.
Community art as part of Northern art events can be created in highly heterogeneous groups in which the group members share the same goal with regard to the activity.
The aim of the activity is to help build and strengthen the sense of community. Art can be seen as a tool for socio-cul-tural inspiration (Kurki 2000), but at the same time some events have strong connections to cultural tourism, too. Very o�en the final productions, such as the Forest Theatres or other outdoor performances, are performances for the tour-ist. Since the late 1990s, I have examined projects that focus on multidisciplinary and multi-artistic activities. (Hiltunen 1999; 2003; 2004; 2005; 2006.) In my forthcoming dissertation I will examine embodiment, performativity, and site-specific art and their potential in community-based art education in the context of art teacher training. I intend to find out how the process of constructing an art event can offer an open space for conversation and collaboration – and how perfor-mative art in the Northern environment can open the senses and lead one towards embodied experiences. At the end, it is a question of a possibility for change (Heim 2004):
The experience of change may be unpredictable, postponed, fragile - brought into being by tenuous and complex methods. The capaci-ties of language, reflection, memory, metaphor and imagination
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are raised in the ancient relation between human performer and participant. Performance, which is face-to-face, must balance the demands of the poetic and the ethical – to be free to imagine all pos-sibilities and to be answerable to the lives and suffering of others.
The experience is immediate and sensuous; it is the creation of a world and a comment on the world.
In this article I will concentrate on the Shaman’s Drum (Noita-rumpu) event in Fell Pyhä (Pyhätunturi), in Northeastern Lap-land, where I have been tutoring the participating art students in their project studies. The material of this paper is based on conversational, interview-based discussion of five persons. I have invited four art students (aged 24 to 31 years) to discuss with me their own experiences on the latest Shaman’s drum -event, which they organized and guided themselves in Sep-tember 2006. As teacher educator, I am interested in what they have learned from working as art teachers in the project.
Tiina Turtiainen is a fourth-year student of art educa-tion at the University of Lapland, and she is doing her proj-ect studies in the Shaman’s Drum projproj-ect. Anna Pakkanen´s main subject is graphic design; Shaman’s Drum is part of her minor studies in community art and environment studies.
Tiina’s and Anna’s field of instruction was the visual se�ing and environment around the performance. Jukka Hannula is a musician and a student of music education. He directed the event and was responsible for the music. Jaakko Posio is studying to be a dance teacher; he was the choreographer and the dance teacher in the project. Later in this article I will call these four art students as the Team.
The topics of our discussion handled the experiences gathered from the Shaman’s Drum project; first, from the art educator’s; second, from the pupil’s; and third, from the audi-ence’s point of view. In my article I will compile the conversa-tion and treat the issue in relaconversa-tion to the current discourse on art education and in the interdisciplinary discussion on the theme.