4.11.2022

Glow Up performance club w/ MALLA

Fri 4.11 from 19:00 to 23:00 | Tickets: €17.50 and €19, tiketti.fi |  Hugo event space, Kalevan Navetta

The performance club Glow Up is about taking care of yourself and others. The theme has arisen from the general need for relaxation and caring for one’s well-being. The event includes performances by Tiia Kasurisen, Eero Yli-Vakkuri & Co and Vishnu Vardhani Rajan. The evening ends with a music gig by Malla. Multitalent Malla Malmivaara is an award winning actress and musician. Malla’s music is an eclectic mix of electro pop and house music, inspired by analogue synthesizers and drum machines.

Malla, photo J. Särkilahti

“Glow Up” is a phenomenon that has become common during the covid pandemia. Glow up is about enhancing one’s being, for example, from the messy home look during quarantine to a well-groomed and as “good-looking” as possible. Glow up may include self-indulgence and self-care, but the aspiration of these actions is primarily making an external transformation. Is the phenomenon problematic? Can only people, who are considered beautiful, be able to glow up? Or is it a form of self-indulgence to enjoy your updated look?

Tiia Kasurinen, photo. Teea Kasurinen

Tiia Kasurinen is an artist and choreographer who graduated from Stockholm University of the Arts in 2017. Kasurinen is interested in themes of identity, gender, gaze and pop culture, and explores them in her work utilizing makeup, visual transformation and movement as her tools. Youtube tutorials and somatic practices go hand in hand in her work, creating a recognizable aesthetic. When Kasurinen is not working on her own projects, she works as a dancer, performer and collaborator for and with other artists.

Eero Yli-Vakkuri, photo Leena Kela.

Eero Yli-Vakkuri (b.1981) is a recovering survivalist. In the past he made annoying street interventions which made people uncomfortable, presently he is advancing sustainable design through campaigns, workshops and artistic presentations. He prefers to work in groups and to develop antidisciplinary collaborations with specialists from different fields.

The performance of the Glow Up club has been prepared by a group of twelve artists. The performing group includes Tonya Björkbom, Julia Elo, Viola Jalaskoski, Uljas Kaitala, Anni-Maaria Leppänen, Sade Marila, Pinja Minkkinen, Piia Muurinaho, Ignacio Pérez Pérez, Tiia From, Sanna Svartström and +1. The performance of the artist group is using activities that change the forms of matter and defy gravity.

Vishnu Vardhani Rajan

Vishnu Vardhani Rajan ( Hyderabad, Helsinki) is a body-philosopher, filmmaker and a performance artist. A hyphenated identity, multidisciplinary practices and building connections between art, science, witchcraft, history and cultures define them. Vishnu’s work spans, dance, non-performance-performance, performing arts, performance poetry, stand-up comedy, moving images, punk-architecture and cultural poethics of community building. Quilting as a methodology centering topics of sleep, rest , conflict and shame, ‘Convivial Complaint Cell’ and Infinite Playlist Afterisms (IPA) centering politics of pleasure , splendour and joy are their ongoing work. Vishnu’s persona, Vamp Master Brown, is the first Indian drag king in Helsinki.  They are currently researching on how to combine various disciplines to achieve a new visual vocabulary and language in performance, storytelling and cinema. They are currently reading Sara Ahmed’s Complaint with a reading-circle. Vishnu’s guerilla curatorial praxis aims to address Multi-Scalar social challenges.

The event is curated by VarikkoGalleria and studios artists Aeon Lux ja Alan Bulfin. The theme of the performance club is about taking care of yourself and others. The event is called “Glow up”. The theme has arisen from the general need for relaxation and caring for one’s well-being. In the background, there is also the curator Aeon Lux’s own interest in trying to sort out what is the essence of these relaxing places, activities and times, such as holidays, hotels and nursing homes. What stimulates our sensory system to relax? Is the experience of visiting a forest or sleeping in a hotel possible to create some other way or another place? Is it possible in performance art to create a bare and confidential relationship between the performer and the viewer as it is seen between the relationship between the patient and the caregiver?

Curator Alan Bulfin’s accompanying words: “Performance art is the poetics of becoming otherwise with audiences and everyday objects.” Performance art uses everyday objects and gestures in a new way. It intensifies them and makes them become poetic, for example using repetition as a tool. When the purpose of everyday use disappears, new meanings can arise.

Photo on the right: I’m Not Entirely Here (cypersad) Tiia Kasurinen, photo Saara Taussi