Untitled Performance Lecture (a gift, redux), 2026 revisited the site used in the second edition of ANTI - Contemporary Art Festival for the performance art work, Untitled Action for a Bomb Shelter in Kuopio on the occasion of the festival’s 25th edition.
The performance lecture explored the 2003 work within the context of Kuopio's recent Shelter2026 / Suojaan 2026, the largest civil defence drill in Europe since the end of the second world war.
The lecture quoted other works through actions and gestures including the performance art work, Menopause Gym (2024), and Menopausal Gym (2024) with the almost impossible task of the lecture being read as a series of precarious balances with resistance bands and gym balls were attempted. A tilting action of the body was made to invoke the photo-collage series, TILT, a Proposition and live works that resist the horizontal vertical bodily orientation, uttering the lines of David Bowie's Lazarus (2025)
Look up here, I'm in heaven
Look up here, I'm in heaven
I've got scars that can't be seen
I've got drama, can't be stolen
Everybody knows me now
The final actions of the lecture was made in an homage to Bruce Nauman's 1966 work, Failing to Levitate in the Studio, - Failing to Levitate in the bunker.
Photo credit: Akseli Muraja / ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival 2026, Kuopio, Finland
ANTI director and lead curator Elisa Itkonen,
ANTI Production team: Sohvi Roivainen, Esa Korhonen, Milja Silvan, Katja Papinniemi
Festival assistants Eleanor, Minja, Maria and Meri
The green sequined gown was originally fabricated in 2017 by Suvi Hänninen for WAKE Festival.
Thank you to the following with whom I chatted when preparing the text:
Helen Cole, who permitted me to quote from a Facebook post she made on the 25th anniversary of 9/11
Dominic Johnson
SJ Norman
George Rallis