3 October 1999

Goodbye from Helsinki

Hi Rita :-)

I hope you got yesterday's email. Anyway, this is my last email from Helsinki, and then I'll be back at my Netmatters address again tomorrow afternoon.

I had a very interesting time after I emailed you yesterday. First I went round the Kiasma on my own - I got to see the exhibitions properly at last - and then I went round again with Kaija, one of the organisers who works in the education department, and she told me lots of background about the building's construction and design and showed me aspects of the architecture that I would never have noticed on my own (and the guidebook, as usual, is too heavy for me to carry). It's such a privilege to be here as a guest of the Kiasma and thus to see things that I wouldn't as a visitor - as well as spending far longer here than any tourist would. This building has definitely got into my world top three and will probably remain there indefinitely, so it couldn't have happened in a better place.

After the tour I was just in the right mood to give my talk, which went well I think - there was a good and very varied audience, anyway, and most stayed till the end! Essentially I gave them a guided tour of the different works on my website - including the residency, obviously! - followed by half an hour answering any questions about my work that people wanted to ask (and there was quite a variety!). I started off, though, by discussing the performance art aspect of wearing the brace IRL, and particularly people's reactions to my being at Kiasma. I'm going to update my Audience Responses section of the Cyborg site asap to discuss this in detail, but I'll tell you the incident now that I found the funniest.

There is an installation here where you walk into an apparently empty room, and then the lights go down and UV comes on, after which you see that there are paintings on the walls of a nightline done in phosphorescent paint. While I was enjoying it, initially on my own, I became aware that other visitors were coming into an apparently empty room to see me on display. Then, when the UV came on, as well as the nightline the white on my brace glowed, along with the bits of the brace that are decorated in phosphorescent paint and the soles of my boots (which are manufactured to glow in UV). Then, after the UV went off and the nightline was left glowing, so was my brace! I feel that I can justifiably claim this as art practice, but basically it was a lot of fun!

The last event of yesterday was a 'Calvalcade' in the Kiasma Theatre of different Finnish disabled performers, poets and speakers. There was such a wonderful atmosphere of Pride and celebration that I was really overcome, and cried when the children danced and again afterwards when the Threshold Centre gave me a present of a book about Finnish art. Art books are always precious to me, and have generally been very rare over the past few years because they're so expensive, so this really touched me.

It's been a long journey over the past week, and I'm glad that I have been writing to tell you about it because I will have a record of what actually happened - it's been so intense and exhausting that I think it would just turn into one surreal whirl otherwise! This really has been an historic event for disabled art and culture, not just in Finland but internationally. In Finland there is now a fairly clear understanding of the existence and meaning of disability art and culture for the first time, not just among disabled people but the general population, while internationally it has been the first time that disability art and culture has been recognised by the mainstream art world. (I would like to think that the new Tate is already planning a similar event, given that Kiasma planned this before it even opened, but I doubt it . . . )

For me, it has underlined that, if I did not identify as a disabled artist but insisted instead that I was simply 'an artist', I would be the one who lost most by that. Disability art and culture is such a very rich world to be based in, but perhaps I need this background even more when my art itself is in a different arena, in order to find not just the strength, but the joy to make work. Anyway, I hope I have given as much as I can during the past week, because I have certainly gained a lot.

And yes, I did find the bar I was looking for after the official goodbyes had been said . . .(the event continues again this afternoon, but I will be gone by then).

Thinking about you lots and hoping it's not raining at Mount Grace!

Love

ju90

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