30 September 1999

Hi Rita :-)

Well, here is the second instalment of my diary from the Kiasma Museum - I'm back in the kids' internet room again!

After I signed off yesterday I was introduced to John Kemp, who is the president of VSA Arts, a worldwide disability arts organisation. He's also going to be speaking at the seminar on Friday, about the history and theory of disability arts, which I think will be very interesting. It's also going to be interesting to find out more about disability arts in the US, where John is based.

After being introduced we were given a very quick tour of the Kiasma, which was reassuring - I thought at one point that I would never get past the lobby the whole week! I discovered from this tour that there is a Richard Long piece and several of his videos on exhibition at the moment, which I thought was great timing - tomorrow morning they are going to sort out a wheelchair or scooter for me so I can spend several hours going round the exhibitions, and I am looking forward to spending a fair bit of time with Richard Long's work.

John and I then spent the afternoon with the Threshold Association, which is the centre for independent living in Helsinki. It was great to find out all about them and to exchange information with disability activists from other parts of the world. It will be really helpful to report back to Greater London Action on Disability and Disability in Camden about what is being done here, and I hope that we can keep the connection going. It is also interesting to me to realise from talking to John that many of the disability activists worldwide are artists.

By the end of the day I was pretty much exhausted, but fortunately the adrenalin kicked in when we came back to the Kiasma for the official opening of the event. At one point this got pretty surreal, as the Rev Ari Suutarla, Finnish President of Eucrea (the European disability arts organisation) gave his official welcome accompanied by actions from a figure dressed as Father Christmas. (This later turned out to be Sari, who is one of the event organisers from the Finnish National Gallery.) Was this Finnish sign language, I wondered? (It wasn't!)

The opening was followed by the first performance from Bilder . . . (no, I won't be able to spell this until I've looked it up, and I'm finding it too hard to carry anything, so don't have my papers with me at present). This was great, but I'll tell you more about it tomorrow when I've seen it again, because I'm not at the point where I can express my thoughts and feelings about it yet.

One of the Finnish disabled artists present at the opening asked me yesterday how I coped with not being able to dance, since I was so clearly a dancer. I explained that I hadn't danced for 20 years, and hadn't realised how formative dancing had been to my body and soul until I went into the brace, when I also realised for the first time it was impairment that had made me "fail" as a dancer. Then, doing the first work on the filmdance piece around the body and movement that I am currently developing brought up a huge range of emotions from adolescence, and no doubt there is more to come.

So I was actually shocked by her perception of me as a dancer - which appears to be shared by some of the organisers - because to me I ceased to be a dancer 20 years ago, and was just grateful then that writing and painting had also been part of my creative life since childhood (although I pretty much stopped painting when I failed my Art A Level.) It is only now that I have even begun to think about the part dancing played (plays?) in my life. Still, I knew that this trip would challenge me . . .

The artist in question, by the way, was Sirkka-Liisa Krapinoja-Sass, who has a similar impairment to me and who has produced some very interesting work with body casts and braces. There's a three-hour panel discussion this afternoon where John and I are joining a number of Finnish disabled artists, including Sirkka-Liisa, and I'm really looking forward to meeting them all and having some indepth discussions.

This morning I was able to have a lie-in, which was great, and then staggered to the end of breakfast before returning to my room to get up properly. (My only accommodation problem relates to the fact that Finnish hotels don't provide coffee facilities in the rooms, while I have great difficulty in getting my body moving without it. However, everyone is being so kind here that I am promised the loan of a kettle from today!)

Breakfast also turned out to be rather surreal, as I opened the paper to see a large photo of me at the Kiasma, accompanied by an interview in which I speak fluent Finnish. I still don't know what I said! IRL I have not learned much Finnish yet, although I love the way that multimedia artist translates. (As before, I don't have my papers with me to tell you this yet.) I am still waiting to find out the Finnish for disabled artist, as well as the phrase I have been determined to learn since this trip was booked - "I am a lesbian - take me to your bar" ;-)

Well, I hope to hear from you soon, and that this email is getting through. I am really looking forward to finding out how things are going at Mount Grace - if you send me all the images as jpegs, I should be able to open them without any problem.

Thinking of you.

Love

ju90

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