Interview with Annika Tudeer

The performance group Oblivia will present Turn Turtle Turn - the lecture performance on the Mad House stage from November 1 to 10, 2024. Annika Tudeer is the artistic director of Oblivia and one of the founding members of Mad House Helsinki.

Photo by Saara Autere

Mad House: happy anniversary Annika and congratulations on your great, pioneering work! Turn Turtle Turn - a lecture-performance is a very personal piece that deals with life, death, motherhood and more. You said that making such a personal piece was a thrill, and that you wondered if you could "talk about yourself for an hour" in these times. You also said that when you were 50, you looked at everything very differently than you do now at 60. How did the themes of the piece take shape from your own life and what things or moments inspired you most in creating this piece? 

Annika Tudeer: Thank you for the congratulations!

I had long thought that I would do a solo in 2024. But from where? -It was a mystery. When we did Turn Turtle Turn we wrote epic lyrics. In general, Oblivia and I write a lot of songs and lyrics, and very quickly, which we then edit later. So we started the Turn Turtle Turn - the lecture performance first with a brainstorming session with Tua and Timo, and then I continued writing. What came out of the pen was not at all what I had planned. I wanted to write about embodiment: to describe in words the embodiment of a woman, a mother and a child. I wanted to write a corporeal text that works through rhythm and pedalling, and in this way to bring out the different corporeal experiences of women.

What resulted was an epic text in English. I'm a rather private and even solitary person, I usually prefer to deal with big subjects and structures in my art rather than myself. But now I had gone to where it burns ("gå dit där det bränner", as Monika Fagerholm advises in her writing courses) - that is, to my beginning, when I was adopted. The work is about my four parents and my relationship with adoption. How the void or gap has shaped me and at the same time always fascinated me. I don't think there are many Oblivian works in which I haven't mentioned the words "void, gap" in the process, meaning in Lacanian terms that the void creates in us a compelling need for consumption as we try to make up for it. I also talk about this in my solo Annika does Swanlake/Annikagör Svansjön (2015), which was also both a personal and theoretical work. In it, I focused on my own failures. This Turtle solo, the starting point of the performance lecture, is more complex, and on the other hand simpler in form.

I'm terribly nervous about whether you can do this. Can I talk about people on stage who have been alive and important to me. You do this all the time in books. Why not on stage? I have to admit that I didn't expect to react so strongly: I've been depressed, sick, and my body wants to tell me something, maybe out of fear. I try to communicate with little tiny Annika, it's comforting. At the same time, I know that this piece wanted to come out in this form and with these words. 

MH: In your work, you refer to vast stretches of time, such as dinosaurs and Greek mythology, alongside your own life. How do you feel that framing different time perspectives affects the way we understand our own lives and our place in the world, and helps you to express the uniqueness and vulnerability of life in this work?

AT: For me, long timelines open up the possibility of experiencing that we are part of one big whole, part of the Earth and all that has gone before us humans and all that is here and now and all that will be. I find it quite incomprehensible how carelessly we use sand, oil, water, etc. It's as if everything was created just for us. Of course this is not the case, we are part of it all. When we die, we literally become part of the earth. There is a great respect for grains of sand, because dinosaurs have walked on them, or sometimes they have been part of a rock on which a mammoth has lain or over which an ancient fish has swum. This continuum makes me quiet and my respect grows for this incredible planetary system of which we are but a small part. Human-centredness is a complete error in thinking.

I try to express the uniqueness of life by zooming in on one person, my life and the things that have influenced and shaped me. I feel that this zooming in a large scale context is what makes Turn Turtle Turn universal.

MH: You co-founded Mad House 10 years ago. How has Mad House influenced your artistic career and can you name any particular ways in which you have influenced Mad House? How does it feel to return to Mad House with this new work? 

AT: I am so happy and proud of Mad House. It's mega fun to be back at Mad House and in a great new space, which is a scale model of the HP8 library where Turn Turtle Turn was shown in Munich. I'm very happy that Mad House has been able to continue to operate. The idea was simple when we founded Mad House: we needed a production house for performing arts in Helsinki. Creating one is not easy. A production house as I envisioned it needs big resources and Mad House has never had them. A multi-faceted production house model is not very common in Finland, Zodiak being the best example. On the other hand, Mad House is a very important and resilient platform, which I hope will have a long life. 

I have certainly made the biggest contribution to Mad House by taking the initiative to set up Mad House in 2013. We spent a lot of time thinking about how to develop a non-hierarchical and friendly organisation, how to act as a collective workplace and how to be an important platform for the performing arts scene as a whole. 

I worked as a curator for a few years and it gave me a great exposure to different elements. I was a more versatile curator at Teurastamo than at Tiivistämö, Heidi Backström and I had very clear ideas about how to cover different areas of performing arts and artists. However, Tiivistämö is the starting point of Mad House for me, and therefore close to my heart in all its madness, frenzy and impossibility. 

It is important to play many roles as an artist. An artist's life is complex anyway. Artists have so much knowledge, skills and expertise in so many different areas, which are not always needed in the actual making of art, but which can flourish in other contexts.

MH: You said that Oblivia's collective way of working was born as a protest against the dictatorial director culture of the 90s and its glorification of suffering and humiliation, that it was a reaction to your own bad experiences. Oblivia has pioneered a listening and friendly way of working together. Can you share how you have built a sustainable workplace, share examples of practices and tools you have found?

AT: Very early on, almost at the beginning, I thought that Oblivia should be structured as a workplace where you generally work Mon-Fri 10-17 and where a safe framework allows you to create good art. The more security around it, the better the chance to create something new and experimental. By security I mean good working conditions, working spaces and the necessary tools, fair pay, long-term planning, trust, good practices - how we are together, transparency, and so on. The idea of a workplace also creates a distance between personal and professional life, which was important to me.

At the very beginning (in 2000), we created an ethical code: 

- go where the fence is lowest ( don't waste energy on unnecessary things)

- laugh a lot

- cultivate lightness

- please 

- not open

- respect yourself and others

- freedom and responsibility go hand in hand

- everyone is always paid 

- problems can be solved

- organisation is as important as artistic work

Of course, it's been a long process to get to where we are now, where communication and perhaps enjoyment are at the centre. We've always been flexible and friendly on tours for example, we've had a lot of laughs. We like long-term relationships, and if the job is good, and the work is interesting, it will be successful. 

We used the peak period to develop our organisation into a collective, where in regular zoom meetings we make decisions and keep up to date with everything that's going on in the group. We're also a very family-friendly workplace: we take life situations into account, we're flexible and we pay for things like babysitter travel and accommodation when we're visiting. 

Now we are a collective of eight. It used to be more vague who belonged and how they belonged in Oblivia. With mentor Elena Polzer, we went through the whole Oblivia organisation and what could be improved and developed. We start every meeting with a check-in round, where everyone shares their news so we understand where everyone is going today. We also have precise job roles and tasks within the team. Every three to five years we create a new strategy. This is a great tool for action. The annual strategy days provide a space for collective reflection on how the strategy is working at the moment. In general, things can be solved by communicating and organising. We invest a lot in internal development because we believe that a strong organisation enables us to make our art as it is.