Interview with Laura the Light / Laura Pietiläinen
Absurd aliens open Helsinki portal - Laura the Light & Co.: Star children in the world visits the Mad House stage 6.-9.3.2025.
Photo by Lauri Mattila
Mad House: You have been working on Star children in the world in small parts between 2022 and 2024. How has working in this way differed for you as an artist from processes in which a work is created in one go and with little time? How or when do your artistic themes or framings get selected ?
Laura the Light: I get my ideas as intuitive visions that bring joy. This series of five smaller performances, which I eventually thought would become a complete work where I could play with pre-created performance materials in any way, came to my mind when I started creating first small performance at Kivinokka in August 2022. I felt that I wanted to create a stage work where many times, places, energies, and life processes would be present at the same time. I envisioned that the theme of each performance would come from the processes I was experiencing in life at the moment, and each would also involve an energetic opening to the energy frequencies of the stars, with new colors, nuances, and connections to a broader source of being. Then life unfolded in a way that brought forward challenges I had also, in a mystical way, sensed would arise over time.
For each small performance, I invited the music maker, and in three of the performances, the musicians came joined in to perform. Almi, Piia and Lätsä and I took plenty of time in the performance process to share life and artistic processes and to develop the small performances, and open a special sense of unity with each of them. Sara created paintings for each of the small performances, and in several of the performances, they became part of the costumes. All five small performances were holistic worldings, for which I also developed a rich costume design. After each performance, we filmed video material in various inspiring outdoor locations within the worlds of the performances. When the stage work was created on a tight schedule of just over two weeks, we already had such a strong foundation for our collective work and so much glowing material that we focused mainly on refining and polishing the final performance mix. What sets this work apart from the performances I have made before is that this show carries many profound shared spiritual journeys, experienced in different life situations, times, and places.
MH: In the performance's description, you write about star children, the soul and a church of the new era, while aligning these with B-class. How do you view the tension between humor and seriousness in this work and in your artistic thinking? In what way, or why, could B-classness be important for the soul's connection in this time?
Laura the Light: I've found a relationship with art making that is similar to when I was a child, inventing performances and playing with other children. It's wonderful practice, but one must be careful not to fall into the traps of a stuck adult, like cynicism, the illusion of knowing, executing, or forcing things into specific image, etc. One must follow the flows and know how to let go. Seriousness is one adjective that freezes my creative flow, which I sense in the Finnish art scene. Foolishness and B-class aesthetics break this, and it feels that by recognizing the foolishness, something loosens up in the body and mind, we become more equal and more united, souls that perhaps only long for connection to unity or to the collective, and the ease of being with others in our own vastness, in our diversity and uniqueness. For me, the soul means a deeper or more authentic connection to oneself, and through that, to other souls. My intention is that every performance process can free us to be as we are, and that's an endless flow. I would also like to say that seriousness doesn't mean the same to me as being real. Being for real is important for me, and it means believing in the power of art and life, and committing to creating a better existence in the world or outer space.
