In the Mirror of Care Work symposium 19.-20.1.2024
Photo by Marit Benthe Norheim, Inga Gerner Nielsen & Nat Marcus
The two-day symposium In the Mirror of Care Work will take place at Mad House in January 2024. The workshop and discussion will be held in English. Read more about the project below and see event details here.
In the Mirror of Care Work explores skills within Nordic interactive performance practices. Using the mirror as a metaphor for visualisation and connection, artist Inga Gerner Nielsen brings into conversation the work of nurses and interactive performers. By inviting in the perspectives of care workers and looking into the history of their profession, Inga engages in discussions about the politics, mythologies and poetics of her own field.
What do we see when we look in the mirror, and when that mirror is a nurse? Do we, as performers - like the nurses were once said to - abide by the feeling of a calling? Does this involve a kind of spiritual care for our audience? And what of the nurses' working conditions should we perhaps try to adopt as (care giving) performers?
Based in Denmark, the project visited Stockholm (MDT) in September 2023 and is coming to Helsinki to meet and exchange with local practitioners. In January 2024, Mad House will host a two-day symposium consisting of a free workshop for artists and a public talk open to everyone interested in creative processes at the intersections of art, culture, and other fields.
In the Mirror of Care Work is initiated by performance artist Inga Gerner Nielsen with a knowledge production team consisting of choreographer Ar Utke Ács and publisher Nat Marcus. The project is a collaboration with the Nursing Education at UCN (DK), Mad House Helsinki (FI), The Institute of Care (FI), MDT (SE) and Tabloid Press (DE) and is supported by Nordisk Kulturfond.
BIOS
Inga Gerner Nielsen initiated In The Mirror of Care Work with a local nursing school in Denmark when she realised how much her one-to-one performances draw on the physical and social skills she developed as a non-professional helper in the elderly home she worked at while studying Sociology. She hatched artistically in the '00s, performing with the group SIGNA and co-founding activist performance collectives in Copenhagen (DK). Today she explores the subtle nuances of interaction in performance installations inside as well as outside the art institution, most recently in the post-master program A.pass (BE).
Ar Utke Ács is working as an artist within contemporary dance and an expanded understanding of choreography. Throughout the past years, they have created a series of works focusing on affect landscapes and subversive poetics of positioning oneself non-verbally, including the performance echoes that was co-produced with MDT (SE) and Dansehallerne (DK). Ács holds an education in Dance Performance from SKH Stockholm and is an active member of respectively Dance Cooperative and höjden studios and one of the organisers behind the queer art club collective fake daughter.
Vienne Chan is especially interested in pension systems and the financialisation of care work. Currently she is working with climate movements to counter austerity politics and towards greater social justice. She was a panel speaker at Transmediale (2023), a research associate at documenta Institut (2021-22) and held an EMAP residency at m-cult (2020).
Trojan Horse is an autonomous educational platform based in Helsinki. It organizes summer schools, live action role-plays, workshops and reading circles in the landscapes of architecture, design and art. Trojan Horse encourages designers and architects to do more experimental projects, research-based work and form bolder political statements.
Tuukka Haapakorpi works with new performance, games and sound art. Recently they've produced a radio piece regarding overgenerational trauma and architecture of poverty.
m-cult is a Helsinki-based non-profit organisation founded in 2000. M-Cult is an agency that develops and promotes new forms of media art and digital culture, with a focus on the cultural and social aspects of media and technology.
Tea Andreoletti is exploring how artistic practice can foster collective democracy, feminist leadership and community engagement in rural local governance. She works as an artist with participatory performance, collective memory and water tasting between Helsinki and Gromo, a village in the Italian Alps where she grew up.
Daniela Pascual Esparza is a Hesinki-based artist with a background in urban governance. She creates passages between these fields to explore other ways of being in the world. Daniela actively works as a performer, curator and coach.