Article: waggling cursors on google docs

Patakieli: We’re here! The limits of freedom and structures could be interesting?? 
Hevonen: Sensitivity and fuck I can’t remember the word. Well anyway, how is responsibility divided and who has the energy and I don’t know was there anything that I wanted to talk about?
Yksisarvinen: Write your names down so that we can keep track of who speaks and what they say. 
Patakieli:Where are you H and L?
Lenkkeilijä: I’m here
Yksisarvinen:This is going well. 
Lenkkeilijä: really fucking well 
Patakieli: It’s funny ‘cause I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about freedom? More about structures. 
Yksisarvinen: there hasn’t been a need to talk about freedom, because that’s what we actually have a lot of 😀 and we’re lacking structures 
Hevonen: What about freedom?
Patakieli: Just where are the limits of freedom in our work? 
Lenkkeilijä: But if this is an introductory-type of thing, then what is it that we want to say? I at least didn’t really discuss freedom in my text, more about our work in general
Patakieli: We should probably talk about how skillful we are at being merciful towards ourselves?:) 
Hevonen: I don’t think we’re that merciful towards ourselves :DD tbh
Patakieli: Well what about the skills that we learn to use meaning that nothing is perfect but still good?
Lenkkeilijä: hmmm
Hevonen: I think we could talk about our ruggedness and things being in progress or something about this way of letting everyone have the freedom to function in the way they want.
Yksisarvinen: I think we could talk about how we can’t really agree on what to talk about 😀 
Patakieli: Random 4 lyfe !
Hevonen: Y has a good point. This is exactly how we work and the end result is a fucking great mishmash.
Yksisarvinen: Yes, we rarely agree on everything and everyone has to be heard and no one is solely responsible and so on, so it is a cacophonous mishmash.
Patakieli: Compromise?
Lenkkeilijä: Isn’t this discussion doing that
Hevonen: I was thinking the same L! 
Yksisarvinen: Was that it then 😀 FINISHED! :DD 
Kettu: XDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Lenkkeilijä: I’d like a thought that ties it all together…but Nah why bother? 
Yksisarvinen: Something witty/conspicuous. something encapsulating…
Yksisarvinen: The whole article was built on the Vähäkämä-method, where everyone gets free hands. 
Patakieli: Hevonen that was good! This introduction was written with google drive, all of us writing at the same time in the same document. Just like our first application! 🙂 
Hevonen:  It was a boring comment so I deleted it 😀 Thanks, Patakieli for writing it back. 
Yksisarvinen: There are no boring comments. Fuck self-critisism!!
Lenkkeilijä: I thought it was an important clarification! 
Yksisarvinen: Maybe our second application as well, to some extent, and everything else we’ve produced. Not with google drive, but with similarly disorganized methods. 
Hevonen: But it wasn’t witty like you hoped Y.
Hevonen: Yes because we are disorganized and work like that; a bit messy and now this article _article_ is yet another experiment into a more fuzzy life and style.
Patakieli: Could we call it a bit messy? I don’t really feel that Vähäkämä is messy in any sense of the word.
Lenkkeilijä: This is turning into a long introduction. Time to stop?
Yksisarvinen: Now that I think about it, it is nice that the reader gets a feeling of “what the fuck is this”, when they’re reading this. And it’s nice to be transparent and leave everything we wrote. That we wouldn’t edit this at all. Keep it raw!
Hevonen: THE END!
Patakieli: THE BEGINNING!
Hevonen: I agree with Yksisarvinen 100%, others as well? I’m fascinated by this incompleteness and unpolished touch. And it’s nice that it’s visible. 
Patakieli: Alright then. 
Lenkkeilijä: We’ve got an end and the beginning already!

joy

wildness 

freedom

frenzy 

bouncing

stairs ufh*

Someone cries when they’ve hit their head on the railing. One or more brings a first-aid kit. 

Elsewhere they are joyfully going down the slide, pouring through colorful tubes and telling when someone gets an electric shock. The plastic runway can raise hairs and the length and curvature of the spiraling tube dictate how dizzy you are at the end of the material and by who you are brought up to the surface. Four persons, dressed in tracksuits filled with air, float in the water. The current loves its travelers, embraces them with whispers, and carries them softly towards the end of the pool. The tracksuit-personas bounce around (at times at the same speed)  swiftly side by side sometimes successively and/or on top of each other. Before their clothing dries, someone is jumping the steps running towards the top. 

again, again, again
– yells one of them, who in all the ruckus forgot their pants in the pool 
(at the same time another of them notices that they have six limbs)

-Ronja

I want to settle on a time for the meeting. The meeting, where we’re supposed to go through shared things. One attends two schools and works almost full time on the side, another has a thousand projects and things in life, the third is never heard of. Let’s get in contact a bit closer. A certain kind of uncertainty is always present, but we’ve managed it before. 

I often think of us as a “slightly” dysfunctional family. There are many things that are difficult, and many things that bother me. Still, we are a family. There is room for each individual’s existence and every one of us has a meaning in the group. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have ended up working together as an artistic collective and keep working together again and again. Creating and executing requires willingness and durability. It requires listening and being heard. Even when it, from time to time, feels like the support isn’t there it can always be found in the end. 

Each of us has our own turn and moment to push others into action. Now!

Waiting for replies and a disorganized email inbox.  
Remember to label the messages “unread”!

We’re looking for new ways to explore, interpret, and bring forward emotions, events, and take a stand. We talk about how art should be available for everyone. We talk about funding. That is our work and our responsibility. Once again it is time to introduce, explain, and “sell” a piece. A piece that started as thoughts and feelings about the state of the world and by collective will was packaged into a complete piece, shaped into the form of a live performance. 

Performances are nearing and we’re supposed to re-rehearse the piece. Momentarily, we bring our own lives together during rehearsals. We’re professionals and we know what we are doing. Even so, our current lives and hardships are reflected in the space. 

“Yeah yeah, it’ll be great!” one of us says, agitated, as the group argues about the placement of the audio setup. The recollection of the situations and details of the piece are quick to appear and they are felt in the bodies. The body remembers. We’re here once again. 

“We have to be thankful for the gigs”, we remind ourselves. 
The piece grows in depth when it’s performed and slowly the different tones appear for its creators. 

We talk about the next piece: “Should we ask for an external choreographer to join our workgroup?” Again a  new way to work collectively. Again, one of many collective decisions that we’ve been making during the process of our latest pieces, sometimes fast and sometimes painfully slow. Through these decisions we’ve dreamt, created, and finished works collectively. This time, our collective decision is about a new element; a possibility to hand over some decision-making power to a so-called external decision-maker. 

We would distribute power by giving away power, we would try something new by embracing the new and we would once again find new aspects of working together. 

Or at least that is how we hope it will work, at the same time remembering that our family is built on strong opinions. That is how we got this far. By a certain war of wills, that has pushed our work forward by force. Decisions have been made and power has been distributed, or there has been an effort to collectively distribute power. Compromises have become second nature and we’ve often thought about what is the right way to do things. 

Strong minds in a creative fight. That is something we can depend on. Even when the organizational chaos is at its worst, we can trust our strong minds. 

– Ella 

our heads clatter 
at the bubbling street kitchen of ideas 
auch. uuh. äh. where is the? 

milk?

no the eggs. sugar first. 
or.
oh. hmm. well. it turned out like this, can we serve it? cheers!

we’re hot and in a hurry
nevertheless, I enjoy every moment

and we’re not always in a hurry. sometimes we linger, wobble, dream, stretch time and reshape it like pizza dough. I wish that we could curl up together more often and take a nap during afternoon siestas 

the most difficult thing is to open the curtains in time of the tent swaying on the street when someone is in need of air.

I learn to listen

cause I’ve learned that it’s worth it

I’m learning to let the wind enter the tent, I let it travel in between my body hairs, dive toward the lungs, I take a deep breath in and out blowing the flour up in the air 

oh. that’s okay. I’ll clean. me too

me too

me too

we promised, that we wouldn’t make a piece where food is prepared. I don’t think that we’ll stick to anything we promise. me neither

I’m thankful that I have this place: a time-machine, a forest trail, the runway from Paris fashion week, a highway, ira needs to pee again, a fully-packed gig-car, summer country, stage land, wasteland, a common cursor, a rock machine, a baseline, a place that grows and for growth. in a changing and hectic world, our hectic hole is one of the safest places that I know. I want the unicorn to now and always drink the microwaved coffee from yesterday and eat popcorn for dinner. 

I want the bird to be late, per usual. I want the horse to sing out loud weird chants as I wake up. some things need to stay as they are. 

the flapping cursor on the screen is a sign that unicorns are writing. 

– Ira

Vähäkämäs mode of operations is best described by the collective hustle and bustle, as well as the lack of structures; a sort of creative alternation between collectivism and anarchy. There are plans for creating structures and further development, but there has been a lack of ambition. Vähäkämäs’ random work method is in all its stressfulness, fruitful soil for original ideas. Even when faced with panic and despair. The collective resembles a shaky, overworked, bohemian slapstick artist, about to fall into a psychosis, whose everyday life is as humoristic as their simple art. Vähäkämä is unintentional buffoonery served with good intentions. I can’t recommend Vähäkämäs working-methods as they are, but by cherry-picking, you can find nonlinear, raw and chaotic, beautiful and creative power in the core of our work; an ecosystem of sorts, where a never-ending food chain and the lottery of evolution spews out new ideas, dreams, and practical methods. 

– Teo

1423 

Text: Ella Effendy, Ronja Syvälahti, Teo Mattila and Ira Vuolle
Translation: Kaisa Lundán
Proofreading: Gabrielle Vaara
Photo: Ira Vuolle