Article: Blaue Frau goes Portal!

Blaue Frau is Sonja Ahlfors and Joanna Wingren, a duo that has been making performance art for over 15 years in Finland and abroad. We came up with the idea of Portal during the fall of 2019 when I was still working as a producer with Blaue Frau. To open up Blaue Frau and the motives behind the Portal-project we talked with Sonja and Joanna about their career and why big and persistent collaborative projects have been such a big part of what Blaue Frau does and aims to do.

(E: Elina Tervonen
S: Sonja Ahlfors
J: Joanna Wingren)

E: Hi Sonja and Joanna! How would you describe Blaue Frau for people who have never heard of you before?
S: Well, Blaue Frau is of course the two of us, but often we have a variety of other performers and artists from Finland and Scandinavia working in our productions. In a nutshell one could say we are a feminist performing arts group which aims to develop non-hierarchical and norm critical working methods in the field of performance art and theatre.

E: What does that mean in practice?
J: Mostly it means that we make performance art and theatre but we also examine our working methods and how our productions are developed critically and on many levels. We keep the process in focus instead of concentrating solely on the final outcome. 

S: Yes, for example in traditional theatre one already knows in the beginning what the result should look like, and then the director and the working group pushes towards that desired result, no matter what. When working with the process as the focus we instead listen to each member in the working group and make space for new ideas that might lead to new results. We concentrate on a good, creative process rather than on a flawless outcome.

J: We have always wanted to rattle the old structures in traditional theatre and in the field of performing art. Those structures are often outdated and stiff, and in a sense, non-negotiable. There is very little space for actors to steer the process in a different direction than the planned one.  

S: To work with the process in focus leaves us room to explore and also to make mistakes! We have come to the conclusion that if we are neurotically afraid of failure we will be left with a very narrow space to make our art.

E: That is something I have learned from you, one is allowed to make mistakes! I think this is quite central to feminist thinking these days, it takes oneself away from the need to accomplish all the time… In spite of this you have made quite a variety of things. As you say, Blaue Frau never stops. What else have you done in addition to performance art and theatre? 
J: Haha, well that is a way to accomplish a lot when you just go and do without fear of failure. We have for example published a book, Någon hatar oss igen (Someone Hates Us Again). Then we made a radio drama and a talk-show, the Micke and Steffe show.

S: And then we have our own podcast called Taxen & Terriern that is basically a project where we experiment with “over-sharing” and talk about personal stuff in public which is also a big theme in our artistic work.

J: Yes! And in the field of performing arts we have facilitated different workshops and the festival Pop Up Art House.

E: Right, I wasn’t working with you during Pop Up Art House in 2013 & 2014. That was when I was an exchange student outside of Finland so I don’t even know what that festival was about. Could you tell me about it?
J: It was a festival in 2013 and 2014 on the Diana-stage on Erottajankatu. It happened four times over two years, one month at a time. At that time we felt ”feminist performance art” was non-existent in Finland or it was really margainalized. We felt pretty lonely in the field of performing art and norm-critical theatre. At the same time we got information from different funds that in order to get more stable funding we would need to have a venue. It was a sum of different coincidences but we happened to get the Diana stage for our use. I also happened to meet this Hungarian actress, Ágnes Kaszás, in a bar. We talked with her and she said she would like to have a bar that would also include a stage for gigs, performance art, events and so on. We had similar thoughts. So we realized there is a space for all of this in the Diana-venue and this is a possibility for us to work together. We also invited different artists to join the artistic team of the festival and the artistic team curated the guest plays, organized events and so on. 

S: Most of the performing groups had the same problem back then – no one had a venue. Helsinki did not have a Madhouse back then and theatre Viirus did not function the same way it does now. So we wanted to offer a platform. We also, of course, knew that our productions and audience would never fill up 4 months of performances so it was natural to invite other people to perform in the venue as well.

E: How was the program curated? When I go through the program there are so many different things that have happened there! 
J: There was an artistic team selected every season but if some of the old team wanted to stay for several seasons they were welcomed to do so. Then we decided that every season of the festival would have a theme to tie the performances and different events together. The theme was also present in the space as we redesigned it for each season. 

S: With the artistic team we also wanted to enhance diversity. We chose people from different contexts and backgrounds. It was important for us to work with flat-structures so that everyone in the artistic team could bring what they needed to the festival. We wanted to have different kinds of performances, events, people and of course – a lot of parties! Haha.

E: What did you learn from Pop Up Art House? 
S: The biggest feeling of success was just that we made it. There were so many people saying that we couldn’t do it, we were told that the Finnish-Swedish field is too narrow and there aren’t enough performances or audiences, all that… But we actually did it! 

J: And we learned a lot about sharing resources and how to curate a program. We asked the Cultural Center Caisa how we could stay as open as possible for the artists and audiences from different backgrounds so that there would be room for diversity in the Pop Up Art House. They basically answered  that the people either come or they don’t and it’s up to them to make the decision to take part in the festival or not. That was a big lesson for us. Like, we can have the resources and the space and we can try to stay humble and offer it to other people with good intentions. But despite those intentions everything doesn’t always go as we wish and sometimes we make mistakes even though we’ve tried to do things right. We learned it’s okay and we just need to keep learning. 

S: We managed to make Pop Up Art House an inclusive festival. We were able to bring people from different art fields together. Sometimes we had a big audience and sometimes very little, you never knew which things would work and which wouldn’t. Making the festival taught us that you can’t just fantasize about doing things, you have to be hands on and make things happen.

E: And yet you chose not to continue with the festival after those two years?
S: We noticed towards the end that the festival had become too big and elitist and at the same time it had gone in a direction that didn’t completely represent us. I don’t mean that it would have gone bad but we just realized we’d done everything we could with this festival and that it was time to move on. 

J: I think it’s important to learn to end in time. So that one doesn’t continue so long that the project loses its vitality and potential.

S: This also helps in our goal as artists to grow and learn with each project.I don’t want to be hypocritical and say that all of our collaborative projects are just our wish to do something altruistic for the field of performing art. For me it is also very essential as an artist. These projects make it possible for me to learn and develop, to be in motion. When one works with norm critical art it is essential to share experiences, to listen to others and most of all to stay open to the world. One cannot do all that alone. 

E: I understand. You also had these workshop series’ that were executed on a Nordic level. There were altogether 16 workshops with the theme of antiracism and norm criticism in 2015 and 2018. Was this need to learn one reason why you started the workshops?
J: Yes, it was really about what Sonja just explained. We wanted to continue to work in a collaborative way. One big question was antiracism and norm criticism itself. Like, how can one do antiracist and norm critical art without it being too educational or preachy? We wanted to create spaces where we could learn as a community.

S: At this point there had been much discussion about antiracism and norm criticism in Sweden but it had yet to make its way into the mainstream theatre field. It was interesting to go to different Nordic countries and invite artists to discuss these themes and learn how they are presented in different areas. The problems are quite similar in every country but the question is if these topics can be dealt with in the current social climate. 

J: During these workshops I realized I needed to start to think about what I do with my privilege and with the money we get. And I needed to learn how to talk about these things and what language to use. As a result we also facilitated a separatistic workshop where we could not join ourselves with Sonja. That was an interesting experience and it really raised so many questions and feelings in myself!

S: In the end people started to ask us why we get the money to facilitate these workshops. And they were really right, like why? That was the point we again realized that the discussion about antiracism had gone forward in society in general and our workshops were a bit ”outdated”. And that is a good thing! But for us it was this kind of a turning point that we needed to accept that this does not work anymore and we needed work on a different level.

E: I think there are a lot of similarities between the Pop Up Art House, the workshop series and the new project PORTAL…
S: Yes, absolutely. Especially now that we are living under a pandemic, it feels even more important to bring artists and people together. Of course, as we said before, this project is about give and take. We wanted to start Portal because we thought we could learn through working together and sharing knowledge with others. Also, we can make our own work seen but we hope the other participating groups and artists will benefit the same way!

E: What do you expect from PORTAL?
J: The culture around art is changing and developing so it’s an interesting time to work with norm critical art. As we noticed with our workshop series, the issues we dealt with during Pop Up Art House are not so prominent anymore. The inspiration for PORTAL was born last fall when there was a lot of discussion about the relationship between critics in the media and the performer, especially in the Finnish-Swedish theater field. We wanted to create a platform where artists could show their work and present their working methods without consideration of the critic and their narrow lens. 

During this Spring with the pandemic the whole idea started to get bigger. We wanted to connect with other groups and artists and have workshops and discussions and so on.

S: This kind of method that is based on sharing, gives so much to the artistic process itself. I’m excited to hear about other groups and artists work and what is important for them and where they’re coming from. 

J: We’ve also been doing a lot of interactive performances and working with different people has given us so much experience and knowledge of how to come face to face with people. So in that sense it has also been very useful to meet people from different backgrounds outside the context of the artistic work as well!

Text & translation: Elina Tervonen
Proofreading: Gabrielle Vaara
Photo: Liina Aalto-Setälä