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Biased

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BIASED is an interactive performance that divides the audience into two groups. At the entrance, each audience member chooses between Actor A and Actor B based only on their photographs. According to their choice, they are led to opposite sides of the stage and separated by a wall built from cardboard boxes. Each box bears the name of a different cognitive bias.

Throughout the performance, the performers dismantle the wall, brick by brick, introducing the cognitive biases written on each box. The audience takes part in psychological tests designed to reveal these mental shortcuts, which contribute to prejudice, misinterpretation and other errors in human thinking. As more of the wall disappears, the two groups gradually begin to see one another. By the end of the first part of the performance, the wall has been transformed into the Experimental Ruin Café on stage. The cardboard boxes that once divided the audience now serve as café tables. Around them, the two groups take part in game-like experiments exploring cognitive biases in their own lives. See a 7-minute documentation of the performance here.

The performance was created by Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, Tellervo Kalleinen, director and dramaturg Anna-Mari Karvonen, actor Matija Kezele and musician Fred Nevché. Part of the work group were the actors Yasmin Ahsanullah and Niina Sillanpää. The light and space design was made by Milla Martikainen.  It was produced as part of Espoo Theatre & ’s contribution to the Centriphery project, funded by Creative Europe. BIASED premiered at Espoo Theatre & in 2022 and later toured Finnish schools.

Photo by Darina Rodionova

TAKAY-SIN

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Takay-Sin is the name under which I currently create and perform music. In 2025 Minna Records released Takay-Sin’s first EP Silmänkorkeudelta. Photo: Noora Geagea

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Wormholes Exhibition @ Hämeenlinna Art Museum, June 2027-

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Madonreikiä – Wormholes opens at the Hämeenlinna Art Museum on 18 June 2027.

In this year-long exhibition, Oliver and I present seven artworks created between 2005 and 2026. Throughout the exhibition, we will revisit each work from today’s perspective, exploring them through new artistic approaches. Stay tuned!

About

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Tellervo Kalleinen is a Helsinki-based artist and songwriter. Rooted in strong concepts, her participatory practice spans moving image, performance, and music, fostering unlikely encounters and creating temporary communities. Her work embraces absurdity as fertile ground for collaboration, play, and unexpected perspectives. She approaches art as a collective creative adventure, and her projects often begin with an open invitation to participate. Her solo performances create twisted spaces between performer and audience, such as Recycle You, in which she recycles audience members’ expired opinions. Alongside her artistic practice, Kalleinen writes and performs music. She is currently active with her solo project Takay-Sin.

Kalleinen is one half of the artist duo with Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen. Their collaboration began by organising The First Summit of Micronations as curators of the Amorph!03 performance festival in Helsinki in 2003 (produced by Artists’ Association MUU). Their Complaints Choir concept (2005-) has spread to nearly 200 cities worldwide. Alongside several moving image works, such as People in White (2011) and Archipelago Science Fiction (2011), they have worked with complex public art commissions. In 2022 they completed Keskustelupuisto / Common Ground – A Public Space Game, in which participants designed and realised a public park through a two-year, game-like collaborative process. In 2026 they unveiled The Most Valuable Clock in the World, a clock that shows precious moments drawn from people’s lives and the surrounding natural environment – the work was commissioned by Invisible Dust in collaboration with Oulu2026, the European Capital of Culture.

Together with Niina Lehtonen Braun and Mirka Raito she forms the performance trio JOKAklubi (since 2009), and she is a founding member of the YKON collective (2005). She is a former member of The Speech Karaoke Action Group.

Education
2003  Master of Fine Arts, Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts
2000–2001  Guest student, HFBK Hamburg (Prof. Cosima von Bonin)
2000–2001  Guest student, HFBK Braunschweig (Prof. Marina Abramović)

Awards
2015  William Thuring Prize, Finnish Art Society
2014  Ars Fennica Prize (with Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen)
2014  Faces of Wisdom Film Festival, 2nd Prize (with Niina Lehtonen Braun, Play This At My Funeral)

2012  AVEK Media Art Award (with Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen)
2012  Best Feature Film Award, Lo Spiraglio Film Festival, Rome (People in White)
2003  Grant in Honour of the 150th Anniversary of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts

Publications
Keskustelupuisto / Conversation Park (Lönnström Art Museum & Studio Kalleinen, Rauma)
The First Summit of Micronations (Artists’ Association MUU, Helsinki)
In The Middle Of A Movie (Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki)
Lost And Found (S.M.A.K., Ghent)
Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo)

KAUKAISU

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In 2014 she released a vinyl Kaukaisu: Käsky ja hyräily

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Archipelago Science Fiction

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Tellervo Kalleinen & Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, 2011-12
Commissioned by CAA (Contemporary Art Archipelago)
Curated by Taru Elfving and Lotta Petronella

The work shows four possible future scenarios for the Finnish archipelago. Using web questionnaires and face to face interviews we mapped islanders´worst and best case scenarios about the future of the archipelago. In 3 workshops at Utö, Houtskär and Korpo the islanders then produced cinematic ideas portraying bleak or optimistic visions of the archipelago in the year 2111. Four ideas were then realized with more than 100 locals acting in the films. The four scenarios are: paradise for an aging elite, lifestyle immigration, neo-capitalism , outdoor museum. Archipelago Scifi is a collaboration with Swedish film-maker Henrik Andersson.

ARCHIPLEAGO SCIFI : 2012 : film 25min : 4-channel installation

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Final Scenes of Disaster Movies

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For Final Scenes for Disaster Movies (2023), me and Oliver invited residents of Helsinki to imagine final scenes of imaginary disaster movies. The only condition was that the scenes had to take place in Kansalaistori, a square in the heart of Helsinki. 

Of the 105 submissions, we realised three. One hundred volunteers performed in the films.

The commissioning organisation, Helsinki Festival, premiered the films in the same square where they were shot, as a free opening event for an audience of 15,000. The musical score was composed and performed live by Cleaning Women. The project was curated by Marko Ahtisaari.

Room to Breath

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Room to Breathe (FIN: Tilaihme) begins with a simple fact: I have graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts’ Time and Space department. As a Master of Time and Space, I invite the audience into a conversation about all the spaces we bring with us into this shared space and moment. Through the play of words, the dialogue unfolds, space shifts, and time disappears…

Originally created for the media art space Sielu (Karkkila, Finland, 2024), the performance was later presented as part of JOKAklubi’s The Theory Show at Westwerk (Hamburg, Germany, 2024).

Tunneluonto

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In the Finnish language, tunne luonto refers both to “knowing nature” and “feeling nature.” In our interactive Tunneluonto walk, Maija Hirvanen and I invited participants to reflect on the relationship between knowledge and sensation in their experience of nature.

The tour was originally planned for Vartiosaari and the Helsinki Botanical Garden, but it can be adapted to different environments. The walk was part of Maija Hirvanen’s Walkapolis walking series in 2016.

 
 

Play This at My Funeral

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Audio by Blood Music aka Karl Jonas Winqvist
Video by Tellervo Kalleinen & Niina Lehtonen Braun

In the video different individuals are posing with the instrument they wish to be played at their funeral. The video is combining the genres of music video and participatory art.

People in White

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People in White is a film that explores the relationship between doctor and patient in mental health care from the point of view of 10 patients.

In the film a central artistic device is re-enactment of key moments in the therapeutic process in which former patients play themselves as well as their doctors. Memories vary from beautiful, healing moments to the horrors of isolation and abuse.

Margreet has been receiving electroshock treatment monthly for 2 years now. As side effect she has lost most of her memory – but she doesn’t care because she feels better. She has had the same psychoanalyst for 20 years. He is her memory; He knows more about her than she can remember. She is afraid what will happen when he dies.

Margreet is one of the 10 patients who gather together in order to share their experiences about mental health care professionals. They return to their memories through story telling and re-enactments. 

Some of the stories are beautiful descriptions of healing moments. For other participants the traumatic experiences they had with doctors are still haunting them even today after many years.

Complaints Choir

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In the Complaints Choir project the complaints of the choir members are transformed into an impressive choir song with the help of a local musician. The project is open for anybody, no earlier singing experience required. The complaints vary from small daily irritations to big global issues.

The concept was open sourced in 2006, and has been spreading around the globe since then.

Installation
The documentation of the choir performances from all around the world form a 4-channel video installation. The videos are shown one after another distributed over 4 walls.

Videos and more info at the Complaints Choir web site

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