Performances / Events

Together with around six participants, I host a collective dance event. As the audience gathers on the dance floor, the participants, one by one, invite everyone to dance to a song of their choice. Before the music begins, each participant shares a period in their life when they lost control. Now, they take the lead, and the audience is invited to follow their movements.

The project was first commissioned and produced by Mad House Helsinki (2019). It was later organised at Living Room, Yerevan (2025), and at the Art of Peace Conference by Austrian Forum for Peace (2026), both at the invitation of artasfoundation.

Photo by Saara Autere

A storyteller shared stories of conflict collected from local residents in a sandbox. As the audience gathered around an arena made of sand and tailor-made props, she made the conflicts visible and tangible. To a passer-by, it looked like an ordinary storytelling session in a playground.

Oliver and I created the project for Cure Park (2017), organised by TAAK in Amsterdam, which brought art interventions to the tranquil setting of one of the Netherlands’ largest public parks. The storyteller was the professional mediator Chantal van Doesburgh. The work was later presented in Helsinki, curated by Ceyda Berk-Söderblom.

As the name suggests, I host a recycling event. Audience members exchange old opinions. An idea you no longer need may be interesting to someone else. Some opinions are needed by nobody.

I have performed Recycling You at numerous festivals and art events since its premiere at the Teatteri Nyt festival at Kiasma, Helsinki, in 2009.

The photo is taken by Carolin Blöink at Atelierfrankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, as part of an art event called Isn’t Everything After all a Part of Our Inner Life With the External Left Outside Our Counsciousness, curated by Dr Sonja Müller.

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The Summit of Practical Utopias 26—29 September 2013 in Brioni Island, Croatia
Organised by YKON, Drugo More and Electra

The Summit of Practical Utopias gathered 35 activists, artists, game designers, researchers and visionaries on the island of Brioni, President Tito’s former summer residency in the Croatian Adriatic Sea. Organised as a collaboration between YKON (FIN/DE) and Drugo More (CRO) in dialogue with Electra (UK), the three-day Summit took the form of a reality game where game rules, rather than summit conventions, defined the interactions between participants or players.

The Summit of Practical Utopias was born out of the legacy of The First Summit of Micronations, held in Helsinki in 2003. Kings, presidents and representatives of ‘self-made’ countries such as The Principality of Sealand, Ladonia, NSK-State, Kingdoms of Elgaland & Vargaland, Transnational Republic and State of Sabotage met each other in an unprecedented three-day exchange.

The participants in the 2013 Summit of Practical Utopias represented a wide cross-section of contemporary Utopian practices. Find out about the participants here

PRACTICAL UTOPIA
The term was coined specifically for the Summit. It reflects the desire to change the current system of society by developing alternative proposals that outline the first practical steps towards long-term processes of change. Practical Utopia insists on the necessity of Utopia as an intellectual concept interlinking the fantastical and the pragmatic in bringing about social, political and artistic change.

THE GAME
Replacing conventional conference formats, the Summit will use game design to provide a playful yet serious system of exchanges. The sights and infrastructures on the Island will be turned into a playground that will support the players to collaborate in novel ways.

The game is designed by the artist collective YKON and inspired by Buckminster Fullers’ ‘World Game’ (1961). It was created as a proposal for an alternative system of pedagogy: a game, rather than a curriculum, as the main platform of learning. It was intended as a tool to formulate competing, comprehensive design-science approaches that would “solve all the problems on Planet Earth.”

BRIONI
Initially a stone quarry, and later a luxury retreat for the wealthy, the archipelago became Josip Broz Tito’s summer residence after World War II. Tito was the central figure in Yugoslavia’s experiments with organisational structures, experiments which profoundly transformed its society. Brioni played a crucial role in the forging of the Non-Aligned Movement, and was the site where self-managerial socialism met international celebrities and world leaders. This beautiful and provocative Island speaks both of the possibility of imagining alternative systems, of restructuring social life, whilst simultaneously problematising this desire.

The performance took place in a private home in Mannheim, Germany. Audience members arrived in pairs, and each participatory performance lasted 10 minutes. They were invited to choose one of the plates on the dining table. Under each plate was a script describing a situation that had once taken place around that very table. The audience members then acted out the scene together. The homeowners watched each performance from the balcony, as if attending a theatre performance.

The project was developed for X APARTMENTS Mannheim (2011), commissioned by Hebbel am Ufer in collaboration with the International Schillertage.

We gave a performative crash course in the roles of helping and being helped. Following a brief introduction, the performance took place in pairs behind the closed doors of private ”clinic rooms”. One participant took the role of the helper, the other the role of the person seeking help. Before entering the room, the rules of each role had been agreed upon together.

The project was a collaboration between Tuomas Laitinen and myself. It was part of Laitinen’s 12 Etudes for Everlasting Life series, produced by the Reality Research Center in Helsinki.

The Speech Karaoke Action Group is a group of 13 artists who developed a karaoke system for speeches. It functions like classic Karaoke, but instead of singing, people can do spoken karaoke versions of speeches – and perform it in any desired style. The system includes all kinds of speeches, ranging from dictators rants to movie speeches to private wedding speeches.

Besides the karaoke club evenings, the group organises also Speech Karaoke workshops. There anyone can add a speech of their choice to the karaoke system.

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Find out about YKON´s projects at YKON web site

YKON was founded in 2005 as an artistic initiative and platform for exploring utopian fantasies and the political imaginary in relation to concrete sociopolitical structures and concerns.

Emerging from and working in the field of contemporary art, YKON merges the languages and approaches of a number of disciplines, such as game design, scenario development and experimental education.