About AFTER WAR installation

Last week was too complicated to even describe. Shortly said, Kaja didn't want to take orders from me so in the end we decided to do it in her way. I liked that. Im not the kind of person that likes compromises if it has to do with my work. Im the General. Now I ended up being her 'actress' taking orders. She was not satisfied. I had to be the kind of actress that is intelligent, that thinks along, shoots ideas, positive and eager to agree on anything. Ok, fine … I'll be the sophisticated and extremely talented actress if she likes. 

Our last showing was on saturday and it was part of the Maraton 2012 which is 6 epic hours of short forms. We made and installation in our Holy Ghost Blackbox. So we were put in a context not typical for the residency program. 

Our idea was to work on the 'scene after'. Not to expose the actual event but the scene after the actual event. And as we were previously blamed on propagating violence we decided to dig deeper in it. Our work was in two parts: first the after war installation in the Holy Ghost Blackbox and then 'after talk' with the Resident (me and Kaja) on Kanuti Gildi SAAL's main stage. 

To put it banal, to non romanticize The After War installation I'd say the scene was a situation after violence, after a battle, hostage blackmail, collaborate rape, SM sex, abuse, torture, explosion… 

Basically about victims, showing what horrible thing violence is. 

in The After talk the 'victims' were explaining what really happened. That they chose the abuse coz they like it, its a turn on, sexual, physical enjoyment.

Anyhow, in order to 'play' the victims of a physical abuse we decided to experience it. To avoid the imitation of violence, to avoid the accusations of making bad theatre. to avoid the blame of not being real enough. We needed bruises, we needed wounds. 3 days before the showing we had a beer, put some music on and had 40 minute fist fight with each other. We used less wrestling techniques and mostly just kicking each others  legs. It was difficult to get wounds so we used wooden laths about 40 cm long and 10 cm wide. They were the leftovers of Juha Valkeapää and Kajas House piece. They were efficient in making painful scratches and more bruises. Such intensive fight was tiring, I was happy that we had done pushups on the previous days. In the beginning it was hard to find aggression to make such violent attempt towards Kaja. It was much easier to attack and punch as hard as possible after she made me feel pain. Very quickly Kaja became just a target, impersonal target, just a task, mission to complete. Everything became irrelevant: the violence, the pain, hurting someone, behaving bad, destruction, aggression. These were not the issues to think of. 

In the night I was limping home, my heel was badly hurt from hitting her over and over again. I was happy about the great success. 

In the end,  'AFRER WAR' installation was pure theatre, fiction.

Since we started with the War and Sex residency people come to me feeling sorry for me. Their whole approach is victimizing us, feeling compassion, saying 'poor girls, how will you manage'. The reasons seem to differ a lot. Some feel sorry for me because they think that Kaja abuses me, some feel sorry 'coz they don't want to see us fail (that shows how sure they are about us failing) and some feel embarrassed coz of the topics of war and sex.

We are not victims. Its a choice. Clearly.