Community of Practice
Eeva Kemppi, artist
Eeva Kemppi (b. 1979) is a Finnish artist, writer, theatre critic, researcher and producer. She has studied Art Research at the University of Helsinki and Community Theatre and Theatre Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. She has 15 years of comprehensive experience in different fields of theatre and live art in Finland, Bolivia and Ireland. She has published two nonfiction books about two different group theatres in Finland and has written critics and articles about Theatre, Live Art and Performance Art for more than 15 years. Kemppi has worked in Live Art collective Other Spaces as a live artist and performer since 2011 and has 10 years’ experience of creating participatory performances. She has been part of the working group of Other Spaces performances such as “Reindeer Safari” (2009), “Car Park” (2013), “Motorway is Ours!” (2014), “Wolf Safari” (2014), “Panpsychic Sessions” (2015), “Great Barrier Reef” (2018) and “Collection of Imaginary Beings” (2020). Many of these performances have been performed since the premiere, both in Finland and abroad in different festivals and Production Houses, like Kampnagel in Hamburg, Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Mad House in Helsinki, Danssehallerna in Copenhagen, Bodyworld Festival in St. Petersburg, Nordwind Festival in Hamburg, Science Festival in Edinburgh, Kontula Electronic Festival in Helsinki and JUNIOR Festival in Toronto.
Other Spaces is a Live Art collective founded in 2004. The collective has developed a unique aesthetic and working methods and has become one of the most significant and international Live Art groups in Finland. The core of the work is based on collective bodily exercises that bring into contact with different unfamiliar forms of being and experiencing. In other words, the exercises let us visit “other spaces”. Common theme of our exercises is metamorphosis. Our participatory performances build on these exercises. We believe that getting in touch with different forms of experience can alter us and our behavior thoroughly. Our aim is to increase understanding of interspecies relations and the role of humanity as a part of the ecological system.
Description of current research
I have been working as a live artist and writer with transgenerational practice and thinking for recent years. For me, transgenerational thinking means both evolutionary perspective, that allows us to see that we carry all the stages of the evolution, different species and different generations on our body and identity, and the practice of working between different generations.
For me the ecological crisis is an exigent circumstance we are living in right now. It is not only a trend or a theme, it affects everything that I have to do as an artist and as a human being. Ecological and other prevailing crises pose a crucial question for humanity: how we adapt and find possible ways to live and work together. I believe that there is an urgent need for transgenerational and interspecies cooperation. We need the knowledge and experience of all species, as well as our species’ past, present and future generations, to survive the crises we live in. We need to summon all the past and future generations and all the beings and organisms to act together so that we can all coexist and learn how to face the new era on this planet.
Last years I have been creating transgenerational performances with Other Spaces Collective and with some other working groups as well. As a writer I have been working with two book projects: The first which studies the birth of life on this planet and the modes of reproduction of different species. And the other one studies Karelia as a memory, a state of mind, an identity, an utopia, an intergenerational fabric, and a geographical and historical place. In that project I explore home, chain of generations, alienation, experiences of refugees, integration and living between places as an affective experience.