I AM EDITH SÖDERGRAN // PROJECT BY JOSEF KA 2022

I AM EDITH SÖDERGRAN IS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROJECT BY PERFORMANCE AND MEDIA ARTIST JOSEF KA DEDICATED TO THE LIFE AND ART OF THE FINNISH AVANTGARDE POET, EDITH SÖDERGRAN (1892 – 1923) WHO WROTE IN SWEDISH.

VISIT https://iamedithsodergran.wordpress.com

PREMIERE OF THE PERFORMANCE IN LATVIA, RIGA – OCTOBER 2022

Concept, scenography, performance: Josef Ka
Music: Aleksandr Aleksandrov
Animation: Anonymous artist, Ivan Dubyaga
Video: Josef Ka, Marek Waldemar Pluciennik


Special thanks to Vladimir Gorlinsky, Vassily Popov, Walter Ulreich, Serge Vasilyev, Tina Romberg, Mark Maher, Peter Nynäs. Hbl – Hufvudstadsbladet, Arbis, Blumentopf Gallery/ Mike Blumentopf, Glo Noise, Barbro Kronqvist, Anne Suominen, Johan Lindberg, Harald Weinhofer, Walter Karl Eggerth, Jesper Dalmose, Alexey Gusev, Laura Tynan, Alexandra Kostrubala, Alexandra Fly, Erik Hokanson, Qing Cai, Egr Nagaen, Föreningen Konstsamfundet, Svenska kulturfonden, Konstrundan Nordic Culture Point

A review by Alexei Gusev, poet, philologist, and journalist

I can’t claim to know much about performance art and its trends today. But I like the very idea of breaking the distance between the artist and the audience, provoking the latter and stimulating them to co-create and co-participate.
I went to the performance in Riga about EDITH SÖDERGRAN without knowing anything about the Swedish poetess from Petersburg, who broke off from Russia for good after the revolution of 1917. But now the biographical parallel seems rather obvious. Josef K has left her native Russia for several years now and lives in Helsinki. In general, the choice of SÖDERGRAN is not at all accidental. Through this figure the author, I dare to suggest, is trying to rethink her experience of migration and being outside the familiar linguistic and cultural environment.
The action itself took about forty minutes. And it started pretty cheerfully – by snatching random gentlemen from the hall for a joint dance, by uncoiling a long piece of white cloth and other things, embarrassing the local reserved audience a little. Then the drama really ramped up when Josef Ka started climbing an unsafely lean-to-the-wall ladder. I can’t describe the climax, it’s worth seeing.
The performance itself is accompanied by the mesmerizing and penetrating music of Riga’s Alexander Alexandrov. So it can be accurately qualified as an audio-actual-visual performance.

Riga, October 2022

Published by Josef Ka

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International performance, visual and sound artist Josef Ka blends richly varied influences – everything from Butoh dance to cinematic theory – with her decades of nomadic world travel to create bold, highly personal site-specific art. Josef Ka’s themes range from investigating the place of the human body in contemporary reality to exploring the inner body as a representative system of our human and post human kind. Her artistic practice often actively invites the audience inside a sort of private reverie, making it is a deeply participatory one; she actively engages with both her audiences and with a wide diversity of other experimental artists. In addition to her own work, Josef Ka curates a regular series of events and exhibitions at her Helsinki underground space – Sauna Gallery – and teaches classes on the theory and practice of performance art. She is also the inventor of the WORST THEATRE and her yogic training system, KA-YOGA. https://eskargoeskargo.com/

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