Alternative MAPs, New Moves, Old Taboosz

When it premiered in 1996, the Helsinki-based Baltic Circle Festival was part of a wave of new East-West cultural alliances forming across the region that were concurrent with Europe’s ongoing reinvention as the European Union. The Festival formed exchanges with artists and companies from nations in the Baltic region that just a few years earlier had been republics of the Soviet Union. Spearheaded by the experimental theatre company Q-Teatteri, Baltic Circle extends Q’s commitment to the avant-garde through a multidisciplinary program of national and international works. The 2014 festival program was no different. Among its most politically potent offerings was the Make Arts Policy (MAP) Summit and its linked public art and performance program. MAP was a large-scale, socially engaged artwork co-produced with Check Point Helsinki and led by Dana Yahalomi of the Tel Aviv-based group Public Movement. Set in Helsinki’s magisterial city hall, the Summit hosted over five hundred participants who registered on a first-come, first-served basis online. The purpose of the MAP Summit was to have representatives from all ten of Finland’s national parties state their arts and culture policy positions and take questions from the public. While some political groups have no representatives in parliament, the current coalition government—made up of six parties and led by Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen of the center-right National Coalition party—is a far cry from the big tent politics that pervade North America.¹

Each of the party representatives, which included everyone from the far-left Communists to the far-right populist True Finns, had to agree to present their platforms within a dialogic model. MAP organizers distributed two cue cards to audiences—one blue, one white—which participants could raise at any point during a politician’s speech. (Not coincidentally, these are the colors of Finland’s flag.) The blue card demanded, BE CONCRETE! (KONKRETIAA!); the white card asked, WHY? (MIKSI?). These cards were designed to hold politicians to account, so if unsubstantiated claims were made (which happened all the time), a sea of blue or white cards, or both, would rise up throughout the hall. Sharing the stage with the politicians were two musicians, a saxophonist (Linda Fredriksson) and percussionist (Teho Majamäki), who gave musical expression to the color coded cards. KONKRETIAA! and MIKSI? were each assigned their own distinct musical refrains. When any one card gathered enough momentum among the audience, the musicians would play the refrain associated with that card while the politician was still speaking. These musical prompts were the sonic expression of the people and, ideally, would allow politicians to address the concerns of the public in real time. Those representatives that trucked on with their speeches—and refused to face the music—were often met with heckling by the audience for refusing to provide a stronger rationale for their policy platform. Unlike a traditional debate or rally, politicians could not fully control their messaging but had to act responsively to their constituents.

MAP was more than simply an evening information session held in the lead up to the 2015 national elections. It was a new social formation—a new way of practicing policy—that attempted to address public concerns surrounding the place of the arts and culture in Finland following years of austerity-driven cutbacks. MAP repurposed already existing media idioms, a strategy common to Public Movement. For example, in addition to the musical cue cards, politicians had to respond to an experts’ room made up of a roundtable of cultural workers that cut into the proceedings via a live feed with running commentary and follow-up questions after each speech. (The room itself was set up in the lobby where attendees took their coffee breaks so that back room politics was fully on display.) Between policy presentations, the real politicians moved offstage and made way for their fictive counterparts. A young ensemble of actors impersonating politicians reenacted parliamentary debates that ranged from the founding of the arts academy (1877), to the splitting of fifteen...