PROGRAM
Sidewalk 2nd Ed. 2025: Embracing Performance Art in Vantaa – open call for all
The Sidewalk Project was envisioned as a dynamic initiative to engage the residents of Vantaa in the exploration of performance art, emphasizing this medium as a powerful and accessible form of self-expression. Sidewalk was initiated by The Other Side Performance Art Platform and funded by the Kone Foundation.
The project aimed to remove barriers between art and the public, encouraging participants to reflect on their experiences and creatively express them with the medium of performance art.
With a focus on inclusivity, the project welcomed with an open call all individuals from diverse cultural and educational backgrounds, prioritizing enthusiasm over experience. This approach ensured that performance art became a medium through which all participants could meaningfully engage with art, regardless of their previous artistic experience.
Phase 1: Workshops and Lectures
First phase of The Sidewalk 2nd Ed. 2025 began with workshops led by Diana SoriaHernandez, introducing participants to performance art and encouraging experimentation. Alongside these sessions, participants benefited from insights shared by distinguished guest lecturers, including Roi Vaara, Gustaf Broms, Leena Kela, and Pancho Lopez. These artists provided various perspectives, enriching the participants’ understanding of performance art as a versatile and accessible medium and gave an assignment for participants to ponder and reflect on.
Phase 2: Ideation and Execution of Performances
Participants also received personalized guidance from Diana SoriaHernandez, the mentor of the project, Parsa Kamehkhosh, and Aman Askarizad, helping them refine their ideas, arrange the logistics and develop their final performance pieces. At this stage, participants also had to think about the presence of cameras and documentation in their works in order to decide about details of their acts and what they want to emphasize on.
Phase 3: Post-production and Exhibition
In the third phase of The Sidewalk 2nd Ed. 2025, attention shifted to post-production and preparing for the final exhibition. The performances, captured during the execution phase, were edited by The Other Side team or by participants who chose to handle the editing themselves. The performances filmed in the art project will be exhibited at PUBLICS.
WORKSHOPS
Photo credit: Aman Askarizad
INTERVIEWS
Diana Soria Hernandez (Mexico 1983) is a visual artist focused on the exploration of Performance art in the intersection with video, ceramics and installation. She studied her BA in Fine Arts at ENPEG La Esmeralda in Mexico City, an MFA in Printmaking by theAcademy of Fine Arts Helsinki and an MA in Live Art and Performance Studies at the Theatre Academy Helsinki. Her work has been shown internationally in exhibitions and festivals in 15 countries.
Her practice includes self-organised events as an effort to contextualize and expand views on Latin America in Finland. She has received several grants by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (2024, 2018) Kone Foundation (2019-2020, 2017); an international residency at La Chambre blanche by CALQ and FONCA (2023) among others.
STATEMENT
Performance art is my main discipline since action, process, intuition and reaction are at the core of my interests. I see performance art as a possibility to experiment and learn something new of who we are as humans, beyond representation. The performance art I am interested in unfolds beyond mediating through decorations and production values. I believe in art in a way of what is held in the undefined, what cannot be grasped through exact words. I want to create an art that flows in the undefined and can hold open interpretations, revealing who we are.
Performance art is my main discipline since action, process, intuition and reaction are at the core of my interests. I see performance art as a possibility to experiment and learn something new of who we are as humans, beyond representation. The performance art I am interested in unfolds beyond mediating through decorations and production values. I believe in art in a way of what is held in the undefined, what cannot be grasped through exact words, what is open to interpretations and fluid, revealing like a subjective mirror, who we are.
Roi Vaara (born July 17, 1953, in Moss, Norway) is a Finnish performance artist. Vaara studied in the general evening course at the University of Applied Sciences in 1972–1975 and art research at the University of Jyväskylä in 1976–1977.
Vaara has presented around 300 different performances. His works have been exhibited in about 200 international exhibitions and festivals in more than 30 countries. Vaara was awarded the Ars Fennica award in 2005. In 2010, Vaara was awarded the Pro Finlandia badge of honor. The President of the Republic awarded him the title of Academician of Arts in March 2023.
Check out the interviews with the mentor of Sidewalk 2nd Ed. 2025 and some of the lecturers from the program.
Leena Kela (Finland) is a performance artist, artistic director of the New Performance Turku Biennale and works as residency director of Saari Residence maintained by Kone Foundation (currently on sabbatical / study leave until 09/2025). She has worked with performance art for twenty years and is doing her doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki.
In her works she explores dialogue of corporeality and materiality in performance art. She makes performances that play with and twist our relationship with everyday objects. She has presented her performances internationally in performance art festivals, events and exhibitions in every continent except Antarctica.
Pancho López (born June 3, 1972 in Mexico City) is a performance artist interested in the everyday life and feelings of human nature, and how it connects with artistic expressions. He studied Communication Sciences at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of UNAM in Mexico. Founder and current Director of the Extra! International Performance Ar Festival. For 11 years he was head of the Department of Performance and Contemporary Art of the Museo Universitario del Chopo. Coordinated the International Meeting of Performagia Performance. Pancho Lopez’s most important series of performance are “Picnic Formal”, presented since 1997 until 2007 in Mexico, United States and Canada; “Sal de Mesa”, presented in Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic; and “Ira", made in Mexico, China, Canada and Poland. He was a journalist for 5 years in the Crónica de Hoy newspaper. He received grants from the Multimedia Center and the Jumex Foundation to investigate videoperformance in Latin-America. He published the book "Central America in Action. An approach to Central American performance and some of its protagonists", published by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) of Costa Rica and the La Neomudéjar Museum.
Gustaf Broms was born in Sweden in 1966. He currently lives and works in the Vendel forest. Gustaf’s practice is engaged with the exploration of the nature of consciousness, the dualistic concept of Being NATURE (the biological process of body), and being MIND (as intellect interprets experience). In his practice, he started off working photography and installation, but two work in particular led him to work with the more formless processes of performance.
In 1991, Broms burned all of his work, and in doing so realized that the intensity of the action and the remaining ash far outdid anything he had previously made. In 2005, he completed a series of works entitled “5 Faiths for a Brave New World” in which he worked with objects that were physically too heavy for the body to move. These two experiences created a longing to explore the formless and led up to the project entitled “A Walking Piece” made with Trish Littler, in which the two artists spent 18 months walking across Eastern Europe. The result is considered a drawing.Currently, Broms’ continues to work with his own body as the tool for examining what this living thing is.
PARTICIPANTS
Kamilla Fodor
Sadaf Yazdizade
Nikan Dorran
Hongfei Bi
Paula Kapanen
Jimmy Salermo
Yuliia Ivanytska
Coireall Kent
Nilius De Franceschi
