Dramaturgy is about finding a clear thought and a path through chaos, without reducing the chaos.
(Hurme 2019)
Writer and director Juha Hurme discusses how nurturing planetary life, tolerating complexity, generating new perspectives, and cultivating empathy are central tasks of performances in the world. Hurme combines the views of Markku Wilenius, professor at the Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku and a contributor to UNESCO in a popular manner with those of German performance scholar and professor Erika Fischer-Lichte, who speaks about theatre’s task to “create connection” (Hurme 2019).
I am particularly fascinated by Hurme’s idea of dramaturgy, which he humorously describes as “finding a thought and a path through chaos” – a fitting analogy for the role of a performance designer. The prevailing ecological crisis can also be described as chaos, a web of complex and interconnected factors, where instead of simplifying the crisis, it is more fruitful to try to recognize our own position and impact within this chaotic network.
Timothy Morton, one of today’s most renowned environmental philosophers, describes this difficult-to-grasp web with the term “hyperobject.” Morton introduced the concept of hyperobject in his book The Ecological Thought (2010) and expanded on it further in Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013). According to Morton, hyperobjects are vast, complex, and hard-to-perceive phenomena that extend beyond the boundaries of time and space. In addition to the ecological crisis, examples of hyperobjects include radioactive radiation, the Internet, or the floating plastic islands in the oceans. Hyperobjects force us to acknowledge that we are not separate from our environment but deeply intertwined with its complex processes (Morton 2013).
In the 21st century, the role of performance designers has expanded beyond the confines of institutional stages, drama-based approaches, and traditional pre-planning practices. This change has been described with concepts such as “expanded scenography” or “expanded lighting design” (Kilpeläinen 2019, 181–187). Researcher and university lecturer Maiju Loukola further develops the concept of expanded scenography in her dissertation (Loukola 2014), building on Rosalind Krauss’s critical analysis of the changing boundaries and definitions of sculpture in contemporary art (Krauss 1979, 30–44). According to Loukola:
From the perspective of expanded scenography, scenographic work must constantly redefine its relationship to sister arts, adjacent artistic fields, and various socially defined environments; performance, installation art, environmental art, public and found (urban) spaces, natural environments, or various non-human agents.
(Loukola 2014, 63)
At the core of performance designers’ work is dramaturgical thinking, which involves understanding the structure of chosen materials, organizing their relationships, and making hidden connections experiential. I would argue that designers’ training provides excellent foundations for collaboration within multidisciplinary teams, even with experts from fields such as cultural and economic studies or biology. What could this dramaturgical thinking – this spatial-temporal and dynamic-processual ability to compose elements – bring to multidisciplinary collaboration in dealing with chaotic hyperobjects like the ecological crisis?
For example, researcher of economic culture Paavo Järvensivu (from the BIOS Research Unit) and director-dramaturg Katariina Numminen have expanded dramaturgical expertise into strategic crisis management through the WISE research project (Creative Adaptation to Wicked Eco-Social Transitions, 2018–2023). Within the framework of this project, they organized an exercise for municipal decision-makers called Tulevaisuuden tilannehuone (The Situation Room of the Future), which explored the dramaturgical structures of decision-making and knowledge production in times of multiple crises. Dramaturgical thinking made it possible to map out the challenges related to the timeframes of decision-making (WISE Project 2023).
Lighting designer Vespa Laine has had long-term collaboration with algae researcher Conny Sjöqvist from the University of Turku in the multidisciplinary Fern Orchestra group. Fern Orchestra’s works have addressed topics such as photosynthesis, closed biospheres, and the senses of plants. In her article Designing Mareld (2023), Laine also encourages multidisciplinary collaboration. According to Laine, working with specialized university researchers connects one to a broad network of knowledge and the most current research, often not yet published. Additionally, Laine highlights in her article that in some academic circles, artistic work is considered separate from scientific contributions. “If you work as a scientist, can you spend your working time on art projects or popular science outputs?” Laine asks. She believes that the “spirit of the Renaissance” and exposure to curiosity across different disciplines open new doors and perspectives for both artists and researchers alike (Laine 2023, 159–161, 170–171).
A significant experience for me has been working together with cultural anthropologist Inkeri Aula (PhD, Aalto University) and artist Mark Niskanen, who resides in the United States. Our collaboration began in 2019 when Niskanen and I were searching for theoretical background material for a soundwalk artwork. We came across Aula’s article Aistikävely kaupunkimaisemaan (A Sensory Walk into the Urban Landscape) (Aula 2018). After reading it, we decided to contact her. That September a remote meeting marked the start of a multi-year collaboration that continues to this day.
Our work has focused on sensory ethnographic research, multisensory experiences, and the art of noticing, which refers to perceiving interspecies, historical forms of shared life. Our path into sensory ethnographic research originates from the SENSOTRA (Sensory Transformations and Transgenerational Environmental Relationships in Europe, 1950–2020) project at the University of Eastern Finland, which explored the experiences of different generations regarding their living environments. Aula invited Niskanen and me to create a sound installation for SENSOTRA’s Urban-related Sensoria conference in June 2020 (UEF). We ended up analyzing excerpts from the SENSOTRA research material, collected using the sensobiographic method, under the tag “more-than-human” (Aula 2022, 360–364).
Sensobiographic walking is an ethnographic research method developed by Helmi Järviluoma and her research group, which allows for the analysis of changing environmental relationships. In multisensory materials, the interviewee chooses a meaningful route for themselves, and discussions about sensory memories, observations, and experiences at different times are documented along the way. Through sensory memories, it is possible to reach larger questions, such as the manifestation of cultural history in personal experiences and our relationship to the environment amidst the ecological crisis (Aula 2022, 347).
From the SENSOTRA material, together with Aula and Niskanen, we developed a video artwork titled Ghost Light (Aula, Niskanen & Salo 2020a), which dealt with “the ghosts of the environment.” In the work, a ghost light flickers on the Small Stage of the Finnish National Theatre, emptied by the pandemic, telling of the entanglements between species. The concept of the ghosts of the environment came to the artwork especially through the multidisciplinary collection Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. The collection’s texts address the possibilities of survival in damaged ecosystems using the metaphors of ghosts and monsters. In addition to interspecies entanglements, ghosts represent the history of places, which is often hidden or forgotten, but still influences the present and future. Ghosts can also refer to ecological traces, such as the changes in landscapes caused by human activity (Tsing, Swanson, Gan & Bubandt 2017).
After the SENSOTRA conference, we continued our ghost-themed series and as a working group created sound installations The Rains Are Different Now (Aula, Niskanen & Salo 2020b) and Murmurations (Niskanen & Salo 2020), for which we collected material using the sensobiographic method from the Kokemäenjoki River and the East River environments. Based on the sensory walk materials of the Pori Art Museum’s Poriginal Gallery sound installation, Inkeri Aula’s article “Creative environmental relationships enhance resilience: Sensobiographic walks at Kokemäenjoki river” was published in November 2023 as part of the collection Understanding Marine Changes: Environmental Knowledge and Methods of Research (Aula 2023). Therefore, our multidisciplinary group’s work also produces new knowledge and does not remain merely as data-driven media artworks exhibited in public or gallery spaces.
In 2021, we published the gamified website Garden of Becomings (Aula, Niskanen & Salo 2021), which serves as our group’s virtual workspace and opens and shares the background of our work in detail.
Cultural anthropologist Inkeri Aula describes the dialogue within our working group as a simultaneous artistic and analytical process, where themes emerging from the material are reflected in relation to theoretical concepts, experience, and modes of presentation. According to Aula, the authorship in the completed works feels dispersed (Aula 2022, 362, 366).
Many of our works can also be viewed from the perspective of expanded scenography, as at times they feature an undulating light on a theatre stage or a whispering speaker in a park. Although expanded scenography fundamentally escapes the drama-based performance tradition and its practices, it has been amusing that, instead of a script, I have often had transcribed sensory walk material on my desk, resembling a traditional play script:
PERSON 1: This thing really does smell, doesn’t it? I think I sensed a flower of some kind…
(Aula, Niskanen & Salo 2020a)
PERSON 2: The dandelion keeps reproducing. It likes this polluted world.
PERSON 1: I have a very sensitive nose. Can you smell the sea? I can’t, not here…
Approaching sensory ethnographic material through the eyes of a performance designer and using dramaturgical tools can at its best offer perspectives that a fellow researcher might miss in the material. And the same is true in reverse – the core of multidisciplinary teamwork lies in mutual influence and being influenced, forming a way of knowing of its own (Aula 2022, 367–370).
Dramaturges Katariina Numminen, Maria Kilpi, and Mari Hyrkkänen describe dramaturgy as the particular composition, structure, or set of rules characteristic of a specific whole. The way in which that whole is constructed and organized. For example, while working on the gamified Garden of Becomings online publication with Aula and Niskanen, our dramaturgical work has involved the spatial-temporal and linguistic composition of various materials in relation to the surrounding context and chosen technology: observing, selecting, discarding, and reordering. What elements are present in the publication, and why? In what order are the materials, and what logic guides their progression? How do they form connections with one another (Numminen et al. 2018, 208–209)?
Our shared dramaturgical work is characterized by curiosity and sensory exploration from different perspectives and areas of expertise, exploring questions of: what if, and what else? Sometimes questions are answered with more questions, which as a method enriches and expands perspectives in unpredictable directions.
In dramaturgical work, the relationships between things are significant. How do we deal with and tolerate complexity and incompleteness? What does our dramaturgical work mean in the proximity of the ecological crisis, when working with local residents or approaching the crisis as a sensory question?
We have also approached our multidisciplinary collaboration through lightness and playfulness. In November 2019, at the Ecology and Dramaturgy seminar held at the University of the Arts, dramaturg and director Katariina Numminen, who has studied the relationship between plays and dramaturgy, asked: “What if we just started playing together differently?” What is the point of collaborations between art and science? According to Numminen, the point of play is its senselessness, and senselessness itself is valuable. Can anything new emerge otherwise, except by repeating and varying what already exists? Does a paradigm shift begin when a familiar game is repeated slightly differently (Numminen 2019)?
I believe that the dialogical processes between art and science are, at their best, a societal arena where it is possible to dream, imagine, and search without knowing what exactly is being sought. And performance designers have a lot to contribute to this work.
For example, the essence of the Garden of Becomings publication project could be seen as building a common playground for various experts through dramaturgical work, without a clear or specific goal. At the same time, dramaturgical work deconstructs the myth of the individual genius in a society and sows the seeds of multidisciplinary collaboration and insights, a kind of budding, around itself.
The collective, imaginative, and intellectual play within a multidisciplinary team, using dramaturgical tools, can at its best create unexpected connections in chaotic networks between various human and non-human agents, leading to insights and spaces for acting differently, and thus for being in the world differently.
So, what would it mean to play with the concept of an ecologically and socially sustainable future here and now?
Sources
Aula, Inkeri. 2018. “Aistikävely kaupunkimaisemaan: Yhteisen tilan kokemus ja joutomaiden polut.” Elore 25(1). doi.org/10.30666/elore.72816.
Aula, Inkeri. 2022. “Keskinäisen vaikuttumisen tiede ja taide ympäristökriisien keskellä.” In Kinnunen, Taina & Venäläinen, Juhana, eds., Kulttuurintutkimus tietämisen tapana. Tampere: Vastapaino.
Aula, Inkeri. 2023. “Creative environmental relationships enhance resilience: sensobiographic walks at Kokemäenjoki river.” In Jetoo, Savitri, Kouri, Jaana, Laine, Silja, Tynkkynen, Nina & Törnroos, Anna, eds., Understanding Marine Changes – Environmental Knowledge and Methods of Research. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. doi.org/10.4337/9781035311118.00017.
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Aula, Inkeri, Niskanen, Mark & Salo, Jani-Matti. 2020b. “The Rains Are Different Now.” www.niskanensalo.com/the-rains-are-different-now Accessed 18 October 2024.
Hurme, Juha. 2019. “Ihmiskunta tarvitsee teatteria selviytyäkseen.” yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2019/08/21/juha-hurmeen-kolumni-ihmiskunta-tarvitsee-teatteria-selviytyakseen Accessed 18 October 2024.
Krauss, Rosalind. 1979. “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” October 18(Spring 1979). Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Kilpeläinen, Raisa. 2019. “Valosuunnittelu liikkeessä.” In Humalisto, Tomi, Karjunen, Kimmo & Kilpeläinen, Raisa, eds., Avauskulmia: Kirjoituksia valosuunnittelusta. Taideyliopiston Teatterikorkeakoulu. urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-7218-03-7.
Laine, Vespa. 2023. “Designing Mareld: A Case Study.” In Kilpeläinen, Raisa & Humalisto, Tomi, eds., Sustainable Choices – Potentials and Practices in Performance Design. The Publication Series of the Theatre Academy (Teatterikorkeakoulun julkaisusarja) 77. Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki. urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-353-066-9.
Loukola, Maiju. 2014. Vähän väliä (V/ä/h/ä/n v/ä/l/i/ä): näyttämön mediaalisuus ja kosketuksen arkkitehtuuri. Helsinki: Aalto ARTS Books. urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-60-5624-1.
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Niskanen & Salo. 2020. “Murmurations.” www.niskanensalo.com/murmurations Accessed 18 October 2024.
Numminen, Katariina, Kilpi, Maria & Hyrkkänen, Mari, eds. 2018. Dramaturgiakirja – Kaikki järjestyy aina. Teatterikorkeakoulun julkaisusarja 68. Taideyliopiston Teatterikorkeakoulu. urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-353-006-5.
Numminen, Katariina. 2019. “Ekologia ja dramaturgia II – Käytäntöjen harjoittelu, dramaturgia ekologiana.” Lecture 8.11.2019 in the series Dramaturgia ja ekologia: Ekologinen jälleenrakennus. Helsinki: Teatterikorkeakoulu.
Tsing, Anna, Swanson, Heather, Gan, Elaine & Bubandt, Nils, eds. 2017. Arts Of Living On A Damaged Planet: Ghosts of The Anthropocene. London: University of Minnesota Press.
WISE Project. 2023. “Strategisen kriisinhallinnan dramaturgia.” wiseproject.fi/strategisen-kriisinhallinnan-dramaturgia Accessed 18 October 2024.