An untitled video performance inspired by poet Harry Salmenniemi’s score Stage Directions for One Performer.

Published in Ice Hole – Live Art Journal Issue 12, November 24, 2022.

HARRY SALMENNIEMI

Stage Directions for One Performer

Forget yourself because

Remember: you cannot tickle yourself. This must show on your face

Be whoever whose hand you can hold

Be the lovers doubting each other

Be outside yourself and whole

Linger in it

Be a fruit, inside of which another fruit has been put

Be whoever who stares at a reading person in a restaurant

Be the eye’s eye

Choose the correct moment, well assessed and well explained

Give yourself orders. Follow them

Order yourself from without, because it is the only way

Touch your delusion in delusion

Remember the wind

Put the music on with volume so low that you cannot hear it

Think: being sick is caring

Be as if you were listening

Be the story told by anyone, in which you finally find yourself

(finding is a curse)

Think that you hear the music, but do not think about the music

Be, linger, in non-occurence and tie

Be, linger, think about hurrying

Think about wine drank in a hurry

Acquire a quality bottle of wine and drink it at leasure

Be the groceries at the cash desk

Follow as the receipt is refused

Hear laughter from above

Hear how the child says:

— This utopia was built for the new middle class. But they did not find it suitable.

That is why it is so cheap here. Our family…

Be the October November light

Be tired, but ready to act.

Be everything that is built on sand.

Be the civilization and rustle on the carpet

Understand that the birds are escaping and escape.

Thank you: Editorial board of Ice Hole Issue 12, Virpi Vairinen, Leena Kela, and Pilvi Porkola