White Man went to Black Market ...

Roi Vaara

Before I became known through my performance "White Man" (Helsinki 1983), I had worked in the O-group, which had also become known through its actions and installations. Becoming known does not necessarily have anything to do with being successful. In order to achieve a position in Finnish society, in addition to being competent you need the ability to adapt to the prevailing norms; you need the ability to fit into the pattern decreed by the majority or some other (for instance, economic) power. Independent thought or action can have unpleasant consequences. I considered everything I produced very much some type of art, but others did not. In Finland, art can only be academic: formally competent and theoretical in content. Officially I was sometimes unemployed, sometimes a father (of three children) living on social welfare.

In Finland the broaching and discussion of topics has been made futile.lt is more democratic that way, for the consideration of affairs and the power to make decisions are in the hands of the administrative bureaucrats, whose task it is in any case to make sure that order is maintained and the machinery spins smoothly. Any particular day has one story to be broadcasted, the usually trivial politics, sports, or celebrities. Citizens have absorbed the social realities, are programmed to produce according to the dictates of the dominant values.

In Finland, high taxes and high living expenses prevail. By the GNP (Gross National Product), Finland is one of the successful nations in the worid. 'It is a lottery victory to be born in Finland', is the common saying, without the least trace of irony. Luckily, I have seen life in other places. Even though it is not necessarily much better, at least it is more diverse. In 1987 I went to the Kassel Documenta. I was penniless and depressed but a sort of feeling of unfulfilled discontent, a thirst for life, drove me on my journey. I familiarised myself with the programme when I arrived.

Documenta 8 was for performance art. The ASA performance, a happening over several days took place in a side-room of the New York Discotheque. But, heavens! where was the performance? I noticed that objects were arranged in the room, tuning the space - for instance on a high and narrow chair sat a frog, Prof. D. Cappy. Around a table, some people were talking. I did not have long to wonder or to make observations about the space when someone (Boris Nieslony) approached me, and asked, whether I was possibly an artist."Poetry, song, food, performance, drawings - would you possibly like to order some art?", asked Boris in presenting the ASA archives. It became clear that the ASA happening was not a performance, an action event, but it was an event without action, an atmosphere created and modified by the presence of actors.This sort of art work seemed to me to be unprecedented and at the same time very meaningful and relevant. This sort of thought seemed to be light-years ahead of the narrow confines of artistic theory in Finland.

After having become familiar with the artists who were present - including Jacques van Poppel, Boris Nieslony, Norbert Klassen and Jurgen Fritz from Black Market - and their different projects and ways to relate to and to express things, I was filled with enthusiasm. What they did had the taste of life. I was able to sleep the next few nights at their place. I had found that what I had left home to search for; I had found People. I was returning home via Berlin, where one early morning at the metro station I chanced to meet Boris. He invited me to spend a few days in the city.ln the spring of 1988 I received a surprise: some post from Black Market, an invitation to participate in their tour of Poland. It was like a jump into the void. Gradually I began to understand : for me, Black Market was not just an art academy but a gate to beyond the boundaries of my country ‑ worid in which performance art is taken seriously .

Now after ten years with Black Market, I can believe that no other artistic organisation couid have had a similar influence on my personal life. I feel ~d something very special from the members of the organisation. This capital, the power of their gifts, conditionless, has caused . When this happens to you, everything becomes clear and life meaningful. Black Market is the heir of the group Fluxus. In Fluxus, uid present each other's happening‑partitures, making their own adaptations. They were scripted forms, often comically absurd entional (performance) situations, for instance numerous event partitures for orchestras.

In Black Market the performers create their own work, probably without written partitures (I remember Alastair MacLennan once suggesting that he ~erformance, an excellent suggestion, never again repeated.) The Black Market events are mostly detached from their references erformance)events, allowing feelings and associations to be awakened by the events themselves in a more general context unitreality.

In Black Market happenings, the performers perform in the same space at the same time. They do not know ahead of time what sort of event wouid performer prepares his or her own work. The duration of the performance is agreed upon and then just go out on stage. The difthms, pictures, and qualities mix, clash, appear and disappear; the simultaneous events, one there and another here, weave and her. Black Market is a forum of meetings, a field of simultaneous communications.

One performance in parallelling another gives birth to a third. The relationship between performers can be or not be reactive. One performer's intense activity contrasts vith another performer who is motionless the entire performance, while a third has closed himself off in his own private worid. The direction of communications can be both external and internal according to the defining forces, which compose the different personalities. Black Market is a unique performing ensemble, an excellent example of a form of community and co‑operation based on individual freedom and not on ting it. In this, it has revolutionary features and art‑historical significance.

Black Market has shown that communication as well as work can be direct and spontaneous, nor are mutual contracts about rules, preparatory meetings or other mediations needed. What is needed are people who are consclous about themselves and the environment, who have sensitivity and ability to express themselves. When the question is of a group based on autonomous individualism, its chemistry is dependent on the chemistry between the individuals.

Black Market has made a long journey from its early experimentalism to more professional genres. In the summer of '98 in Poland, we saw what has happened to Black Market, we felt that the journey we had made together was reaching a new stage. We saw what has been left behind us, but noy yet what is in front of us.

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