On-Time Performance
Participation
The performance will take place on a one-off basis on the express train between Helsinki and Kuopio on Wednesday 10 September 2025 from 16:19 to 20:24. It is particularly suitable for people who are travelling to Kuopio for the ANTI Festival. Around half of carriage 5 of the Pendolino train has been reserved for the performance: in total 25 seats of which 4 are reserved for the performers. The train ride is free of charge to the participants.
The performance is immersive and its duration is the entire 4 h 5 min train journey but it does not require the audience’s active involvement. The performance develops slowly and resembles an installation. The activities are not intense or require constant attention throughout the train ride. The audience may freely leave their seats and return to the carriage. Audience members may also join the ride during the performance from places located between Helsinki and Kuopio. The performance includes making contact with the audience – participants will be instructed on how to communicate their personal boundaries to the performers and fellow passengers. Instructive flyers will also be distributed on the seats in the train carriage where the performance takes place.
The performance is suitable for people of all ages.
More information: katja(at)antifestival.com
On-Time Performance is a performance installation experienced during a single journey in an express train from Helsinki to Kuopio.
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A train intersects the world with a violent accuracy, harnesses space and time and sets a fixed frame for the passing landscape.
On-Time Performance is a performance installation on the history and meanings of movement from one place to another, of expectations, the railway tracks and the gaze, experienced during a single journey in an express train. The panoramic view displayed by the train window is comparable to the way Western aesthetics perceive the landscape and the environment as something distant and separate from us, as if through a screen or a frame. The performance asks whether things could be different.
In the piece, text, sound and performers’ bodies intertwine with the train’s own ecosystem. At the same time, the performance shifts the focus on travel itself: what happens in the body when it is waiting in motion, is stationary at great speeds. On this exceptional train journey from Helsinki to Kuopio, the swaying and rocking of the train is cradling the passenger-participants into a surge through the ironclad history of the industrial subject where the mundane gets jumbled up with dream-like characteristics.
The performance is Maija Suominen’s artistic thesis for the Degree Programme in Live Art and Performance Studies of the University of the Arts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy.