Used To the Unusual
On a starry Friday night, the Venetsia building in Lapinlahti was filled with multisensory art reflecting on the phenomena we have gotten dangerously used to.
The room is alive with warmth and connection. It’s crowded but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. People are hugging, laying heads on each other’s shoulders, sharing cups of tea and humming together in the dancing polyrhythm of the soundscape. I’m sitting on a patchwork blanket, looking at the wall across. Covered in drawings and animations, it winds us all into a blanket of shapes, colors and flows of thought. At the heart of the room, there is a tent, spreading an alluring smell into the air – the dear smell of cooking. I came home, I think. In this bizarre, loving home, I am safe.
This multiartistic event is called Used To. In contrast to the name of the exhibition, the atmosphere is far from the usual one. Regardless of the high number and differing backgrounds of the people making the event happen, the whole evening feels like one coherent performance. This performance isn’t only created by the artists themselves, but a key role is played by the audience. Their role is to be guests in an unusual dinner by participating in communal activities, including, for instance, a jam session with peculiar instruments or writing down self-reflective thoughts. And naturally, enjoying the meal.
Still sitting on the blanket, I whisper: ‘309 million…’ My breath falters. I wait. ‘309 million people… starving’, I continue. The words, echoing, linger in the room, smothering all other thoughts and sounds. The cables slither around the blanket – the stage. My friend beside me inhales, then exhales through a flute, coaxing a trembling sound like a person’s struggle, or like an autumn breeze rustling empty branches. The music interprets hunger, as well as the eye-opening process of understanding its existence.
Simultaneously, the people around us start forming a line. The tent is no longer just smells and shadows, but open for the guests to fill their stomachs with lentil soup. Another friend of mine is standing there, spooning the food into empty cans that the guests bring in their hands. These are their bowls tonight. The bread and cutlery, on the other hand, are tied to the ceiling of the room – so high that the guests can’t reach them on their own. From the corner of my eye I can see people lifting each other. When one succeeds in grabbing a piece of bread, others cheer silently, and they share the bread.
‘Being used to is a passive state of mind, where beings from persons to societies get desensitized to tragedy and eventually stop addressing humanitarian emergencies’, says Khaled Karri, the father of the evening. Specifically, Used To reflects on the habituation to the ongoing individual and collective suffering caused by the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. The international collective behind the event, Makan, has members from the conflict areas, and as the founding member of the collective, Khaled felt the need to show what these artists and their friends and families are going through.
‘Food has a key role in many of the crises we see in the news. Due to our privilege we don’t need to stress about where to get the next meal, but it is a real issue for the civilians in the conflict areas. For instance, everyone in Palestine is suffering from catastrophic shortages of food’, he sums up. Since food is also an essential part of Makan’s communal events they arrange in Rome, the collective decided to create a participatory event using food as an artistic tool. Contrary to a regular dinner, in Used To the guests need to struggle to fill and empty their plates. On top of the multisensory environment of the event, all the details of the eating process have been planned to make people realize the irreplaceable value of food. To stop taking it as granted – being used to it.
Used To ended up in cold, dark Helsinki through coincidences. While finishing my studies in Rome, I happened to play the saxophone at one of Makan’s events. Khaled and I became close friends and, after I moved back to Finland, Makan came to serve food at the Lapinlahti Film Festival this summer. At one of the sleepy breakfasts we had during Makan’s sleepovers in my ridiculously small flat, Khaled shared the idea of the food performance. We sketched the event on a napkin and decided to carry it out. The result of that breakfast and three months of ambitious cooperation is this inspiring, vibrant event taking place in Helsinki. After Helsinki, Makan is planning on bringing the project first to Rome, then to other cities and towns around Europe. ‘Based on the feedback we got from the guests, we did something really impactful today. We made them think. This is what we want to bring to people with the project’, Khaled explains.
People have returned to their mats and pillows, forming a diverse archipelago on the floor. At the stage, we are shaking from the wave of complex emotions aroused by the music, the activity, and the abundance of energies around us. I raise my head, slowly, facing the guests for the first time within our performance. In silence, I stand up, and start singing. I sing, until one voice joins in the melody. I step over the instruments, the cable snakes, to the audience. Taking their hands, I raise them up, while the sound of our choir grows louder, stronger, more beautiful than ever. Soon, everyone is standing, singing, together. Together we sing to the stars, to the moon, to everyone underneath them who are in pain. Who feel helpless. Who are alone. I wish they could hear us, or that we may hear them.
The author is a member of the Makan Collective who performed at Used To on the 8th of November, 2024.
