How to like Finland how Finland can like me (too) : In search of patriotic postures

Abstract

In this MA thesis, I try to understand the mechanisms and affectual postures of patriotism from a queer foreign artist’s perspective. I employ a series of performances, artistic practices and experimental writing to get closer to patriotic corporeality without ever having to define it. The performance triptych called How to Like Finland and How Finland Can Like Me (too) and carried out in three different places throughout the fall 2021 addresses questions of bodily affiliation with one’s place. Thus, the work ponders questions of belonging, exclusion, sharing a geopolitical place with others affectually, and, perhaps, leaving a mark of having been in that place. I conduct my exploration of patriotism using methods of fictioning – creating work that builds on top of an established institution and performs in misalignment and shifts in relation to it. The writing views and analyzes itself through the frameworks of beginnings and translation – operational tools both in this text and my artistic research. The multiplicity of diverse beginnings enables me, the maker and the writer, to stay with the uncertain, overwhelming, unfinished, or ongoing – the qualities that have been present in my work. The framework of translation suggests a plurality of modalities, postures and codes that allow me to shift and morph when engaging in art making and writing. This writing actualized during the war that my homeland Russia started into Ukraine. The text moves and shifts between multiple styles and patriotic postures containing war diary, poetry pages and concept analysis.