Gavriella Abekassis

When this you see remember for me remember it for me if you can.
STEIN, Gertrude, Geography, p. 468

Is it fine to use a quote which Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski wasn’t really aware of, when I actually decided to use it as a start to this text?
I wonder how a legitimate curator would react.
But it is from a current reading, and Jaana-Kristiina is part of my current life, and the quote is so connected to the performance title. It has to be this way.

Just as Gertrude Stein with her productive relationships during her very busy life, it was organically that this performance and this project were born. Not pretending that Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski or I are sharing any intellectual level with Gertrude Stein, although why not, the way Stein wrote words in order to extract their exact meaning, their precise evocation and the use of the words in her writings are close to the selection of words by Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski in her performance Thank U For Me Please. Although in Jaana’s research work, the responsibility goes to the audience to understand words in their exact meaning, this meaning being decided by a very subjective performer.

But does the attention Jaana puts in selecting words and instructions in Thank U For Me Please come from her literary culture as Stein’s attention did? And which literary culture? Well, it actually comes from a mix of her current studies of psychology - In the performance, Jaana quotes and deconstructs Language and Symbolic Power by Pierre Bourdieu - and social media, the latest being used by Jaana as an artistic medium. On Instagram and in our physical world, Jaana studies different types of instructions, in relation to the social situation in which they are given, and the social status of the people exchanging.

The context of the dinner highlights the relationship of power existing in these interactions, by integrating instructions in a context where you wouldn't usually receive them: a dinner, a social gathering where you are supposed to have fun and converse agreeably. A moment where you would maybe forget social tensions coming from other contexts, such as in a workplace.

The result is disturbing, full of tension, and you want to tell Jaana to stop addressing you in this manner. But you also remember that this is exactly the subject of the artwork, and another social miracle happens: to avoid the tension, laughs are taking over.

Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski is the very first artist I met after moving to the UK, and she will probably have an impact on how I will work as a curator from now on. I would like to dedicate this text to her kindness.

Thanks to Gertrude Stein and to Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski, for giving me a chance to write.