Residencies

We invited multidisciplinary arts collective WAUHAUS to TSC Sound Residency 2025, where they worked on their new stage production PETER LIVED IN A HOUSE – a dolphin from dot to dot. The piece, based on playwright Pipsa Lonka’s play of the same name, ruminates on one of the most bizarre experiments in scientific history, where a dolphin named Peter is taught English. At the heart of the work lies the paradox of love in the relationship of humans and animals. The ultimate protagonist is language, including the power entangled in the fables of our culture.

As an aim to create a performance that shakes up all the senses, the working group wanted to use sound design as a scenographic element. At TSC Sound Residency WAUHAUS explored how the studio’s immersive sound system could support experiences of a space, from vast to claustrophobic. The collective also worked with the spatial arrangement of the music within the sound system, sparking inspiration for the ongoing composition work of the performance.

During its residency at TSC Studio, MP Collective will work on the third part of its Framing series, where dance, video, film, and sound art create immersive worlds. The group deepens its exploration of physical, sonic, and video artistry. They examine the interplay of movement, live projection, and video mapping, as well as the role of sound design as an interactive and participatory element in room.

The working group consists of Miikkael Kukkula, Olli Lautiola, Suvi Nieminen, and Ilona Salonen. Aimed at children and families, the piece will premiere in 2026 in Turku.

In Summer Sound Residency, the moving body acts as an instrument for music and composition. Charo Calvo, composer of electroacoustic music and former dancer, has just finished a research of two years about physical movement and sound spatial movement. At TSC Studio, Calvo is joined by sound designer Christophe Albertini and choreographer-dancer Bahar Temiz. The sound material generated by the movement will create a multi-channel composition incorporating acoustic and electronic materials.

Project Afterlife by Jenni Kivelä & Kiltit ihmiset seeks ways to connect with the dead and asks whether it is possible to find a space where one can still be in contact with a late someone.

In addition to choreographer Jenni Kivelä, the creative team also includes dance artists Ninu Lindfors and Linda Holma, lighting and video designer Teo Lanerva, costume designer Liisa Pesonen, producer Inari Pesonen and sound designer Joonas Outakoski.

Musician-composers Maija Kauhanen and Hugh Sheehan form an artistic duo that uses the Finnish traditional instrument kantele together with electronics, home-made instruments, and human-computer interfaces. Their work explores the internal characteristics of sound, and experimental improvisation and performance processes. During their Sound Residency in summer 2023, Kauhanen and Sheehan conducted experiments in both the audience’s, and performers’ position, movement and gesture. Utilising TSC Studio’s immersive audio system, they explored the characteristics of spatial audio as thematic and motivic origin. Their aim was to devise material as a basis for future performances and recordings.

In January 2023 Dennis Nylund, Antti Uimonen and Anniina Tikka worked on their new project Post Breakers’ Revenge. During their Studio Residency they initiated their movement-based research to study the identity and movement language of aging breakdancers. Within the research group, they wanted to create more space in the breaking culture for people whose interests and values might vary through aging and changing life conditions.

In summer 2022, choreographer Suvi Kemppainen, composer Walter Sallinen and dramaturg Klaus Maunuksela worked towards their new stage work From a great height: a choreographic sonic ceremony that examines subsidence, transgression and love for grief. It is an eerie invitation into an underwater world of the hidden depths and transgressing powers, playing with the emancipatory potentials of lamentation.

In the second sound residency in July 2022, the multi-disciplinary Yumi Collective (Sebastian Kurten, Simeoni Juoperi, Antti Uimonen and Hamis Zzy) worked on their first staged work at TSC Studio. Inspired by the ‘Gömböc’ shape, their creation will examine balance and its reciprocative nature through sound and movement.

In January 2022 artist and choreographer Tiia Kasurinen worked on a new staged work SURFACE, together with a team. Kasurinen’s dance performance is a crooked fairytale and an antithesis for children’s stories; a humoristic, yet harrowing perspective on existing under the gaze. SURFACE will premiered in Kuopio City Theatre on 24 November, 2022.

In April 2022 contemporary circus artist and founder of Nuua Company, Olli Vuorinen, was developing an upcoming solo piece Blueberry Burdock, directed by Thomas Monckton. With the “curiosity of a juggler”, Vuorinen’s aim was to study new means of object manipulation and expressions of bodily movement.

Anette Toiviainen‘s and Iiris Puustinen’s residency periods in spring 2023 marked the beginning of a new collaboration between Tero Saarinen Company and Amos Rex, aimed at supporting and elevating emerging artists in the field of performing arts. Dancer Anette Toiviainen’s Duet was created during a time when human contact happened through safe distancing. This solo performance explores the juxtaposition of life and inanimate objects, loneliness, and longing. Iiris Puustinen’s 3, 2, 1 (The Walk) emerged from the choreographer’s curiosity in exploring the potential intersections between dance and fashion. These works were showcased in the spring as part of the Generation 2023 exhibition in the performing arts program.

TSC began a new collaboration with Kiasma Theatre’s annual street art and culture festival URB, and Nordic Hiphop to the Stage, an international project funded by Nordisk kulturfund and Nordisk kulturkontakt, that aims to build an institutionally backed network for collaborations in the sphere of street culture and performance arts. In March TSC provided an artistic residency at TSC Studio for dancers Hamis Zzy and Siiri Korkeamäki. During their two-week residency, Hamis and Siiri created movement material for their new solos that are part of URB’s EU funded Be Part project. Their works are to be seen on 7–9 June at URB’s programme at Stoa Helsinki, as a part of a full evening performance, created by the French Art Move Concept and Nordic Hiphop to the Stage. Photo: Kansallisgalleria / Petri Virtanen