SOPPA
Event held at Galleria Oksasenkatu 11, Helsinki, FI
By: Meri Linna and Tuomo Tuovinen
23.2-5.3.2011
The recipe of how this event was baked:
Soppa is a collaborate exhibition set up by Tuomo Tuovinen and Meri Linna. Its duration was 2 weeks in the winter of 2011. It was formed as an invitation for the visitors to spontaneously participate in an organically developing event, where the key happening was free food. The interior was be built by Anna Rokka and Corinna Helenelund. The intention was to create an atmosphere where people can feel at home and relaxed by simple means. There was selected artworks on displayed in the basement of the gallery and there was invited music artists playing and performing during some evenings.
The core idea was that food is a universal necessity for living therefor the plan was to cook food in order to provide a possibility of fulfilling that basic need for the visitors. However the activities relating to the food could be interpenetrated as a performative gesture and one suggestion was to eat it.
Why this event is located at Oksasenkatu 11?
The gallery space of Oksasenkatu 11 would be an ideal space for this type of a cultural venue. It is located in the middle/upper class neighborhood of Töölö and since social free venues are rarely found in this environment, this event would have a surprising effect on people passing by. The front room of the gallery would serve as the public room, next to the build kitchen, while the basement held a small exhibition. This event could as well create a dialog with the next door “royal” restaurant Elite.
Why soup?
Consumption in our society is full of contradictions, one of them is related to food. The import / production of food in Finland is bound to great complexity. One example of this fact is that the food is not handled in the best possible manner, as a lot of fine food end up in the dumpster or in the food press outside the supermarkets. We liked to create a temporary alternative to this, and we offered the supermarkets the possiblity to donate that food that they were no longer able to sell in the shop for us to use it in this exhibition.