a message to you
30 october 2008: forthcoming special version at Hangar 2, tempelhof airport, berlin
For the 6th Anti Festival in Kuopio, Finland, we presented a new project especially conceived for the Väinölänniemi Stadium. We have tried to keep every text message (SMS) that we have sent each other since Autumn 2006 and decided to use this material to shout to each other across the opposing seating banks of the stadium.
The stadium is set in beautiful trees on a narrow spit of land to the south east of Kuopio with the lake bordering both sides. It was where the local football team played until recently and where the finnish runner Paavo Nurmi broke the 10,000 metres world record on August 31 1924. A Message to You was presented on the afternoon of the last day of the festival which, starting brightly, soon clouded over, becoming cool and windy soon after starting our 3 ½ hour action.
From the very beginning, there were a handful of loyal supporters around both Sophia and Dan, who were inspired to help by the strain they heard in our voices being taken by the wind. At half time we changed ends, oranges were eaten and more lemon tea was drunk. The wind seemed meaner and there were squalls of cold rain falling as most spectators stayed on the side of the bigger seating bank, which was more sheltered from the wind and rain. They watched as Dan made every effort on his own to be heard across the football pitch and running track. Eventually three french-speaking Belgian women came to help, two of whom stayed until the bitterly cold end when, after 3 ½ hours of shouting, Sophia read out the last message she'd sent while we were in the airport in Helsinki on the journey to the festival.
We read out 481 unedited messages, starting with messages sent exactly a year before the day on which we performed. Surprisingly, our voices didn't fail despite not being in the slightest bit trained for this amount of shouting in the cold.
We would like to thank Laura Lahti, Johanna Tuukkanen and Gregg Whelan, the festival volunteers and the other artists who came along and supported us. We are especially grateful to Christa Donner not only for lending us her voice but also taking photographs for us. We would also like to thank Sian Robinson Davies and Charlotte Silver for typing in the text messages to the database.