PEACE MOBILIZATION
Photo Wikimedia Commons: Baltic chain 1989
PEACE MOBILIZATION
What does peace look and feel like?
Peace Mobilization is a community-based and playful Live art event and a series of workshops, in which all interested citizens are welcome to participate. We make together collective corporeal movements, “Acts of Peace”. Live music with flutes and saxophones accompanies the acts and enhances the atmosphere.
Live Art Event at Kansalaistori Square on Sat 19.9.2026 at 12-14.
The event will be performed with participants who took part in the workshops in autumn.
Welcome to follow the event as part of the audience. When instructed by the artists, you can also participate in “the peace movements”
Acts of Peace are simple actions and tasks done together. The movements expand our understanding of peaceful coexistence between people, as well as its forms and possibilities. Peace is not created by being peaceful and doing nothing. It must be reinvented again and again, both alone and together.
Welcome to prepare for peace with us!
THE PEACE MOBILIZATION WORKSHOPS
- Sat 29.8. at 11-13.30 Tapionpuisto, Espoo
- Sun 6.9. at 13-15.30 at Stoa, Itäkeskus.
- Sat 12.9. at 13-15.30 in Kanneltalo
- Final rehearsal on Thu 17.9. at 17.30-20 at Suvilahti Square
THE WORKING GROUP
Planning and guidance:
Esa Kirkkopelto
Eeva Kemppi
Anu Nirkko
Tanja Turtola
Mari Pitkänen
Musicians:
Otto Eskelinen
Taneli Viitahuhta
Production:
Hanna Romo
Eeva Kemppi
Partners:
Espoo City: Tulevaisuustarinoiden Taideiskut
Culture Centre Stoa, Culture Centre Stoa Kannelmäki
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEACE MOBILIZATION EVENTS
“Mobilization” generally refers to a set of actions undertaken to prepare a nation for combat. The mobilization of the Other Spaces collective does the opposite: it is a collective preparation for peace. Peace does not come simply from remaining calm or doing nothing. The possibility of peace must be reinvented again and again, both individually and collectively.
The performance publicly enacts people’s efforts to seek peace in this restless time. The idea behind the Peace Mobilization is to approach the prevailing state of affairs as a state of war, in which speaking about peace and promoting it requires courage and a willingness to take risks, as well as cooperation and mutual trust between citizens. The aim is a kind of peace conspiracy among people—a means of escaping the prevailing state of war into a state of peace.
The Peace Mobilization is a social choreography and participatory public event whose subject and performers are the audience itself. It combines elements of militaristic manoeuvres, mass demonstrations, and the happening art of the last century. Music plays a significant role. Its soundscape draws on military marching-band music, political avant-garde jazz, and the fanfares played during breaks at sporting events. Its purpose is to structure the activity, raise the mood and desire for peace among the participants, attract attention, and inspire the audience to take part.
The Peace Mobilization is inspired by past civic movements and mass demonstrations in support of peace and unity. These include, among others:
- The “Baltic Chain,” a 1989 demonstration in support of the restoration of the independence of the Baltic states, in which approximately two million people joined hands to form a 600-kilometre-long human chain stretching from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius.
- The Moscow-based “Collective Actions” group, which carried out secret, minimalist group actions in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when neither the prospect nor the hope of social liberation was yet in sight.