Vasa does not exactly have a history of Performance art. To my knowledge there has been only three festivals in Vasa before this one. One in the beginning of the seventies, one in 1981 called Vasa is burning, and a one day happening in the beginning of the nineties. These have been happenings mainly with artist from Finland. The Vasa City Arthall is going to be the main place for the festival, but there is also going to be happenings around the town. Platform is going to serve as a meeting point during the festival.

The intention of the festival is to present a picture of what performing in arts is today, and what forms it has taken, espessially as it comes to various new media. The purpose of organizing a Performance festival in the City Arthall and in various places of the town is to reach a vider audience than the usual gallery audience for contemporary art.

The aim is also to widen the concept of Performing in Arts through different happenings and live performances that include visual presentations with basic elements from all traditional categories of art (such as music, dance, theatre, poetry reading and so forth). With this we hope to raise questions about contemporary art in general, about borders between different cultures and about how they differ from each other at the same time as you can find elements that are common everywhere.

The Festival is going to be held from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon with non-stop performances of different kinds. During this time a 23 hours live radiobroadcast from Gallery Platform will be held by two editors from Radio X3M. Platform is situated about 200 meters from Vasa Arthall constituting a meeting point during the festival. Our two radio editors, Peter Lüttge and Stan Saanila, will be reporting from the festival and hope that people will participate in the broadcast. Everyone has a chance to speak up their mind. Or maybe use the radio as a performance tool.